WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Initially, I began this article with the ordinary things people write about when someone dies. But I hadn’t gotten to the end of the first paragraph before I realized that I couldn’t write anything ordinary about Vernon Jarrett, the pioneering journalist who was extraordinary in so many ways.

Vernon died Sunday night at the University of Chicago Hospitals at the age of 84 after a long bout with cancer of the esophagus.

This story is not about how Vernon died – it’s about how he lived.

Vernon has always been a larger-than-life icon in journalism. He entered the field in 1946, the year before I was born, but we have always shared a special bond. We are both Southerners; he grew up in Paris, Tenn. and I spent all of my childhood in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Both of us were history majors and editor of The Aurora, the school newspaper, at Knoxville College. We both maintained a passion for our alma mater and had been serving together on its Board of Trustees. Beyond that, Vernon Jarrett has set a high standard that I can only aspire to reach.

Most important, he was talented. Not only was he talented, he was in the never-ending quest to become the perfect writer.

Whenever you saw the Vernon Jarrett by-line on a story, it was solid assurance that everything that followed was well-researched and well-written. You could take it to the bank. Vernon was a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists, served as its second president from 1977-1979, and prided himself on having never missed a convention in more than 25 years.

At each annual convention, you were as likely to find Vernon in the hotel lobby advising some newcomer in the business about his or her career as attending a workshop or speech.

Vernon Jarrett was a “race man” in the tradition of W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter and Paul Robeson, towering historical figures that he could – and did – lecture about without prompting. He praised and challenged African-Americans and went to his death befuddled that any Black person working in journalism today could part his or her lips to ask whether he was a Black journalist or a journalist who happened to be Black.

Vernon and Les Payne, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of Newsday, would direct young journalists to read the birth announcements in newspapers and see if they could ever find a single instance of a mother giving birth a to a 7-pound, 8 ounce “journalist.”

Vernon’s position was that we’re born Black, we live as Blacks, we die Black, and we should feel some obligation to help people who are Black. It is only fitting that Vernon ended his professional career at the same place he started it six decades earlier – working for the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper.

On his first day at the Defender, Vernon was assigned to cover what was then called a race riot. Not only did he do it well, he has been on fire every since, somehow landing in the midst of every important event that involved Black folks. It is telling that Vernon worked for more than 20 years in the Black Press while the daily newspapers in Chicago maintained all-White editorial staffs. It was their loss, not Vernon’s. He continued to work at the Defender and in 1948 hosted “Negro Newsfront,” the first daily radio newscast produced by an African-American.

The Chicago Tribune, then one of the most strident conservative newspapers in the country, finally came to its senses and hired Vernon in 1970 as its first syndicated Black columnist and editorial board member.

Whether he was at the Tribune, the Sun-Times or the Defender, Vernon never failed to plead the cause of the poor and disadvantaged. He was a race man who did not allow others to limit him because of his race.

Being a race man did not mean letting Black leaders off the hook. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. –who organized funeral services for Vernon on Saturday at Operation PUSH – found that out when he stormed into the office of Jim Squires, the editor of the Tribune, to complain about something that Vernon had written. Vernon invited himself to the meeting and reminded both Jackson and Squires that he would continue to write truthfully or find a new home.

In 1983, he moved the rival Chicago Sun-Times in a similar capacity. That lasted for 11 years. In his last column, Vernon wrote:

“…I’m not retiring from my profession. I have too many bills owed to the dead, including my own son [William Jarrett died in 1993 of a rare rheumatologic condition; a second son, Thomas, is a photojournalist at the ABC-TV affiliate in Chicago] – debts that only be relieved through work with the living.”

When he was living, Vernon was tired of seeing the overemphasis of athletics and entertainment in the Black community. In 1997, he created the ACT-SO, an acronym for Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics. It is held each year in conjunction with the NAACP’s annual convention and students are awarded medals, scholarships, computers and books.

Not only was Vernon a towering figure in the newspaper industry – he served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in the industry – and for many years hosted his own television and radio programs in Chicago.

After Vernon left the Sun-Times, he returned to writing a column for the Defender. He wrote one column a year ago that prompted more than 100 students to enroll at Knoxville College.

With his stellar credentials and accomplishments, there was nothing formal or distant about Vernon Jarrett. He prided himself on being a raconteur. In his 80s, he was calling everyone else old. If you were standing in a crowd with Vernon and a young person walked by, Vernon would often point to someone in the group and tell the young person: “He’s so old that when God said let there be light, he pulled the switch.”

He would also say other things that shouldn’t appear in a family newspaper.

Vernon and I took great pride in Knoxville College, a historically Black college whose enrollment has never exceeded 1,200 students. Although the college has never had a journalism program, it has produced a long line of successful journalists, including Barbara Rodgers, an Emmy award-winning television reporter for KPIX-Channel 5 in San Francisco and Ralph Wiley, an author and former reporter for Sports Illustrated.

The last time we talked, Vernon pointed out that Knoxville College is the only institution that has produced alumni that served as president of the National Association of Black Journalists and the American Society of Magazine Editors, an honor bestowed upon me when I was editor of Emerge: Black America’s Newsmagazine.

Of course, Vernon was making that observation to set me up for an idea he had.

He wanted us to start a writing institute at Knoxville College, where he and I would come back a couple of weeks in the summer to teach journalism to high school students. He didn’t live to see that happen, but President Barbara R. Hatton has pledged to create such a program at Knoxville College.

She said that it will be named in Vernon Jarrett’s honor and knowing Vernon, that would bring a smile to his face. He always preferred deeds over words.