This post has nothing to do about Korea ...

But a tribute to one of my heroes in life, David Halberstam, who died Monday (local time) in California.

Read on if you like, or tune in later this week for a look at Korean Cemeteries (Kim Rawley won't want to miss that one).

I still remember the day I was in my last semester at the University of Southern California and the announcement was made that David Halberstam was the keynote speaker for our graduation. I was thrilled. For a journalism student who knew something about the world, unlike many of my peers, I admired Halberstam's career with the New York Times covering Vietnam to his successful book writing career.

Halberstam at the 2002 USC commencement, almost five years ago to the day.

I was thrilled. "David fucking HALBERSTAM," I told one of my classmates. He wrote the "Best and the Brightest. He won the Pulitzer for covering Nam."

A lot of my friends and some of my classmates had no idea who the man was. A sad commentary on my generation.

I still remember his commencement speech. It was one of the best speeches I've heard in my life. I was scared shitless about the future when I graduated. I took a job in politics because the journalism job market was so bad and because I was deathly afraid of graduating college without a job.

Halberstam finally put it in perspective. I sat there still drunk from the night before but I had a perfect moment of clarity. When he spoke it was like a the sun came out and I knew everything would be OK.

He said none of us should worry about getting out into the world and making mistakes. In fact he encouraged us to get out there and make our mistakes early, when they would be easiest to recover from while we were still young.

He said none of us should know what we want to do with the rest our lives, because we're only in our early 20s.

I still remember him recalling his first newspaper job. He said it was at the smallest newspaper in Missouri and that he had been fired less than a year into the job.

Those few sentences gave me so much hope that when I eventually became a newspaper reporter nine months later, I always remembered what Halberstam said and where he started his career. I was working at an 800-circulation weekly newspaper and I kept remembering, "David Halberstam started small too. If he can do it, I can do it."

Though I'm glad I'm out of the newspaper business and feel sorry for people still stuck in what I consider the industrial version of a nursing home, I still held Halberstam in high esteem because he gave me hope when I started as a reporter.

A year after graduation I went down to the UCLA Festival of Books, solely to meet Halberstam. I remember going down there with my mom after I drove from the Central Valley to Lancaster. When I met Halberstam I was almost speechless. I was in awe. And for no real reason other than respect for what he had done so far in his career and life.

I tried the best I could to thank him for encouraging me though he didn't know it. I muttered out a one-liner about how I graduated from SC and now work as a newspaper reporter for "the smallest newspaper in California."

So, dear readers, if you've made it to the end of this rambling post, thank you for indulging me in a moment of sadness and memory. I have no idea why the death of a 73-year-old man meant so much more than the deaths of 33 people last week in Virginia, but I can probably sum it up with one sentence. I'm a sick person.

James Loughrie ... Good Day!