Newspaper work is full of brutal duties. The raw world we hack through every day makes sure of that.

I thought I'd felt all the spears it has to offer -- until last week. I was asked to write the obituary of a friend.

Timothy C. Doughtie died Sunday after the briefest of battles with pancreatic cancer. He was only 61. He was full of life. He'd been an inspiration to Hilton Head Island as long as any of us can remember. He arrived at age 16, back in 1961, and helped set the tone for a community just starting its new life of modern development.

Fortunately for us, he set a wonderful tone -- funny, irreverent and informal, yet dogged for beauty and against ugliness, greed and self-aggrandizement. For some reason, we've always had more than our share of the latter two. Tim helped pop holes in it, in the silliest of ways.

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