Commentary: Writing more words about my newspaper mentor than he’d like

My journalism mentor, Charles H. “Chuck” Loos, died five months ago, and I just found out.

He was 80. I have no idea how he died. [Editor’s note: Loos suffered a stroke].

How did this happen?

It seems incomprehensible, in these days of instant news.

He wasn’t really an Internet guy. But the veteran O.C. newspaperman probably knew 90% of the people who live here, and I know a lot of people.

Yet he dies, and I don’t hear about it until five months later.

I don’t blame anyone but myself.

I am shocked at how disconnected I have become.

*

Chuck took a chance on me, way back in 1987, hiring me for a full-time reporting job when I was pretty green, an English Literature graduate from UC Irvine who was editor of the school newspaper and who had a couple of years of business reporting under his belt, but who still was a rookie.

Chuck saw something in me — desperation, perhaps.

I was 24.

Now I’m 52 — about the age Chuck was when he hired me.

Chuck wore his glasses low on the bridge of his nose, favored khakis and striped golf shirts, and always had a severe-yet-caring expression on his face, as if he was thinking, “I like you, kid, but you suck.”

I loved how, at lunchtime, he always would order avocado and cheese and bacon sandwiches on white rolls with a touch of mayo. My colleague and I would walk across the street to Mr. Sandwich in Irvine and bring Chuck’s lunch back to him.

We always joked that Chuck loved the “Heart Attack Special.”

I don’t know if those stupid sandwiches killed him.

He’s gone. Does it really matter how he died?

*

In 1989, I moved to Japan to teach English. Over the next six years, I wrote several dispatches from Japan that Chuck edited and published in Orange County Business First — the weekly, long gone, where he gave me my first break by taking a chance on me.

A weirdo with long hair.

Chuck was amused at my escapades abroad, and I was grateful he thought my stories were worthy of print.

Halfway across the world, I was closer to Chuck than I ever would be.

When I returned to Orange County in 1995, a world away from when I left, I reached out to Chuck for job opportunities.

The Internet was in its infancy, and Chuck put up with email, but I knew he would have preferred lunch at McCormick & Schmidt’s in Irvine, or beers at Muldoon’s Irish Pub at Newport Center in Newport Beach — anything in person.

At this point in my story, Chuck would tell me to end it. Too long, he would say.

Over the last 18 years, Chuck and I kept in sporadic contact. I remember a lunch here and there, and promises in emails to get together.

Promises not kept.

I probably last emailed him two to three years ago, telling him how cool it would be to get together.

We never did.

Now Chuck’s dead.

*

Loss, in 2015, is a funny thing.

Not funny, really.

We all are moving at lightning speed, life on a string of endless text messages.

Have we lost the capacity to grieve? Have I lost that?

I heard about Chuck’s death Sept. 14.

I Googled his name (what else would I do?) and came across a nice, but brief, article in the Orange County Register.

There was a picture of Chuck smiling on a recliner.

He looked happy.

I am happy his life, in some small public way, was acknowledged.

But I hate how disconnected I have become, too wrapped up in my own stuff to keep the wider view and wonder how my friends and loved ones are doing — and act on this curiosity, so fleeting but genuine, by keeping in touch with them.

Not with a tweet, or a Facebook “like,” or an email.

But with a visit, in person.

I can still hear Chuck’s voice.

“I like you, kid, but you suck.”

He never said that. But I thank him for thinking that. It made me a better writer.

I’ve failed, however, at the bigger lesson:

Slow down.

Thank you, Chuck, for reminding me of that.

And yeah, I know: light on the mayo.

Go ahead, Chuck. Rip this story apart. I would expect nothing less.

But please don’t edit out these words:

Thank you. I miss you very much. I am sorry I fell out of touch.

GREG HARDESTY is a former Orange County Register reporter who now works for Cornerstone Communications. CHUCK LOOS was a former Daily Pilot managing editor who died March 26. His complete Daily Pilot obituary can be read at dailypilot.com/news/tn-dpt-me-0401-chuck-loos-20150331,0,2739786.story