“If you want mercy, go to God.”

"From me, you get justice."

Tim Russert often spoke about the tremendous impact a couple of teachers had on him – not just as a young student – but as the man who ascended to the summit of network journalism. 

Russert often credited a nun at his South Buffalo grade school with giving him his earliest training in journalism.

Sister Mary Lucille, who in an attempt to channel Russert’s excessive energy as a child into something positive, created a school newspaper and put him in charge.

She also encouraged him to apply to get into Canisius High School where Russert often said he learned something without which his journalism skills would have been wasted.

That something was discipline.

He learned it from a tough-as-nails priest, Father John Sturm, who had been a Golden Gloves boxer and served as the school’s Prefect of Discipline when Russert was enrolled in the early 1960’s.

"I said, ‘Russert, if you want mercy, you go to God. From me you get justice’," Father Sturm recalled just moments after learning of Russert’s death.

RECENT COLUMNS

Archives