In 2010 Louis suffered an ischemic stroke and we almost lost him. A long road to recovery followed, much of it achieved through his own tenacity and resolve, with support from close family.
Louis was partially disabled on the right side of his body for several months. He eventually recovered reasonably well, although he was left permanently with Aphasia and consequently unable to process or respond to information in the usual way, a source of sheer frustration for him. Still, as he said at the time, the stroke may have taken his speech, but not his voice.
For someone who was once able to articulate and make interesting any subject, embellished with exquisite handwriting, often using a fountain pen (strictly black ink), he was reduced to tapping out thoughts and story ideas, of which he still had many, on a laptop, painfully slowly. In 2011 Louis started a blog, partly to exercise and heal his damaged brain, partly cathartic. He called it redoable and the last entry was in 2015.
Before the stroke, Louis had always been an adept writer and narrator. He could be stern at times, but never unkind or personal, prejudiced or judgmental in his observations and, with that dry wit and subtle irreverence, he would entertain us with one-liners and rich anecdotes of his early working life. So I asked him to start writing a memoir of how he came to be in the business of news and writing, for posterity and healing. He threw himself into it and spent a long time creating the following account of his early years in Louisiana (not necessarily in chronological order); he called it ‘Cathode Ray Days’.
*Deteriorating health prevented Louis from being able to continue and fill in the gaps, or to recount his time working as anchor and reporter in Columbus, Ohio from 1975 until 1993.
As a tribute to my beloved husband, I am publishing his unfinished journal, verbatim and unedited, as he left it. Most of the images were originally included by Louis at the time of writing. I’ve added some additional photos of him as anchor, along with various licensed illustrations.
*Louis’ friend, Aaron Handy III, has kindly published an example of his time with WVUE-TV on YouTube, and some of Louis’ later work can also be found on the News Anchor YouTube channel.
