「包可華」之名譯自《聯合報》專欄作家何凡之手，1967年起，何凡翻譯美國家喻戶曉的「包可華專欄」，每週一篇，二十年如一日，曾陸續出版十四集《包可華專欄》，總共七百多篇。
****包可華笑對死神 2006/4 聯社華盛頓四日電】
以詼諧筆調諷喻時事聞名國際的美國幽默作家包可華(Art Buchwald，已因腎功能衰竭，住進華盛頓一所安寧療護院，並決定放棄洗腎治療，據稱只有幾周可活。不過，對於自己兩個多月還沒死，包可華說，連醫師都想不透。
即使死亡逼近，這位普立茲獎專欄作家仍堅持讓每分每秒過得精彩。包可華說，他不怕死，也不為之沮喪。生性樂觀開朗的他不但沒有躺著等死，還成天撰寫專欄，與每天來探訪他的好友追憶過去的美好時光。80歲的包可華說：「這是告別最好的方式。」
一如暢銷書「最後14堂星期二的課」（
Tuesdays with Morrie）作者與臨終的大學教授每周智慧相見，包克華每周也在療護院與家人、以及媒體和政治圈的名流好友談天說地。
因血管問題而在今年1月鋸掉一條小腿的包克華說，截肢對他的「精神打擊非常大」，而且可能是促成他拒絕洗腎的原因。面對死神召喚卻顯得平靜的包可華說：「我不怕死，我的生命豐富美好，已經活80歲了，沒什麼好怕的。」
對於放棄治療的決定，他說：「親人、朋友、大家都不喜歡這主意，但一旦做了這決定，大家也只好尊重我。」他的選擇激起外界關注，也為他帶來新的「粉絲」。自2月7日住進安寧療護院以來收到上百封信，其中一部分成為他6日專欄的主題。
包可華在1995年出版的前傳「離家」（
Leaving Home）中說，幽默感是他的「救世軍」。他在第二次世界大戰後成為南加州大學詼諧雜誌的執行編輯，以及學生報的專欄作家。他在1948年輟學，前往巴黎，成為綜藝報（Variety）的特派記者，同時為紐約先驅論壇報（New York Herald Tribune）撰寫專欄。包可華1962年回美國，展開專欄作家的職業生涯，華盛頓權力掮客常是他筆下揶揄的主題。1982年，他贏得新聞界最高榮譽普立茲獎。
生命將盡的包可華說，人們無須太在意何時死亡，而是該自問：「為何到人世走一遭？」至於包可華怎麼看他在世間80多年？他說：「當然是讓人歡笑。」
【2006/04/05 世界日報
人生的層次──殷海光最後的話語
鄭安國∕文 (20060406)
本文為自由主義學者殷海光，最後一場公開的演講── 「人生的意義」的過往，作者係當時演講會的策劃者與主持人，因而撰寫此文回憶這段四十年前的塵封舊事。 ──編者
四十年前的四月八日星期五下午二時，當時的自由主義大師殷海光先生在台北市木柵國立政治大學六三○教室發表他最後、也是最重要的一次公開演講「人生的意義」。也許是殷海光先生也預知這是他的一次重要演說，所以他的演說就是鏗鏘有力的用「今天是一九六六年四月八日」做為開場白。 筆者當時是這次演講會的策劃者與主持人，四十年來，經常浮現腦際的不只是殷海光先生在演講中那種凜然的風骨；做為一個大二政治系學生，對殷海光的景仰以及籌辦這次在當年深具爭議性的演講會的周折，更是成為大學生活中最深刻的回憶。
對於現在的年輕人來說，知道殷海光的人雖然不多，但由於殷海光是台灣走向自由民主道路上的一位思想巨人，這場演講會的周折，也反映了威權時代轉型中的面貌。
四十年前雖處於威權時代，但是大學生對自由民主的嚮往，仍甚熱切。當時我們一群以政治系、外交系、公共行政系為主的同學組成了西潮學社；有別於以辦活動為主的其他學生社團，西潮學社是讀書會形式，每週聚會，由一位同學報告讀書心得，所讀之書以社會科學及文史哲學課外書為主，偶爾舉辦對外演講座談。設社務委員，每兩月任輪值主席，負責這兩個月的活動。我是一九六六年三、四月的輪值主席。
殷海光的著作「思想與方法」、「海耶克和他的思想」，以及翻譯的「到奴役之路」，都是我們愛好的讀物。因此當時我就想邀請他來政大演講，也向西潮社的主要成員陸錦雯及其他同學們報告了這個構想，大家都很贊同。我當然知道當時台大教授殷海光開課都受到限制，且有好幾年不准公開演講。基於反抗威權的理念，還是決定一試。
