Monday afternoon Ginny and I drove home for Rosh Hashana. Dinner at our house with our Grandparents was tense, but not unbearable. And, when Ginny and I went over to visit Mama�s new apartment it was weird but good. I could picture coming home to two homes � especially if that were home number two.
Tuesday, for the first time in my life and the second time in my father�s, we did not attend Rosh Hashana services. The first time my father didn�t go his wife was in the hospital with a newborn baby and he was taking his then three year old daughter to the doctor�s for an unidentified rash. It turned out Ginny was just covered in bug bites and baby Paul would die in just a few days.
Tuesday my mother�s little brother died, and we didn�t go to Rosh Hashana services and everything in the world was wrong. And, because it�s a terriblehorrible, I can�t say anything better than that.
This is the article that ran in the Oregonian (one of the newspapers uncle Rob reported for) today:
Rob Eure, a former reporter for The Oregonian who helped train journalists in developing democracies for the last several years, died Tuesday in Egypt. The cause was an apparent heart attack. He was 50.
Eure, a Virginia native and reporter there for two decades, was described by friends and colleagues as dogged and curmudgeonly.
"I will deeply miss his energy, enthusiasm and unflagging commitment to the role of a free press in a functioning democracy. When he left us, new democracies on three continents lost a freedom fighter," said Dwight Holton, a longtime friend. "His tenacity,
perseverance, obstinacy and worth ethic are the stuff of legend among fledgling reporters from Cairo to Kandahar."
Eure was born in Roanoke, on Nov. 6, 1954, and attended public schools there. He graduated from the University of Virginia. Eure worked as a reporter at the Daily Progress, in Charlottesville, the Roanoke Times and the Virginian-Pilot, in Norfolk. In 1994, he came to The Oregonian where he covered several issues, including the environmental and philanthropy.
"He was smart and relentless and also irascible, especially with editors," said Sandy Rowe, the editor of The Oregonian and also Eure's boss at the Virginian-Pilot. �Underneath his gruffness, Rob, the son of a newspaperman, was driven by his passionate belief in the good journalists can do."
Eure left The Oregonian in 1998 to work for the Wall Street Journal. After the paper folded its northwest bureau, Eure won Knight International Press Fellowship. Working through the International Center for Journalists, he traveled around the world to help train reporters and editors in developing democracies.
Eure spent time in Slovakia, Ghana, Georgia and Afghanistan.
Peter Sleeth, a reporter at The Oregonian, said Eure tried to teach journalists to do something that did not come naturally: question authority.
"He was totally devoted to teaching journalists overseas," Sleeth said. "He hated editors, but became one."
Most recently, Eure was in Cairo teaching journalists how to impartially cover the Egyptian presidential election. He arrived at his office early, as usual. Co-workers found him.
Survivors include his wife, Deane B., and their daughter, Addie, both of Portland; father, John Walter Eure, brother, John D. Eure, and a sister, Virginia W, all of Roanoke.
Previous | Next