Goodbye To A Friend Who Knew Who She Was — And Lived Too Short A Life

My friend, the journalist Christine Tierney, died earlier this month. The life she lived always seemed right out of another era.

I regularly felt that Christine was a descendant of the women war correspondents and photographers of the 1940s — Martha Gelhorn or Margaret Bourke-White, fearlessly, stylishly circumnavigating the globe in pursuit of stories.

Julia Child’s often quoted phrase, “Everything in moderation,” would have caused her to laugh and shake her head.

At a time when most people had given it up, she smoked three packs of cigarette a day, often interrupting our shopping trips and restaurant meals to go outside for a smoking break. There, she happily puffed, while I, an adamant non-smoker, waved the fumes away.

She loved to drink — beer, red wine, champagne, whiskey, multiple glasses at every meal, trouncing my minimal intake. Once, she left me stranded in a BYOB Thai restaurant while she hunted down a six pack of beer, returning triumphantly with craft brew.

While the rest of us were ordering salads and salmon, Christine enjoyed red meat. Nine times out of 10, she would order a steak, rare, and cut into it with gusto, demolishing every ounce with the same enjoyment she brought to her work.