當時電話並不普遍，所以我向台大經濟系的同學陳松打聽到殷海光先生的住址後，在三月底的某日晚上，直接前往殷海光在溫州街十八巷十六弄九號的寓所。那是一幢像是經過改造後的日式單門獨院的平房。那天下著微雨，沿門摸索了一陣才找到，按了門鈴，即聽見兩隻猛犬的吠聲。殷海光先生親自開門，雖見過他的照片，但仍訝異於四十七歲的他，竟是如此蒼老。雖然未有先約，但殷海光對我的來訪並沒有很意外，可能還是常有一些他不認識的慕名求教者吧！
殷海光先生領我進屋裡，那是一間陳設簡單的小客廳。我向殷海光說明來意，也向他報告西潮學社的性質，他對我們的心意有點嘉許，但對於邀請他演講，他卻很直率的說：「那是不可能的，你知道他們已經幾年不讓我演講嗎？」我說：「知道。」他說：「他們怕我。」我表示，我們還是想試一試。連在台大開課都限制重重，要在相對保守的政大演講，看起來更是困難。也許殷海光也有突破限制的韌性，所以他終於同意我們一試。
談到演講的主題，他說：「就談『人生的意義』好了。」。對我這個學政治的學生來說，其實是希望他談些政治、思想方面的主題，對聽眾來說也比較有吸引力。不過他說「人生的意義很重要，現在就是太多人重視生物層面的東西，而忽略了更重要的價值。」我終於瞭解這個平凡題目中的深意。
敲定了題目、敲定了時間，回到學校向西潮學社報告，大家都很興奮，於是就向訓導處提出申請，也選定了當時政大最大的一間教室，可以容納一百餘人的六三○教室。申請書送出後，我們沒想到很順利的就獲得訓導處的批准。殷老師也沒想到他居然被解凍了。
我們立即製作了幾張海報，張貼在學校各個主要地點。不料在演講前三天，四月五日星期二，訓導處火速通知我，訓導長約我見面。訓導長葉尚志是政大第一期的學長，是一位和藹可親的長者，由內政部人事處長轉任。見面後，葉訓導長很客氣，但很明確的告訴我，有關方面對於殷海光演講有意見，希望能夠停辦。我聽後雖覺意外，但從籌劃之初即已預期可能會有一些干擾，所以並不訝異。我乃反問，現在全校同學都知道這個活動，若現在宣佈停辦，大家會怎麼想？對政府的形象是不是更加不好？葉訓導長說：「可是他們怕會出問題」。我想了一下表示，如果他們耽心殷海光講一些他們認為刺激性的話，我想我可以跟殷海光溝通一下。因為我實在不希望演講被取消，所以自作主張的作了一點妥協。葉訓導長同意我的看法。
當天晚上我就趕去殷海光家，告訴他這個狀況，殷老師聽後用他慣有厭惡威權的語氣說，「我就知道他們這些人的想法，這些俗人，我才不會談政治。」翌日上午我告訴葉訓導長，殷海光在演講中不會談政治問題，只談人生哲學問題。葉訓導長說，好吧，我跟他們溝通一下。有關單位終於對這次演講放行。
四月八日那天二點不到，六三○教室已擠滿了人。這是政大學生社團辦演講難得一見的盛況。我略作介紹之後，殷海光即開始他這場重要的演講。我們依照殷海光先給我們的「人生的界域」手繪圖，繪於黑板上。
殷海光將人生分成四個層次，最低層是物理層，次低層是生物邏輯層，上一層生物文化層，最上層是真、善、美、理想、道德層。殷海光說，人應「擴展我們的界域，由單純的物理層，進為生物邏輯層，再由此發展到生物文化層，繼續發展。然後人類有真善美的意識，有理想、有道德，這就是價值層，這層就是人之所以為人的層級。」
殷海光也提出一個兩難式，就是如果我們要滿足衣食等生物邏輯，而勢必犧牲道德或理想，處此困境之下，我們怎麼作決定。他提出幾個原則：第一，我們萬不可在自己的生存並未受到威脅時，為了換取現實利益而犧牲道德原則。第二，在我們的生活勉強可過時，萬不可因要得到較佳報酬而犧牲他人。第三，當我們因生活困難而被迫不得不放棄若干作人的原則時，我們必須儘可能作「道德的抗戰」，把道德的領土放棄得愈少愈好，尚且要存心待機，「收復道德的失地」。復次，我們有我們的好惡。如果經濟貧困了，我們的好惡是否就要放棄，是否就不能講了。還有尊嚴問題，如果人的經濟價值不能滿足，尊嚴是否可以不顧？
