When I was associate editor of the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger 1984-87, editor Dick McCartney would wander into my office occasionally trolling for an editorial idea. He would ask, What should I view with alarm this week?

It was always funny because as every talk show shock jock, headline writer and book hawker knows, the clanging jangle of alarm sells. Nobody reads a story that says the mail was delivered without event, or that 15,000 flights took off and landed safely, or that 25 million children attended school, ate peanut butter sandwiches and learned their ABCs without incident today.

His question also nodded to the unfounded accusation that he or the newspaper was alarmist.

We covered tough stories there, too: the former Baptist college student and church volunteer on death row after being convicted of multiple murders in Geronimo; the association throwing out a church for calling a man as pastor who had been divorced; one of our pastors on the national stage who declared what prayers God did or did not hear.

Dick was glad for me to write the stories and he handled the calls that came in afterward. The controversies of the SBC were leaking into the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and, contrary to popular belief, editors do not thrive on controversy. One day he called me into his office to tell me he always had a personal commitment to continue in a job only as long as it was still fun.

The joy was gone and he was returning to Texas to the Radio and Television Commission  an old SBC agency created when an optimistic denomination thought it had the money and will to offer a positive influence on programming on that most powerful and pervasive communications tool.

Weve since given up on both the agency and the idea.

He told me to warn me that he wouldnt be there to buffer the calls anymore, so be careful, he said. We had a nice party for him, and for me a few months later.

Dick retired to Gentry, Ark., the area where he grew up and served on the board of John Brown University. We talked a few times but never enough because I was always so encouraged in our conversations and whatever happy chemicals are released from laughter were always boosted by our talk.

An email March 9 with his name in the subject line was immediately foreboding. Dick was gone, in the twinkling of an eye. Dick, 81, had risen from bed and gone to shower. When he didnt come to breakfast in a timely manner, his wife Barbara found him on the bathroom floor, already gone.

Already gone. Like the two decades since we worked together. Like the last chance to tell him how much I appreciated when he showed up at my office door completely out of the blue when I was a seminary student and asked me to join his staff.

My wife was pregnant with our third child. Income and outgo passed in the night but seemed otherwise unrelated. And he showed up from 200 miles away and asked me to lunch. I was clueless, but my boss knew immediately what Dick was after.

His invitation came as if from the lips of an angel. There is no as if for Dick now. The songs he raises, he lifts with the angels.