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ColesCountyDem

(6,943 posts)
Tue Sep 23, 2014, 12:32 PM Sep 2014

To others, you were a distinguished journalist. To me, you were a dear friend.



Yesterday afternoon, my dear friend, Becky Malkovich, passed away at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis MO, as a result of a heart attack and stroke she suffered last week. Becky was just 53.

To the world at large, Becky was a distinguished, award-winning, print journalist, having spent the last ten years as a news and feature writer for the Southern Illinoisan. Prior to that time, Becky was a reporter for 9 years for the Benton Evening News, one of the last family-owned newspapers in the Midwest, a newspaper that had been owned and operated by her family for five generations.

Becky used words in the same way a master sculptor uses marble. Her reporting was always factual, yet never colorless. 'Integrity', a meaningless or annoying word to so many journalists today, was Becky's watch word.

To those of us who knew and loved her, Becky was an amazing mother to her two sons, a loyal 'friend to the end', a wit who could make a statue grin, a loving daughter, sister and aunt. Becky colored our world in an amazing variety of tints and hues, each one unique to that person. Without her in it, the world will definitely be less colorful.

Left to mourn her passing are two sons, Jake and Eli, her sister, Missy, her brother, John, two nephews, one niece and the hundreds of us who were privileged to call her 'friend'.

Thank you for being exactly who you were, Becky, and I'll see you on down the road some day. Have the coffee pot on, and be ready to bring me up to speed on all of Heaven's news.

http://thesouthern.com/news/local/award-winning-southern-illinoisan-journalist-dies/article_84b2f9cc-26a3-541d-8abf-d042821f2144.html
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To others, you were a distinguished journalist. To me, you were a dear friend. (Original Post) ColesCountyDem Sep 2014 OP
I'm so sorry sharp_stick Sep 2014 #1
Thank you. ColesCountyDem Sep 2014 #4
Please accept my deepest sympathies, ColesCountyDem. Octafish Sep 2014 #2
Indeed! ColesCountyDem Sep 2014 #5
Please accept mny condolences. Hutzpa Sep 2014 #3
Thank you. ColesCountyDem Sep 2014 #6
Clarification: ColesCountyDem Sep 2014 #7
A kick in Becky's honor, for the evening crowd. n/t ColesCountyDem Sep 2014 #8
Losing the good ones JimDandy Sep 2014 #9

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
2. Please accept my deepest sympathies, ColesCountyDem.
Tue Sep 23, 2014, 01:01 PM
Sep 2014

Through her work and the lives she shaped, your friend made ours a better world and this a better country.

ColesCountyDem

(6,943 posts)
7. Clarification:
Tue Sep 23, 2014, 05:41 PM
Sep 2014

I've had a couple of e-mails asking if her brother is 'that' John Malkovich. Yes, John Gavin is her older brother.

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