這番話不只語重心長，而且邏輯嚴謹，可以說是殷海光面對橫逆考驗而凝鍊出來高貴而務實的人生智慧。
演講非常成功，但事後從訓導處一直傳出要對我嚴格處分的消息，我感受到一些壓力，唯自忖一切依規定來，如處分我，那麼如何處分核准這次演講的人。因此也就淡然處之了。我根據錄音帶，非常仔細的作了一個錄音記錄，於四月二十日送去請殷海光先生訂正，並於一九六六年五月發表在我所負責的議事規則研習會的「議事會刊」上。在此之後，殷海光並未再發表過公開演講，其所著「中國文化的展望」且於是年六月被禁。
一年後的一九六七年四月二十日，我去台大活動中心聽易君博老師的演講，殷海光也在座，我趨前問候，他緊握我手說：「真是恍如隔世」。我見他較一年前更形蒼老，乃問其身體狀況，他說：「一個多月前得了胃病，正所謂心腹之患。」沒想到二天後，因李敖之敦勸，去宏恩醫院檢查，發現竟是胃癌，而於四月二十五日住入台大醫院726病房。翌日，我與陸錦雯前往探視，他的病榻邊放著一本正在看的英文書「Life Against Death」，顯示他求生的意志。是日，當時任教政大的金耀基老師、王曉波也都來探視照顧。唯終於一九六九年五十歲的英年齎志以歿。所以這篇演講記錄陳鼓應稱之為「殷海光最後的話語」，一些大學並以這篇文章為教材。如今在網路上也可搜尋取閱。
現在，重讀這篇文章，一字一句，每個語調，均是殷海光的風格、心境。全文雖然未觸及政治，但是其期許反更高遠，四十年後，仍令人低迴不已。
即使死亡逼近，這位普立茲獎專欄作家仍堅持讓每分每秒過得精彩。包可華說，他不怕死，也不為之沮喪。生性樂觀開朗的他不但沒有躺著等死，還成天撰寫專欄，與每天來探訪他的好友追憶過去的美好時光。80歲的包可華說：「這是告別最好的方式。」
一如暢銷書「最後14堂星期二的課」（Tuesdays with Morrie）作者與臨終的大學教授每周智慧相見，包克華每周也在療護院與家人、以及媒體和政治圈的名流好友談天說地。
因血管問題而在今年1月鋸掉一條小腿的包克華說，截肢對他的「精神打擊非常大」，而且可能是促成他拒絕洗腎的原因。面對死神召喚卻顯得平靜的包可華說：「我不怕死，我的生命豐富美好，已經活80歲了，沒什麼好怕的。」
對於放棄治療的決定，他說：「親人、朋友、大家都不喜歡這主意，但一旦做了這決定，大家也只好尊重我。」他的選擇激起外界關注，也為他帶來新的「粉絲」。自2月7日住進安寧療護院以來收到上百封信，其中一部分成為他6日專欄的主題。
包可華在1995年出版的前傳「離家」（Leaving Home）中說，幽默感是他的「救世軍」。他在第二次世界大戰後成為南加州大學詼諧雜誌的執行編輯，以及學生報的專欄作家。他在1948年輟學，前往巴黎，成為綜藝報（Variety）的特派記者，同時為紐約先驅論壇報（New York Herald Tri-bune）撰寫專欄。包可華1962年回美國，展開專欄作家的職業生涯，華盛頓權力掮客常是他筆下揶揄的主題。1982年，他贏得新聞界最高榮譽普立茲獎。
生命將盡的包可華說，人們無須太在意何時死亡，而是該自問：「為何到人世走一遭？」至於包可華怎麼看他在世間80多年？他說：「當然是讓人歡笑。」
【2006/04/05 世界日報
Art Buchwald, Whose Humor Poked the Powerful, Dies at 81By RICHARD SEVERO
Published: January 19, 2007
Art Buchwald, who satirized the follies of the rich, the famous and the powerful for half a century as the most widely read newspaper humorist of his time, died Wednesday night in Washington. He was 81.
