In her own words, Marie explained not long ago how she viewed a reporter's job.
"You hear all this talk about the meaning of the media, the need for integrity etc etc," she said during a November 2010, talk at London's St Bride's Church -- the "journalists' church" on Fleet Street at an event to honor fallen journalists.
"But isn't it quite simple? You just try to find out the truth of what's going on and report it the best way you can. And because we are kind of romantic, our sympathy goes towards the underdog."
Ironically, on Thursday 2/23/12, as Marie's sheet draped body lay atop rubble near the media house, awaiting evacuation, the invasion on Baba Amr that she had predicted and risked and then gave her life trying to report on began with armored Syrian units and tanks entering and shelling the neighborhoods starting in late morning.
As of late afternoon February 24, 2011 Marie and Remi's bodies have still not been able to be evacuated nor have three journalists wounded in the same attack that killed their colleagues.
I had known of Marie Catherine Colvin since the late 1980's when we crossed paths at the Grand Hotel in Tripoli, currently a base for the Zintan militia, and like everyone then and since we basically sat around the hotel lobby for lots of hours waiting for an appointment with "the Brother Leader" or one of his associates for whatever reason brought us to Libya.
I followed Marie's work over the years and was in contact in 2001 when she lost her left eye reporting on the Tamil resistance in Sri Lanka.
But I got to know Marie know much better during this past summer and fall, again in Libya, and we continued to stay in regular contact mainly via email. It was following the August 21-2nd rout of the pro-Gadhafi defenders of Tripoli that Marie arrived in Tripoli from months of covering the rebels in the east and then in the west.
On August 22nd, the nearly empty Corinthia Bab al Africa hotel where I was staying suddenly filled with dozens of arriving journalists who, like Marie, had been following the rebels advance toward what some were calling "the final battle at Tripoli".
We immediately reconnected and began helping each other. She briefed me for hours on what had been going on in the east and I filled her in on what I knew about developments in Tripoli. Both of us, like just about everyone, were shocked how quickly Tripoli had fallen and how the claimed 65,000 well-trained loyalist defenders that the regimes persuasive spokesman Musa Ibrahim assured us would be waiting in all the streets and alleys and on every roof top of Tripoli for the expected arrival of the "NATO rebels" had suddenly vanished.
The arriving brigades of journalists were disappointed to find the 5 star Corinthia Hotel without water, or employers to clean the rooms, no electricity most of the time, not much worth eating or much else that they had been looking forward to. Of course this did not mean the hotel would lower its astronomical room rates and the place made a financial killing as did the Rixos and Radisson Hotels.
I was able to show Marie a "secret' bathroom off the lobby that no one had discovered and it was the only one in the Corinthia to my knowledge that was not filthy and overflowing. She also appreciated a hidden plug I showed her that worked off a hotel battery backup near the mezzanine that she could use to make coffee--which she always seemed in search of-- and to charge her laptop and mobile.
In appreciation Marie supplied me with some of those cups of noodles things that I learned many in the international press survived on when amenities faded. Actually, some of them taste pretty good at 3 am as we would sit outside the hotel watching the city and the sea.
Marie was the only person I trusted with the knowledge that Mohammad, the black gentleman from Mali was hiding in my room from gangs of wannabe lynchers from Misrata. He got plenty of cups of noodles also.
Marie also met my Chadian princesses friends and she agreed immediately that the treatment I was receiving including the Sahara paste was just what my infected leg needed. Marie particularly enjoyed "Dr.Fatima's cactus flower drink" since no whiskey or vodka was available.
She would let me ride with her as she investigated the stories she wanted to cover and she introduced me to Irish journalist Patrick Cockburn who was staying at the Radisson Hotel where conditions were only marginally better than Marie and I were experiencing. Sitting together on the Radisson patio I mentioned to Marie and Patrick that during the summer I used the swimming pool at the Radisson plenty. Patrick informed us that these days hotel guests would dip buckets of water from the swimming pool to flush their toilets.
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