Fatal cancer couldn't kill his passion for saving other lives

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I didn't know he was sick. Not that I should have. Why would he have told me? He had no reason and no opportunity.

We didn't know each other. We were voices on the phone. I talked to him many times over the years, but I met him only once.

We were on a panel together in May and he sat a couple of seats away from me. After the long discussion, I went over and said, "Hello it's nice to meet you," or something like that. I know I didn't say what I was thinking: That I liked talking to him. That he made my job easier. That I wished everyone who dealt with the media were as articulate and focused as he.

I figured I'd tell him someday, next time I talked to him, maybe. But I haven't talked to him since and on Tuesday when I opened the paper and saw his name I was stunned.

"Jeffrey D. Grossman, a former newspaper reporter who served the state public safety department in two administrations, died Sunday in Beth Israel Hospital after a three-year battle with cancer that included a liver transplant. He was 45."

I try now to reconstruct walking over to him at that conference, shaking his hand, looking into his eyes.

Shouldn't I have seen that he was sick? Shouldn't I have sensed some sadness?

I didn't. He was so involved in helping other people, so wrapped up in the issue of seat belts, so passionate about other people's lives, that I didn't even think about his life.

He worked for the Patriot Ledger for 16 years; I read this in his obituary and I remember knowing this fact, but I had forgotten. I never knew that it was because of his efforts that the subsequently repealed state seat belt law was passed. I only knew that he was always trying to educate people about seat belts.

I didn't know that it was because of his lobbying efforts that the 911 emergency system was upgraded. I didn't know that he was married, that he had two kids, that he grew up in Quincy and that he was a Grossman, as in Grossman Lumber.

I also didn't know that he went to Thayer Academy and graduated with my best friend Rose.

Rose didn't know Jeff was sick, either. She learned of his illness the way she learned of his death: She read about it in the paper.

"I used to run into him once in a while at Au Bon Pain.

"We both got our coffee there. The last few times I saw him I thought he looked tired, but he never mentioned being sick.

"We talked about work and seat belts and the progress being made getting people to wear them. I had no idea he was so ill."

When I have a cold, everyone knows about it. I complain.

I sniffle and blow my nose and breathe heavily so people will say, "Poor thing. You should take better care of yourself. You should go lie down." I am a total wretch.

Here this man fought cancer, had a liver transplant, struggled to live, yet went about his business as if all this were ordinary.

"For months he had known that death was near," his obituary said. "But he kept working until a few weeks ago. Of late he had become too weak to drive, so his father drove him to work. He was taking calls at home to give colleagues advice even late last week."

I want to remember Jeff Grossman for the rest of my life. Not just for returning my calls promptly and simplifying complicated issues and presenting cogent arguments and always doing what he said he would do; but for continuing to care about other people when he could easily and justifiably have bolted the doors, shut the windows and cared just for himself.

Nobody would have faulted him. Everyone would have understood. But he didn't retreat from the world. He kept on giving, working and lobbying for what he believed right to the end.