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Steven Senne/Associated Press
Art Buchwald spoke at an auction in Edgartown, Mass. in August 2006.
The cause was kidney failure, said his son, Joel. Mr. Buchwald, long a pillar of Washington life, died at his son's home, where he had been living for most of the last eight years.
Mr. Buchwald's syndicated column was a staple for a generation or more of newspaper readers, not least the politicians and government grandees he lampooned so regularly. His life was a rich tale of gumption, heartbreak and humor, with chapters in Paris, Washington and points around the globe.
But perhaps no year of his life was as remarkable as the last. It became something of an extended curtain call. Last February, doctors told him he had only a few weeks to live. "I decided to move into a hospice and go quietly into the night," he wrote three months later. "For reasons that even the doctors can't explain, my kidneys kept working."
Refusing dialysis, he continued to write his column, reflecting on his mortality while keeping his humor even as he lost a leg. He spent the summer on Martha's Vineyard, published a book, "Too Soon to Say Goodbye," in the fall and attended a memorial for an old friend, the reporter
R. W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times. He gave interviews and looked on as his life was celebrated.
"The French ambassador gave me the literary equivalent of the Legion of Honor," he wrote. "The National Hospice Association made me man of the year. I never realized dying was so much fun."
Once described as a "Will Rogers with chutzpah," Mr. Buchwald found enthusiastic readerships on both sides of the Atlantic. Early on, he became nearly everyone's favorite American in Paris for his satirical column in the European edition of The New York Herald Tribune. When he returned from overseas to write a new column, from Washington, he became even more popular. At its peak, it appeared in some 500 newspapers.
He delighted in stirring the pot — never maliciously, always vigorously. The world was mad (or at least a little nutty), he said, and all he was doing was recording it. He did it so well that he was awarded a
Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1982.
Across the world stage, he saw theater of the absurd, and he made an effort to immerse himself in it. He went to Yugoslavia to chase goats; he went to Turkey in search of a Turkish bath, writing that he was astonished when the Turks told him that they had no such thing.
During the cold war, he marched alongside missiles, tanks and troops in a May Day parade in East Berlin. Another time, he rented a chauffeured limousine to tour Eastern Europe. He wanted the people there to know, as he put it, alluding to his plump physique, what a "bloated, plutocratic capitalist really looked like."
More often, though, he skewered targets closer to home. In the Watergate years, he wrote about three men stranded in a sinking boat with a self-destructive President
Richard M. Nixon. As the president hid food under his shirt, he bailed water into the vessel.
Making Readers SmileIn the early 1960s, Mr. Buchwald theorized that a shortage of Communists was imminent in the United States and that if the nation was not careful, the Communist Party would be made up almost entirely of
F.B.I. informers.
"The joy of his column was not that it was side-splitting humor," his friend Ben Bradlee, the former editor of The Washington Post, said last February, "but that he made you smile."
It was an amiable and wry brand of wit that sprang from a man who had been reared in foster homes and an orphan asylum and who had decided, when he was 6 or 7, that his life was so awful that he should make a living making everybody laugh, even if he did not always laugh along with them. He had at least two serious bouts of depression in his middle years and regarded himself as occasionally suicidal.
Arthur Buchwald was born on Oct. 20, 1925, in Mount Vernon, N.Y., to Joseph and Helen Buchwald. His father had fled Austria for the United States to avoid service in the Austro-Hungarian army and opened a business making drapes and slipcovers. His mother, the former Helen Klineberger, had immigrated from Hungary.
The youngest of four children and the only son, Mr. Buchwald virtually never saw his mother. Suffering from delusions, she was admitted to a mental hospital a few weeks after his birth and was confined for the remaining 35 years of her life. Her son was not permitted to visit her when he was a child and decided not to after he became an adult. "I preferred the mother I had invented to the one I would find in the hospital," Mr. Buchwald wrote in a best-selling 1994 memoir, "Leaving Home."
By his own account he had always wondered whether his birth had somehow been responsible for her illness, and when he sought help for his depression, he said, he confessed to his psychiatrist that he had conducted "a lifelong search for someone to replace her."
Mr. Buchwald soon parted from his father as well. Joseph Buchwald, unable to support his children after his business ran dry during the Depression, placed his son in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York. Mr. Buchwald was shuttled to a series of foster homes, including a Queens boarding house for sick children — he had rickets — run by Seventh-day Adventists.
