My first real newspaper job was in the late ‘60s as women’s editor of a weekly paper called The West Bank Guide in Gretna, La, a working-class community “over the river” from New Orleans proper. This was at the height of the war in Vietnam, and a lot of young men went straight from West Jefferson High School into the military. I wrote way too many obituaries for 19-year-old kids who were killed in the fighting. Their moms would come into the office with pictures and, sometimes, even letters their sons had written, which they wanted someone to read. After one such interview, a tearful mom left, then came back into the office and said, “Could you please say he was an altar boy at St. Joseph’s?”