Not long ago, Larry Fiquette sent a newspaper article to one of his sons in Florida. The article was about dementia, which, sadly enough, had begun to attack Larry's mind. He was becoming very forgetful.

The envelope that carried the article bore two stamps. One was in the normal place, the upper right corner. The second was in the upper left corner. Was this a sign of dementia, or a takeoff on dementia? It was impossible to say. Larry had that kind of humor.

Has that kind of humor. As I write this, he is alive, but barely.

His four children are with him at DePaul Health Center. Two sons, Jeff and Todd, have come from Florida. His daughter, Suzanne, came from the state of Washington. Another son, Alan, lives here.

On Wednesday, Larry was weak. Suffering from pneumonia, the question was not whether he would succumb, but when. Todd leaned over the bed and put his face close to his father's. "Goodbye, Dad," he said. Larry opened his eyes. "I might live to be 105," he said. Then he closed his eyes again. That is the kind of humor he has.

He was born in Alabama 84 years ago. He was raised in the mining town of Docena. The miners were paid in scrip to be used at the company stores. He was in that world, but not of it. His father was an accountant for the mine and was paid in cash.

Larry joined the Navy during the war and served on the invasion fleet at Okinawa. It was during that invasion that the suicide kamikaze pilots first appeared. After the war, Larry went to the University of Alabama and studied journalism.

Much later, he worked at the newspaper in Birmingham. It was a time of great unrest. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a campaign of civil disobedience. The newspaper's editors were part of the city's establishment and bitterly opposed King and his campaign. They relegated news of King to the back pages. That slight led to marches around the newspaper. One of the marchers was Larry's wife, Sidney.

She recruited Larry into the civil rights movement. One of his jobs was to go to a lunch counter, order a sandwich and be sitting there — an anonymous white guy — when a black person would sit down and order something. The counter man would freeze. The lunch counters were segregated. "Go ahead and serve him. Don't bother me," Larry would say.

He worked in the newspaper business at a time when newspapers were filled with raffish characters. One day he and a newspaper buddy went to a University of Alabama football game, and the friend parked in a field. They left the game early and his friend saw that his car was boxed in. He got in and slammed into the car in front of him. Then he went into reverse and slammed into the car behind him. Then forward again. Bam. Then back again. Bam.

"What are you doing?" asked Larry.

"Why have fenders if you can't fend with them?" responded his friend.

Larry came to the Post-Dispatch from the Birmingham paper and then left St. Louis when he was recruited to the New York Times. But New York didn't seem like the best place to raise kids, so Larry came back. He and his family moved into a house in University City.

He was an intellectual without being stuffy and a liberal without being self-righteous. He was very much a Southerner — as difficult to define as that is — but above all, he was a family man.

In some ways, he was defined by Sidney. She was raised in the Southern belle mode but then got involved in civil rights. In New York, she was involved in a food co-op and became intrigued with the idea of moving her family into a farming commune.

In other words, she was always excited about something, and Larry never questioned her enthusiasm.

I remember when she and Larry were at my house for the baptism of my son. The priest had left and my wife and I and Sidney and Larry were chatting about this and that. Sidney started talking about her faith. Many people on the left are reluctant to talk about faith, but she was enthusiastic about her relationship with God and completely unself-conscious talking about it, a fact my wife credited to Larry.

"If Sidney has something to say, she says it, and you can tell that Larry is fine with that," she said.

Sidney died of leukemia in 1993. Larry never remarried.

He retired from the newspaper in 1995. Longtime readers of this newspaper might remember him best for his five-year stint as Reader's Advocate. He was a good fit for that job. He loved newspapers and enjoyed interacting with people. His columns were noted for the sly humor often found therein.

Two stamps. I'd have asked him about that, but some things are best left for the imagination.