There, young Arthur, a Jew, was taught that eating meat, fish and eggs was sinful. Years afterward, he wrote, "There is still a tiny Seventh-day Adventist inside of me screaming to get out every time I make a pass at a tuna fish sandwich."
Mr. Buchwald remained at the home until he was 5. He and his father and sisters were eventually reunited and lived in Hollis, Queens.
With the start of World War II, Mr. Buchwald, still in high school, ran away to join the Marines, hitchhiking to North Carolina. "The Marine Corps was the first father figure I had ever known," he wrote. Assigned to the Fourth Marine Air Wing, he spent most of his tour on a Pacific atoll cleaning aircraft guns and editing his squadron's newsletter while earning a sergeant's stripes.
After the war, Mr. Buchwald went to the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles under the G.I. Bill and became managing editor of the campus humor magazine. But he neglected to tell the university that he had not finished high school. Officials told him that he could continue to take courses but that he could not be considered for a degree. (Thirty-three years later, the university gave him an honorary doctorate.)
Mr. Buchwald decided to continue his education in Paris. "My dream was to follow in the steps of Hemingway, Elliot Paul and Gertrude Stein," he wrote. "I wanted to stuff myself with baguettes and snails, fill my pillow with rejection slips and find a French girl named Mimi who believed that I was the greatest writer in the world."
Not yet 23, he sailed to Paris on a converted troop ship and enrolled at the Alliance Française, also under the G.I. bill. Soon he talked his way into a job with The Herald Tribune's Paris-based European edition writing a column about entertainment and restaurants for $25 a week.
The column, "Paris After Dark," caught on, and by the early 1950s, The Tribune had syndicated it internationally. His own favorite, friends said, was a 1952 column in which he explained Thanksgiving to the French, using a liberal amount of French translation, even of English names like Miles Standish (Kilometres Deboutish).
Mr. Buchwald became the subject of headlines himself in 1957. President
Dwight D. Eisenhower was in Paris attending a meeting of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization when Mr. Buchwald, weary of the soft questions lobbed at Mr. Eisenhower by the press, wrote a column about a fictitious news conference in which reporters demanded to know, among other things, when the president started eating his morning grapefruit. The column incensed the president's press secretary, James C. Hagerty.
"Unadulterated rot," Mr. Hagerty called it.
Mr. Buchwald countered that he had "been known to write adulterated rot" but never "unadulterated rot."
Readers seemed to find vicarious pleasure in following the adventures of an expatriate but ordinary American flirting with royalty and the jet set without becoming a snob. In one column, he told readers that he had not been invited to the Grace Kelly-Prince Rainier wedding because of a family feud: "The Buchwalds and the Grimaldis have not spoken since Jan. 9, 1297." When Gary Cooper paid him a visit, he wrote a column of dialogue in which the famously reticent actor did all the talking and Mr. Buchwald replied with "yup" and "nope."
Mr. Buchwald often wrote about his wife and their three children. He had met Ann McCarry, a publicist for the fashion designer Pierre Balmain, in Paris, and they were married in 1952. They adopted three children, each born in a different country, and all survive their father — Joel (born in Ireland), of Washington; Connie Marks Buchwald (Spain) of Culpepper, Va.; and Jennifer Buchwald (France) of Roxbury, Mass. Two sisters — Edith Jaffe of Bellevue, Wash., and Doris Kahme of Delray Beach, Fla., and Monroe Township, N.J. — and five grandchildren also survive. Mrs. Buchwald died in 1994.
In his 14 years in Paris, Mr. Buchwald became as much a celebrity as those whose names he dropped in his columns. But it was in Washington, where he moved in 1962, that his fame took off.
By 1972, his column was appearing three times a week in about 400 newspapers in the United States and in 100 other countries. His nearest rival was his friend Russell Baker of The Times, whose "Observer" column appeared in other papers as well. "Buchwald is incomparable," Mr. Baker once said. "And he is brave, too, doing one of the hardest things in the world to do — to be funny, in exactly the same sort of way in regard to tone and technique, three times a week."
Mr. Buchwald's satire grew more biting in Washington. When President
Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965 with the stated purpose of protecting Americans there during a rebellion, Mr. Buchwald wrote a column about the last remaining one, a tourist named Sidney, who was being detained by the Dominican authorities so that the American soldiers would not pull out.
