I scrubbed this week’s editorial written before Wiscasset’s big vote Tuesday night. I wrote about a town being more than its politics, and how, as passionate as the downtown debate has gotten, when the dust settles, to remember everyone was saying, doing and voting the way they thought was correct. They weren't poor thinkers, overly concerned or not concerned enough, if their view differed from yours; and townspeople will keep going, together.

Since the vote, we have already received one letter to the editor for next week and comments on our Facebook page that made the exact same points, better than I did. 

So I went with the other news on my and many Mainers’ minds, undoubtedly, Wednesday, the loss of former First Lady Barbara Bush.

I covered one of her and her husband’s visits to Walker’s Point while he was President. One of the rewarding things about this line of work is the privilege to see and ask questions of the famous and the accomplished. Some are both. 

Occasionally, an  in-person persona falls short of expectations; on the other extreme are those politicians, stars, athletes and others so personable, interviewing them or just meeting them is one of the best memories of a career.

That’s how I’ve always recalled President and Mrs. Bush. They were people, a couple, waving to a shih tzu on the street or coming out of church.  Two years ago on the TV screen, there were the two, long out of the White House their son later occupied. George Herbert Walker Bush tossed the coin at the Super Bowl. That they would want to be there, part of a beloved American tradition, and that they were able to do it, was a delight for viewers like me, just proud to be an American as I watched the moments.

Class isn’t about money or fame, or even about accomplishments. How far one gets in life isn’t the measure. It’s how you treat people wherever life finds you. It’s someone not being pretentious, not being superior, not having to be better than or smarter than. It’s about being a person, and Barbara Bush was a class act.