Sally Huggins Toner

The secret to learning how to play tennis, my grandfather always said, is to find a doubles partner better than you. That axiom occurred to me on my drive into work this morning as I listened to several high powered female journalists share their experiences with and show their respect for Cokie Roberts. Station managers, international correspondents, bureau chiefs, one after the other, praised her as a principled journalist, a trailblazer, and…a mentor. Cokie Roberts has been a companion on radio and TV, making sense of an ever undulating political landscape, ever sense I can remember. But as I listened to these tributes, and mourned the loss of some old school reporting, another loss came to mind.

If you’re as lucky as I have been, your list of examples, professional and personal, is solid—filled with people of integrity, intelligence, and depth. If you’re as lucky as I have been, there are people who challenge you with the kindest kick-in-the-ass when you need it the most. If you’re as lucky as I have been, there are people who show you how to adult.

For me, one of those people was Melissa Joyce. She was a journalist too.

It’s not what she ended up doing for a living. Melissa was a city planner, an activist, a mom—but before that, she was a high school newspaper editor and National Merit Scholar (though I only found that out because my mom informed me. Melissa never would have mentioned it). She was also a vegetarian, a Bob Geldof fan, and could throw an exacto knife clear across the pub lab, hitting with frightening precision a target she’d pinned to a bulletin board on the other side. (Until one of those homemade darts missed our adviser’s nose by about an inch one inopportune time she decided to check on our progress towards deadline)

I myself had poor exacto knife skills.

“It’s a good thing you can write, Sally,” Melissa would tease me, “Because you can’t cut a straight line for shit.”

She’d always follow up those jabs with a huge hug before shoving a piece of pizza in my hand and making me promise, “not to work and eat at the same time.”

That’s a rule I follow to this day. It’s a good one. As are the others she taught me. Avoid the passive voice. Don’t apologize in life or in phrases like, “It seems like…” or “What I’m trying to say is…” Be direct. Be brave. But most of all, punch up.

You see, I was an easy target. I was two years younger, short, chubby, incredibly awkward. I tried WAY to hard (still do). Melissa could think and write circles around the cleverest, most sardonic seniors on staff. But from what I remember, where I was concerned, that pub lab was a safe space.

“You know I have to get you ready,” she said, as she sat behind me in French class my sophomore year. “Someone needs to be editor when I’m gone.”

It was the finest compliment I think anyone has ever paid me.

Hazelwood, the Supreme Court decision that took power out of the hands of students and put it in that of administration, came down the year after Melissa graduated. I remember her telling me that I, “better pay f-ing attention to this. You’re going to have to write smarter and funnier to get stuff by them now.” And I did. I punched up when it was appropriate, pointing out the dangers of censorship in our libraries and mismanagement of renovations. It all got by. I had the best teacher, even though she wasn’t that much older than I was.

We lost touch after high school. She moved out to the West Coast and then settled in the Midwest. It didn’t surprise me at all that she dedicated her life to activism and community service, to her family and friends. Our mothers are friends, so I guess that was how she found out when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was how I had found out,  about a decade before, when she was diagnosed. I had kept up with Melissa’s battle, her remission, her recurrence, her bravery during treatment. Then, when I got sick, about a week into chemo, I got a package from Melissa. It was a blanket. The softest I’d ever had.

“You’ll need this.” The note said.

She wasn’t done teaching me. Here she was, still sick herself, and she sent me that blanket. It is, honestly, a Godsend during treatment when you are always cold, your nose always running, every surface of your skin an itchy, stingy mess. She knew it all too well. When I messaged her on Facebook and asked her for her address to send a proper thank you, she sent back a smiley face with hearts, telling me it was going to be okay and to feel free to message her if I needed to vent.

She wasn’t done teaching me.

We’re coming up on a year since we lost Melissa.  Can I just take a moment to say…

FUCK CANCER.

Cokie Roberts at 75, Melissa Joyce Douglas at 51. It’s all too soon. It all sucks. There’s never enough time.

I’m still here. Driving to school, mourning a national figure and someone who could have been. I didn’t become a professional journalist either. But I teach kids who might be some day. You better believe they’ll learn everything Melissa ever taught me.

Because she’s not done teaching. And she’ll always be the better partner.