Katherine Gray was a dear friend and valued colleague. She was my best editor. When it came to reading copy, be it an editorial or eulogy, Katherine was the ultimate sentinel against cliché, sentimentality, questionable taste, and clumsy writing. In remembering her, I will try to honor those principles.

Let's get it straight from the outset. Katherine was a hoot. She was a smart, lovable, ferocious force of nature, a person of infinite variety: strong- willed and opinionated, often uttering her thoughts with rigidity and raunchy, combative candor. So what? That was part of her originality and charm. The storm clouds would rapidly pass and that was that. Above all, however, she was loyal and generous to a fault.

As editor and reporter for The Columbia Record and, later,

The State newspaper, Katherine wrote with profound insight about the economic problems affecting inner- city neighborhoods. Those concerns were carried over to her retirement. Not long ago, she learned of an elderly black woman living in a run- down, rat- infested house a short distance from her own up- scale, Shandon home; Katherine became a mover and shaker to set things straight, raising funds and mobilizing volunteers to restore the home to livability. On another occasion, she established the James Pritchard Scholarship Fund at the University of South Carolina as a memorial to an inspirational teacher who had once given her clarinet lessons.

And then there were those countless acts of kindness when sickness or bereavement would strike a friend or neighbor and Katherine and Bob Gray would show up with of homemade soups and other nourishment. Their own customized Gourmet Meals on Wheels.

Katherine did not suffer fools gladly. The same went for bores, both kinds, but mostly those with a single "O." She had a temper — it was the natural extension of her endearing exuberance. If you were on the receiving end of one of her outbursts, the effect could be quite unsettling, peppered as it was with bawdy, withering invective.

There was a time when I thought I might like to take up the game of bridge. Watching — and listening — to Katherine in a high state of dudgeon at a bridge table quickly disabused me of that absurd notion. For her, bridge was rather like the running of the bulls: a blood sport and thus something to be indulged in at one's own peril.

Our careers in journalism overlapped — off and on — for better than three decades. As a reporter, she cultivated a wide network of news sources and was intrepid in pursuit of the truth, unafraid to pose the tough, sometimes personal questions, which ruffled feathers and elicited squirms of discomfort.

Later she became a steadfast colleague on the editorial pages of both the Columbia Record and The State in the 80s and 90s. Always a quick study, her analytic mind, taste, and sound judgment were qualities I particularly valued. I never felt I had written a decent editorial or column until I had run it through Katherine for logic and lucidity.

As editorial page editor of The Record, the first woman to hold that title at the Columbia Newspapers, she presided over the paper's final edition on April 1st, 1988. The editorial page that day was dominated by an hour- glass with the simple inscription, "Goodbye," repeated over and over as it tapered downwards in diminished print size. As a journalistic valedictory, it remains an inventive testament to Katherine's wit, whimsy and perspective.

Needless to say, we kept in close touch after our retirements. I cherished two annual fixtures on our calendars: the double- date at The Summit Club when Bob Gray and I celebrated our June 5th birthdays and, "Breakfast at Wimbledon," at their house in early July. While the Borgs, Beckers, and Federers strutted their stuff on TV, Katherine — ever the gracious hostess and robust conversationalist — presided over the copious consumption of Bloody Marys, champagne and, once, strawberries and cream.

Every couple of weeks or so, the phone would ring. Without preamble and with ice cubes jiggling in the background, Katherine would declare, "Well, they've done it again." "They," of course was The State and its latest transgression against the canons of sound journalism: errors of fact; grammatical faux pas'; or tasteless, maudlin excess in headline. Katherine guffawed in honest derision but — because she cared deeply about the profession and sullied image and integrity of an institution which she served so well — the laughter was tempered with a tinge of sorrow and resignation.

One of Katherine's favorite writers was the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. One of his poems opens with the lines:

Do not go gentle into
that good night
Old age should burn
and rage at close of day
Rage, rage against
the dying of the light

Katherine raged valiantly. But in the end, ever the unsentimental, wistful realist, she went "gentle" — on her own terms — into that good night. Fearless until the very end. A true original who did things her way.