While the focus of any newspaper is what is taking place beyond the newsroom walls, our work lives are largely shaped by the people inside the building, the ones who make us laugh or make us miserable or make us get back to our desks and finish what we said we’d finish.

We have our own workplace legends and clowns, heroes and zeroes.

At the newsroom where I worked in Washington, D.C., one editor was a big inspiration to all of us. Not only was she smart and capable, but she was eternally outraged by injustice and abuses of power, endlessly curious about how the crooked old story would unfold this time, and she had a knack for inspiring less-experienced journalists to tap into the journalistic spirit.

Today, my thoughts turn to Jack Heeger, a coworker in the Register newsroom who died of cancer Friday. It was a real toss up there for awhile as to which was stronger, Jack or the cancer, and Jack beat the odds for a long time. But the house always wins in the end.

Jack had a long and exciting history in journalism and public relations before he got to the Register. As a reporter in 1968, he was inside the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles a few minutes after Robert F. Kennedy was shot, slipping into the kitchen when everyone’s attention was elsewhere and seeing history unfold. In the 1980s, as a PR man, he was in the thick of the way information was disseminated regarding the controversy over the decision to spray malathion in California to beat the Mediterranean fruit fly.

At the Register, Jack was a wine writer and copy editor. But in truth, he was the semi-retired sage of the newsroom.

Caught between the set of people who were about to miss deadline and the set of people who would be made late by the first set of people, Jack would communicate calmly and clearly and get things to work. He saw competence and made sure it was respected, recognized potential and made sure it was encouraged, witnessed lapses and gently made sure they were not allowed to stand.

Plus, he was an enthusiastic, fair and witty wine writer.

I was Jack’s supervisor, and every year we’d go to Nation’s or somewhere to do his annual review. I’m not sure how it comes to pass that someone like me is empowered to render judgment on a man like Jack, but so it was and we would take the hour to talk about whatever and whomever needed talking about. It always ended with a smile.

Here’s to you, Jack. The Register newsroom never had a better friend.