Georgia Garvey

In every school, work or personal gathering, you need at least one grump for the group to thrive.

Grumps do the work that no one else will. When everyone else is being mercilessly upbeat, they swim against the tide and complain. The grump may follow your inane rules — but grudgingly, oh, boy, will it be grudgingly — but they never let them pass unremarked upon. Where other folks try to fit in, the grumps stand out, not because they want to, but because they must.

Even in a children’s show like “Sesame Street,” you need an Oscar the Grouch to balance out what otherwise could be sticky-sweet positivity.

When I went to Columbia College in Chicago, the grump in our professor mix was Len Strazewski. He taught what was then called “computer-assisted reporting,” which gives you a hint at both how long ago this took place and, by the transitive property, my age.

Others remember him going like a dog on the hunt after lazy turns of phrase, needling students for saying that they were going to “reach out” to a source, for example.

“If I said I was going to reach out to somebody for an interview, he’d be like, ‘Oh, are you going to reach your hand out to them? Are you going to do that?'” former student Zoe Eitel told The Columbia Chronicle, where he once served as a faculty adviser, in an obituary this week.

I remember that side of Len Strazewski, but I remember more the way he challenged me to think about my role in society as a journalist.

In the early days of my computer-assisted reporting class, Len explained to us his perception of what it meant to be a reporter, comparing the position to being a scout for a Native American tribe.

A scout, Len said, went ahead of the group, gathering information and keeping watch, occasionally returning with reports on where fresh water could be found, where danger lay, what the terrain might be like up ahead. The scouts provided a crucial service, but they were also set apart.

I don’t think Len told young reporters these things to scare us. He simply wanted us to understand: Don’t go into journalism to be loved. Don’t do it for accolades. Go into journalism because it’s the place where you fit.

Robert Duvall’s character Bernie said something similar in the underrated movie “The Paper,” when he warns wannabe social climber Alicia, played by Glenn Close, that: “The people we cover? We move in their world, but it is their world.”

I think Len found journalism and writing comic books, which he also did, as the places where he fit.

I never read the comic books Len wrote, but after he died a few days ago, I read about one of the characters he co-created. Prime was the alter ego of a 13-year-old boy, Kevin, who can transform his body into one of the most powerful superheroes in the universe. His muscular definition is enough to make Arnold Schwarzenegger rip a phone book in half with envy. Prime lifts school buildings with ease. Prime can withstand a nuclear explosion at close range.

It’s not hard to see why this might appeal, not just to teen comic book readers, but also to Len Strazewski.

These were the things I wish I’d told Len before he died. Maybe he knew them anyway, because he’s the one who taught them to me.