knew him as professional colleagues, and friends we knew, from working with him and so on. think of his amazing wife. charles, the dazzling son of his who was so proud. his mom, who looked almost exactly like him. have a thought for them tonight. martha: we will, and we do. in the days ahead, obviously there will be so much reflecting on charles life, i encourage everybody to pick up things that matter. go back to it, and read those columns, especially about his brother. it is so interesting, because it seems to resonate across the board. he talked about his older brother would always insist to the other guys that he hung out with, that he was not going with them unless he could bring charles. charles talked about how much that meant to him as a younger brother and how much he learned from hanging around with the older kids and the kindness,
about the injury and how he dealt with it. that is something that, for some people, would be game over. they would become depressed, charles channeled it into his desire to continue to be educated. his father always told him, i want you to know everything. i want you to learn everything, i want you to know everything and the stories about them holding the medical book over him, above him, as he lay flat. he spent his hours reading and learning. and advancing his life, he also had the flexibility in his life to change and to evolve through all of that learning. because, he came into his career first of all he became a psychologist, any thought he didn t want to spend his life like that. i want to spend my life thinking about politics and the world. he started off from a more liberal perspective over time. influenced by ronald reagan, became conservative. he never stopped growing and
i think that is such a wonderful title to his book. isn t that really in life, that all of us ever hope to figure out the answer to. things that matter is such a perfect example. what it is, it wasn t new essays, it was a collection of his old columns. i remember when i first saw it, i thought this is a clip job. it s a bunch of old columns. even if they were 20 or 30 years old, there was such clarity, there was timeless wisdom to them, that you found yourself that you couldn t wait to read the next column. as unlikely that it was that he was a tv start, that book became a huge best seller, and he reveled in the fact that it was at the top of the new york times best seller list week, after week, after week. there was a timeless quality to what he said. it wasn t just saying, well, here s what happened today in washington. there was a wisdom that transcended the ops, the downs,
charles put together both of those things. he became someone who was known for being on tv and doing that dance that you just described, that great, intellectual dance of pulling his stuff together. and, so many people across the country were able to see him and watch him as he put it all together out there. and i think, you know, that made him a star, as brett humes said, in a somewhat unlikely way. but he really was. all of us, anyone of us, he was always on special report. whenever i had a mama show coming whenever he was going to be on the panel for a political convention, it was a treat. it was special. people who watched, looked forward to seeing him so much. i also think that he was able to put together the human side of life, and have an appreciation for family and sports, and all of those things that he talked about and things that matter.
charles and always very, you know, apprehensive about approaching him and i was always, please, go say something to him. he would love to talk to you and he is always overly to everyone. in 2013, krauthammer released a book things that matter. most quote he wrote , the catastrophe that awaits everyone from a wrong turn, fatal encounter, every life has such a moment. what distinguishes us is whether and how we ever come back. there is an element of that in everybody s story, a low point. are you lucky enough? that is part of it too. he announced that he had been diagnosed with cancer and doctors had given him just weeks to live. he wrote i leave this life with no regrets. it was a wonderful life, full and complete with the great loves adds great endeavors that make it worth living. i am sad to leave, but i leave