Susan Tifft

When Susan Tifft, who died April 1 at 59, was diagnosed with uterine cancer, doctors gave her a year to live; she lasted nearly three, and her “cancer chick” journal was a tale of toughness, insight and grace–the qualities she brought to whatever she did. Tifft launched her career as a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, later worked as a journalist for TIME and ended up as a professor at Duke, but she was a teacher throughout. Clumsy young writers could be scared of her. But then she’d welcome you in with a dry Yankee warmth and assure you that if you tripped, she’d catch you; go ahead, make the leap. Thus did she teach people to fly. With her husband Alex Jones, Tifft wrote two books about the gothic family enterprises behind the Louisville Courier-Journal and the New York Times. She understood contradiction, the collisions of money and virtue, duty and temptation. Maybe that was part of what fueled her final fight. And while cancer was a terrible thing, she continued to find hope, which she shared through a blog that was heartbreaking, hilarious and revelatory, laced with contagious gratitude. It was one more reminder of how lucky we were to have been her students.