Occasionally a Washington insider would grouse about a Buchwald column, but his victims rarely bled. And he never hinted at his own political leanings in his columns. "He was a people person and not much interested in politics," Mr. Bradlee said.
An Influential CircleMr. Buchwald was as visible in Washington as he had been in Paris. He was often seen in sleek restaurants like the Sans Souci, holding court with a bevy of influential friends like Ethel Kennedy and Edward Bennett Williams, the co-owner of the Washington Redskins.
On Martha's Vineyard, where Mr. Buchwald had a summer home, one friend was the novelist William Styron. Mr. Buchwald played poker there with the journalists Carl T. Rowan and David Brinkley, the Johnson aide and later motion picture figure
Jack Valenti, and the diplomat Llewellyn Thompson. He kibbitzed with the columnists Rowland Evans and
Robert D. Novak, and he dressed in a flea-bitten rabbit suit to play the Easter bunny at a party he gave every year.
Another friend, the CBS correspondent
Mike Wallace , said Mr. Buchwald could not escape his depression even at his summer retreat.
"Three of us — Bill Styron, he and I — suffered depression simultaneously, so we walked around in the rain together on Martha's Vineyard and consoled each other," Mr. Wallace said in a phone interview last February. "I traveled a lot on '60 Minutes,' and no matter where I was, every single night I got a call from Art Buchwald to listen to the same tale of woe. He did the best to make life palatable, to help you be optimistic, to let you know he believed you would beat it. We both did, and so did Bill. We named ourselves the Blues Brothers." Mr. Styron died in November.
Mr. Buchwald's column was the cornerstone of a virtual industry. He recycled it in hardcover anthologies and used it as the basis for radio and television appearances. He was always in demand on the lecture circuit or as a master of ceremonies, holding forth with mock-seriousness and a New York accent. He also had two novels published. One had its origins in Mr. Bradlee's office.
"A guy showed up in my office covered with bandages and blood and told me he was a recent graduate of Sing Sing," Mr. Bradlee said. "He had done time for murder and was broke. He became a thorn in my side, and I got sick of him, so I sent him to Buchwald, just to get him out of my office. Art locked him up in a room and wrote a book about him, 'A Gift From the Boys.' The guy had been deported and his mob friends gave him a girl as a goodbye present."
The novel, published in 1958, became the basis of the 1960 movie "Surprise Package" with Yul Brynner.
Mr. Buchwald's other novel, "The Bollo Caper," published in 1974, was an ecological fairy tale for children and adults about a leopard hunted for his fur. It was adapted as a 1985 television movie.
Mr. Buchwald's also wrote a stage comedy, "Sheep on the Runway," about a pundit named Joseph Mayflower. It had a Broadway run in 1970, delighting audiences but alienating the columnist Joseph Alsop, who felt the pompous villain of the piece had been modeled after him.
Almost 20 years later, Mr. Buchwald sued Paramount Pictures, demanding to be paid for a script idea that he contended was the basis for the hit movie "Coming to America," about an African prince (Eddie Murphy) who visits the United States and winds up working at a menial job. In 1990, a Superior Court in California ruled in his favor.
Mr. Buchwald remained heavyset throughout his life, avoiding exercise, he said, because it was dangerous to his health. He gravitated toward big cigars and rich pastries. He wrote a second memoir, "I'll Always Have Paris," in 1996. And he established a scholarship for "the most irreverent student" in journalism at U.S.C.
It was an irreverence rooted in hurt, his friends said. "No matter what went wrong in his life, he could make a job out of setbacks, out of things that had gone wrong," Mr. Wallace said. Even after he had checked himself into the hospice and refused dialysis, his spirits remained up as he accepted a stream of visitors.
A Legacy of Joy"I said to him the other night at the hospice, 'What are you going to leave behind, buddy?'" Mr. Wallace said in February. "He said, 'Joy!' He almost shouted it."
As he continued to write his column, he found material in his own survival. "So far things are going my way," he wrote in March. "I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn't Die. How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don't know where I'd go now, or if people would still want to see me if I weren't in a hospice. But in case you're wondering, I'm having a swell time — the best time of my life."
Nadine Brozan contributed reporting.
不是國民黨員，也不是黃埔軍校出身，俞大維卻擔任中華民國國防部長長達10年，是首位設有紀念館的國防部長。（中央社檔案照片）
◎林水福
