Someone special left earth Monday night. I met Jim Newton when I was a whipper snapper still in college, a senior holding down my studies and commuting an hour from school to the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville where I was the communications director for an on-site pavilion. We became friends and he, also a professional adviser to me. Two years later, when I left my next job, which would be in Nashville, I’d learn that he’d asked my employers if they’d loan me to be his communications assistant for a special assignment in Lausanne, Switzerland. They said no. (Insert expletives. I’ve always wanted to live abroad for a period of time. This was my ticket and I never knew I’d been offered.) I eventually parted ways with those employers and I ended up working with Jim in Atlanta.

This seasoned, veteran newsman, turned savvy public relations adviser was brutally honest. He cut me no slack in editing my green, too-often sloppy copy. I learned from him as he wrote both PR strategies and disaster plans, literally pounding out their drafts on an old, noisy clunker of an electric typewriter. And while he could cut my ego to its knees, he always had a kind word to add that encouraged me to keep going.

Those were some of the best years of my youth. We had a special team of 20- to 40somethings working together in the communications department of a nonprofit agency. In our wing, we dissected world news, talked about art, politics, our shared love our burgeoning city and our lust for good food. We eagerly consumed that food during lunch hours, which stretched beyond the agency’s permissible limits. But we worked long hours and we worked hard. And, mostly, we loved it.

Jim was my first mentor. There had been others before, but he was the first to whom I pinned that name. This was the mid-80s and “mentor” back then had another connotation in certain contexts. And Jim would remind me of that double meaning, grinning slyly. That was Jim. He loved the fact that he was “just a dirty old man.” He flaunted it as a badge of honor.

In honor of Jim’s 50th birthday, a colleague and I hired a professional belly dancer. I met her in the building foyer and whisked her, donned in an exotic draped and blousing chiffon outfit, midriff bared, of course, up to the fifth floor for a surprise performance. This was not an ordinary workplace. It was a religious organization. A conservative one. And what we’d done was delightfully taboo. And, frowned upon by higher ups when word got out. Oops! Too late!

Jim thought that tagging himself as “a dirty old man” meant he could get away with certain comments and long, slow, approving looks regarding a woman’s appearance. In one of my angriest moments—I’m sure I shook with that anger as I fiercely glared at him— jabbing the air with my forefinger pointing at him and threatening: “If this were IBM you couldn’t get away with those kinds of comments!” For the record, they were mostly somewhat benign. But. Then they weren’t. This was the 80s and women—particularly nice Southern girls like me working in religious organizations—didn’t have words and categories to describe these situations. The time was pre- Anita Hill.

But in 1991, Anita Hill carved a mark in history. And she left one on my mentor. I’d soon leave the Baptists and launch my own communications business and then move a few years later back to Nashville. Jim eventually retired and moved to Mississippi. We reconnected through email. More than once, he told me that he now got it—that commenting on a woman’s appearance in the manner that he did within the workplace was not acceptable. Thanks to Anita, he now understood my anger. And he apologized. Humbly. Repeatedly. Once by phone. And, last time, in a voicemail, delivered in a regretful, shaky, dying old man’s voice.

And now I am humbled. During the holidays, the “call Jim” notation never made it off my to-do list into an actual phone call. I had heard that his leukemia had returned and things weren’t looking good. And then week before last, I heard that he had been moved to hospice. I exchanged emails with one of my former colleagues. It looked to be too late to call. And then, last Monday, it really was too late. Time was up….

Time has long been up, too, for my whipper snapper days. Despite his “dirty old man” behavior, I loved Jim. I am grateful for having worked with him. I am grateful for his honesty, even when it was a bit abrasive. I am grateful for his kindness. For his belief in me. Back then, I sometimes did not feel worthy. I think maybe he saw in me what I could become. I am appreciative in how he shared his knowledge. He took me under his wing.  Maybe I wasn’t the only one he mentored that way. He loved me and he loved us all—all the incredibly talented, smart and creative people he carefully chose to be a part of his team. He was good to us. But then he did expect something of all of us in return….

Every one of us in the department had tales of being interrupted in our work in the late afternoon by a frantic Jim, high on three ingredients upon which he subsisted—coffee, mega doses of adrenaline, and sometimes antihistamines. (High pollen counts are a thing during Atlanta springs.) Could we take him to the airport he’d ask, his eyeballs and neck veins popping. Plus, he’d always asked us this wee favor with one hour (or less) to spare before his flight departed. This was decades before 9/11 changed everything, and travelers had to arrive at the airport at least a couple of hours before departure. Miraculously, Jim always made it to the plane. Every.time. But by the time he leaped out of the passenger side and slammed the door and dashed—coattails flying—the veins and eyeballs of his once calm chauffeur were also popping, their own heart pounding with adrenaline. I made that trek from midtown Atlanta to the airport, maneuvering rush hour jams several times. I recall them often occurring on Friday afternoons. I think my colleagues and I may have made a pact, in those Nancy Reagan days, to “Just Say ‘No'” to Jim if he requested those nerve-twisting, treacherous taxi rides from us.

The world has changed since 1982, when I first met Jim. But my fondness, my gratitude, they are eternal. Like the place that he has gone to now. Jim: I join so many who will miss you. Thank you for the multitude of blessings (and laughs…often at your expense) you gifted us here with your presence. I hope you are happy and that there’s lots of coffee and maybe a few pretty women, cause, you know…some things never completely change….