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Ink Out Loud: I called him Atticus

Mandy Feder
Ink Out Loud

We were unlikely friends — Stephen and I. He was a defense attorney and I was a newspaper editor.

Our friendship was natural, instant and solid. We’re the same age, both loved New York punk rock from the ‘70s and we lived in some of the same places at the same times when we were growing up.

He had gone missing two times this year. A Traumatic Brain Injury unraveled his Amherst College education, his family, and the years he spent tirelessly upholding the letter of the law as a public defender.



I used to watch him in the courtroom in awe of the powerfully precise way he commanded the space and engaged the room.

I asked him once if it was difficult to defend people who were likely guilty and often pretty evil.



“No,” he said. “I have so much respect for the process that it’s my responsibility to give everything I’ve got to every client.”

So, I called him Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

He was Atticus incarnate.

He used to stop by my office on his way to and from the courthouse just to share a New York Dolls video, give me a hug, show me his new motorcycle, or grab a piece of candy at the front counter.

Last summer he came to Lake Tahoe and was holed up in a room at MontBleu feeling down and disoriented from the effects of his brain injury. I thought I might be disrupting his solace as I apprehensively approached his room. But he opened the door and smiled big. He said he was so happy to see me. We talked for hours about everything and nothing. Later we went to get a bite to eat. I watched him fall in and out of sleep at the dinner table as he struggled to get his old self back. It was painfully frustrating for him.

The next day we planned to meet for an early dinner at Ciera Steak & Chophouse. When we sat down he handed me a little paper bag. “I bought you a present,” he said.

Inside the bag were two shiny stones. One had the word “Friend” carved into it and the other — “Dream.”

I placed them next to each other, but he told me they were in the wrong order and he moved them around. “There,” he said, “Dream Friend, that’s you.” He told me I was one of the few people he trusted in the world and one of the best friends he ever had. We reminisced about the fun we had at an Alice Cooper concert the year before and we laughed together. He talked about wanting to move here to Tahoe. “Maybe I’ll get a house in the Keys,” he said.

But that was the last time I saw my friend Stephen.

He took his life this week.

My head is swirling with his smile and his despair.

Godspeed, Atticus.

“Now I think I know, what you tried to say to me. And how you suffered for your sanity. And how you tried to set them free … This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.” — Don McLean

Mandy Feder is the Managing Editor of the Tahoe Daily Tribune. She can be reached at mfeder@tahoedailytribune.com or 530-542-8006.


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