CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The best way I can remember my friend Brian McIntyre is through my prose.
Y’all might remember Brian. He reported for a couple of TV stations here before jumping into a quasi-PR role with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
I speak of Brian in past tense because he’s not among us. He died May 13, 2012. His spirit remains, however, with us, particularly for people who knew him well.
I did.
Yet I’m not writing now about Brian, a man whose presence brightened everyone else’s life, to soften the disappointment I felt when I had no public outlet to use for this friend who lost his war with prostate cancer. Instead, I’m writing about him for someone else’s sake: his son’s.
Gavin, now 15, was a toddler when he lost his father. I can still picture him roaming a courtyard at First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland, unaware of what was unspooling inside at his father’s funeral.
He wouldn’t have understood the eulogies. Brian’s friends and family spoke warmly of a man who loved people, a musician ecstatic to strum his guitar to serenade strangers as he was to serenade friends.
Brian worshipped his guitar. He worshipped people who played guitar even more — Clapton, Beck, B.B., all of ‘em in the trade. Brian could have been one of the greats himself, had he not had so many interests.
First among them were his friends. Brian put nobody ahead of them — well, maybe his mother, his older brother and his wife Megan. Oh, and Gavin, of course. But his list was short; it included me.
I met Brian when he was a student in one of my courses at Ohio University, his second home. I didn’t like him. I saw more style in him than substance, a trait I despised in people — still do.
In class once, I was reviewing grammar points while Brian chatted with another student. As I spoke, his voice halted me midsentence. I told him sternly: If you think you can do this, come up here and show us.
To my dismay, Brian accepted my challenge. He sauntered to the blackboard, grabbed a piece of chalk and finished what I had started.
His classmates applauded. So did I.
In an instant, he and I became friends. I grew to welcome every moment I shared with Brian, and I cherished the unexpected gestures he made to people who mattered in his life.
And the people who mattered? In Brian’s world, that would be almost everybody — the butcher, the baker, the barista.
I have no idea what this world, rather, this city would be like had Brian lived beyond 42. He would have surely done more for Black youth in our public schools, and I wouldn’t have been surprised had he dipped his hands into politics.
What I know is the world has been a lesser place since his death. People laugh less; people cry more. People make less music — less good music anyway.
Years ago, Brian invited me to attend a Chuck Mangione concert. Aside from Brian’s camaraderie, I wanted to hear Mangione, a flugelhornist, perform his signature jazz piece: “Feel So Good.”
Listen to it, Gavin. The song will tell you as much about your father as anyone else can. For Brian made everybody “feel so good.”
Justice B. Hill grew up on the city’s East Side. He practiced journalism for more than 25 years before settling into teaching at Ohio University. He quit May 15, 2019, to write and globetrot. He’s doing both.