We can learn from those we've lost

One ... with courage makes a majority.

-- Andrew Jackson

The month is not half done, but has already proved a sad one for Georgia. Three of the state's unique personalities passed away in a four-day period.

Two made news. One commented on it. All were special.

Let's begin with the last, Durwood "Mac" McAlister , a former managing editor, columnist and editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal . He died Monday on a suburban Atlanta golf course, which, as most of us know, meant he was halfway to Heaven. He was 81.

Mr. McAlister was very tall, very personable and very gracious to a younger version of me when I asked him years ago to help judge a variety of newspaper contests. I knew he had judged Pulitzer entries, so he was certainly able to review the entries I had collected.

He could have been arrogant or stuffy or demanding, but he wasn't. He reminded me of the Fred MacMurray dad on My Three Sons, which is also coincidental because he could act. Sort of.

For years he was a regular on the stage of the Georgia Press Association's annual Cracker Crumble, a series of skits in which journalists played the roles of our state's political leadership and mocked them both mirthfully and unmercifully.

Mr. McAlister seemed to enjoy it much more than a deacon at First Baptist Church of Decatur should.

Speaking of politicians, we also lost Mac Barber last Sunday. He was 91.

His obituaries called him "colorful" and "eccentric." He certainly was that.

Mac Barber was one of Georgia's longest serving public officials, first elected to the Legislature in 1949. For years he was on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates utilities.

Like most statehouse reporters of the 1980s, I could never figure out what Mr. Barber was all about, but he seemed to really like the job and developed a reputation for personally talking to citizens who called about their utility bills. But that's not all.

Mr. Barber was known to climb out the window of his office near the Capitol.

He insisted it was easier than taking the hallway and steps to get to his car. We suspected it was because he didn't want to talk to reporters waiting in his outer office. They were always asking him questions, such as why he didn't cash his state paychecks.

That's right. He just wouldn't cash them. He said he was saving them up to fulfill a pledge to the University of Georgia in the name of his late wife.

Speaking of the state's flagship university, one of its most remarkable critics, Jan Kemp , died Dec. 5 from complications of Alzheimer's disease. She was 59.

In the 1980s she successfully sued the University of Georgia after she was fired for protesting a policy of changing substandard grades for athletes.

She won a huge settlement and was celebrated by educators everywhere. She was also condemned by Bulldog faithful for tarnishing the name of their beloved university, which she always insisted was her beloved university, too.

During that notoriety, I invited her to be on a journalism program in Atlanta.

She was not what I thought she would be. She seemed very reserved and very shy, and I asked her in a quiet moment why she had done what she had done.

She said she was just doing what she had learned in her Methodist Church youth group years before.

"Psalms 19:14," she said.

If you look it up, it reads: "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."

Good words to live by. Good words with which to be remembered.