Yeah, Big Russ, his dad, is somewhere near 90, they were saying on TV. Tim had just gotten through moving him to a new care facility with the last couple of weeks. I'm assuming his mother has passed on and wonder if perhaps she were the one who might have had coronary artery disease genetics.

Dr. Dave always maintained that Tim was likely a sitting duck for a heart attack just by looking at him. Morbid as it is, that's a sort of standard cardiologist's hobby--guessing health risk by evaluating lifestyle, physique and behavior. Tim Russert had the build of someone at higher than average risk for heart disease, but of course we didn't know his blood lipid levels and couldn't guess at them till today, which indicated he must have had some arteriosclerosis. Then he carried some extra weight and was sedentary. He probably had genetic propensity and elevated blood pressure. They say he was a notoriously driven, hard-working, type A sort of journalist, too, so that fits with the profile, too. We have just gotten finished with a longer-than-average primary season so he had no doubt been stressed with covering it all. Frankly, if the interminable Hillary pursuit had kept up much longer, I think a lot more of us might have had cardiac arrest!

What we were still wondering was about the actual cause. There've been conflicting reports, and the term "heart attack" is a medically vague one, just like "nervous breakdown." Have you read in any reliable sources or detail, BA, whether he had an infarction, meaning heart damage from blockage from arteriosclerosis, or cardiac arrest, meaning heart stoppage as a result of some type of disease or rhythm process? Others, please forgive the seeming morbidity of these questions and understand that these are the standard things that people with medical leanings always ask.

I'm not someone who's superstitious or buys into the afterlife, but it does please me to imagine that he's somewhere, happy and busy and reconnecting with people like John Chancellor, Peter Jennings, Ed Bradley, and David Brinkley, to name just a few of the broadcasting greats who've gone before him.