An Appreciation

Losing a member of our work family can be as devastating as losing a blood relative, and that is why so many of us here at TIME wept when we learned last week that Brigid O’Hara-Forster had suddenly died of a brain aneurysm in London.

Brigid began working at TIME in 1968 as secretary to managing editor Henry Grunwald, and soon became a reporter-researcher in the World section. As the section’s head researcher for 10 years, she wisely helped guide our coverage of summits, foreign elections, countless Middle East crises and (almost countless) changes in the Kremlin.

In 1996 Brigid returned to her native Britain to work on the TIME Atlantic edition, and there she truly blossomed, managing the reporters with aplomb while writing on subjects as diverse as Wimbledon and Russian art. But her greatest passion was for friendship, and her greatest pleasure came from conversation with friends, conversation that was full of curiosity about how the world worked and a moral energy about how it should work. The magazine was very lucky to have had her as a journalist all those years; we were far luckier to have had her as a friend.

Jim Kelly DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR