Levon Helm

Sorry to see that Levon Helm has passed. In a world with a better perspective, he'd have a more prominent obituary than Dick Clark.  Newspapers always worry about how to play obits.  How do you gauge someone's worth after he or she has died?  I was working for the newspaper in Richmond when Jerry Garcia and Mickey Mantle died within (my memory) a week.  I think we played the Mick a little higher, but what a quandary: Many of the Grateful Dead fans probably didn't know who the hell Mantle was, and a whole slew of Yankees fans probably thought Garcia was the guy who founded Ben and Jerry's!