In Memorium

I was saddened today to hear of the death of Dith Pran, the New York Times photojournalist whose escape from his native Cambodia was portrayed in the movie The Killing Fields. He was 65 and suffered from pancreatic cancer.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dith a few years ago, when he was reporting on an open house at the Edison Labs in West Orange. His kindness and the lightness of his presence struck me, especially given the sheer horror of inhumanity he'd witnessed and been victim to during the Khmer occupation of Cambodia. He had every reason to be angry and bitter, but he just didn't seem to be the type to waste his energy on resentment.

Apparently that was just the way he lived life. In an obituary today, his friend and fellow journalist Sidney Schanberg said, "His gift was his ability to handle extreme situations and never lose his balance. He didn't let horror change him. He kept looking for the good in people." And he spent much of his free time working to convince people not to let the horrors happen to anyone else, ever again. (The Times ran an informative obit in today's paper, which you can read here.)

It's funny - for some reason he came to mind the other day, and I recalled that he'd mentioned we might run into each other again sometime, maybe in the park near my home, where he liked to take pictures. I wish we had.

May he rest peacefully.