I met him late in life, both my life and his. Yet, that didn’t diminish what he offered or the way he offered it. He was verbally clever, financially savvy, and approachable. That’s why I tuned in to Louis Rukeyser every Friday night on television for about five years. My partner, Earl, had done the same, only forever. In fact, he was the one who sold me on Rukeyser’s program.
In those years, our Friday night routine was cast in the proverbial concrete. We went to dinner and then went home to watch Wall Street Week on PBS. That program was our dessert. In the beginning, I didn’t understand much about the financial information Rukeyser imparted, but Earl took notes as if he were studying for some accounting class. Me? I always appreciated Rukeyser’s turn of a phrase. He had language down cold.
Two days ago, Louis Rukeyser died at age seventy-three, a victim of multiple myeloma, a rare bone marrow cancer. He left his TV program and the public eye around 2002, and I believe he knew then what his prognosis was. He chose to battle it in private.
However, since no public mention was ever made about Rukeyser’s state of health, Earl and I often wondered what he was doing since he announced his “retirement” a few years back. We spoke often about missing him as part of our Friday night ritual. Sure, there were other financial analysts who took over his half hour spot on PBS, but none of them claimed our allegiance. We just lingered over coffee or a second cocktail in the restaurant-of-the-week.
Early on, we hoped Louis Rukeyser would reconsider his retirement, but that never happened. Instead, he faded more and more from public view. Now he is gone, but I bet Earl still has those notes as a remembrance of a certain time in our lives.
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