RIP Gerald Ensley and Bill Crider: Admired Writers, Different Paths

Death, all the evidence suggests, is unavoidable.

There's always a chance, and maybe a pretty good one, that because we can't know what we don't know, that the other side of life has: A) something in store that we haven't thought of; B) something we can't comprehend; or C) something that's just as real as what we have now and we can't see it or know about it from here.

The topic comes to mind now because of two people who lost their mortality, or so we believe, this week. One I knew. One I'd never heard of but now wish that I had - and wish I'd met.

What Gerald Perkins and Bill Crider had in common, aside from the fact they were respected writers among peers and readers in their different worlds, was the admiration of others. Friends and peers appreciated their work and their kind words. They meant something to others. They touched others in their souls. (Although it has to be revealed that Gerald, in his self-written obituary, said he didn't care if his life meant something to somebody else. He wasn't sure it was supposed to.)

Gerald Ensley of the Tallahassee Democrat.

What Gerald and Bill Crider didn't share was the manner in which they left us. Gerald died quickly after suffering a stroke. Crider passed away at the end of a year-and-a-half battle with cancer.

Is There a Good Way to Go?

Confronting the loss of these fine men in a short time span caused something to flash across my mind. Is there really such a thing as a good way to go?

That probably depends on your definition of "good" in this case.

Personally, I prefer the Gerald way. Hit me and take me away. The thought of a lengthy exit filled with doctors, hospital beds and either a lot of pain or a lot of memory loss has no appeal to me.

I've long told friends I think the best way to perish would be in a plane crash. Presumably it would be fast, so fast that it would also be painless. There would be no piling up of medical bills. Everyone would always remember how you went -- and my wife would collect from the resulting lawsuit. (Note: My wife doesn't share ANY of these sentiments.)

The thought of dealing with doctors, nurses, hospitals, procedures and drugs for months or years at a time horrifies me beyond anything Stephen King could dream up. I suppose it does all come down to quality of life -- how well you feel when you're seriously ill.

Bill Crider

A drawn-out death does have some benefits. Although you don't get to pick the day you die (unless you live in the right-to-die state of Oregon), you would get to say a real goodbye to the people you love and the people who loved you. (Most people don't take the time to look up people they hated to give them a good "fuck you" before they kick off. But that's another story.)

Like characters in the suspense and mystery novels I read and write, we mostly don't get to choose how the end comes. Even when confronted with a terminal diagnosis, even when it is doomed to be drawn out, choose not to take matters into our own hands or to pursue the avenue of assisted suicide.

There are all kinds of cultural and familiar pressures brought to bear as well, particularly when the diagnosis involves a disease that doctors have shown success in slowing down with treatment. We're taught to fight, hang in there and keep hope alive.

If you die in a hurry and you want to have those quality endings, you have to have lived in a way that everyone knew how much you loved them. And you'd want to know how much you were valued.

That's not really they way we play it out in American culture, at least in my experience. That's too bad.

But as in our writing, until you publish, there's always a chance to make a change.

Who were Gerald Ensley and Bill Crider?

Gerald Ensley, Journalist

Gerald was a longtime writer for the Tallahassee Democrat. I knew Gerald when he was a general assignment writer, and like all good writers in college towns, he helped out with the big local sports stories. In this case, Florida State University football and basketball.

From journalism school, newspaper reporters are trained not to use the word unique to describe someone or something. That's because the word, the reasoning went, wasn't descriptive enough.

If Gerald wasn't unique, he was certainly different than everybody else. He said things others wouldn't say out loud, in a (mostly) good way. He didn't care if other reporters thought he was too rah-rah when he wrote about the Seminoles.

Although he wasn't the primary beat writer, he said, and no one else could write his perspective the way he could, he said.

I don't want to make it sound like I knew Gerald well. I did not. A few times we broke bread in the press box and had conversations before and after press conferences. We had beer or two over the years, but generally I ran with my crowd and he ran with his.

We respected each other and got along. Our jobs were different, and our paths didn't cross the way mine did with other journalists in Tallahassee those years.

While I moved away from Tallahassee and back to Central Florida, Gerald stayed put in the city that he loved, working for a newspaper that clutched his heart.

Bill Crider, Teacher, Mentor and Mystery Writer

Bill Crider was a mystery author from Texas. I didn't know him at all. In fact, until I read a tweet about his passing this week, I'd never heard of him.

A lot of others did, and that much was evident by the reactions I've been reading about his passing. He was a legend in Texas. As one fellow author wrote: "For me, Bill was the highlight of most Texas cons in the last decade. I miss him like family."

Bill, his friends and peers say, was a generous man who spread help and kindness among fellow authors,\. He encouraged them to get their manuscripts finished and get on with the business of getting published.

By trade, he was a college English professor and, later on, chair of the English and Fine Arts Division. Oh: He also wrote three different mystery series (one about a sheriff, one about a private eye and one about some amateur sleuths (college professors) and a handful of stand-alone mysteries. A few of his books were award-winners.

His impact on others was greater than book sales. People who met him only once or twice have stories about how much he inspired them and how much they were were grateful for his enthusiasm for their work.

He also had a widely appreciated pop culture blog.

RIP, Bill and Gerald. Maybe we'll meet, or meet again. It's impossible for us to know, although you already might.