Bill Carlson died Friday night after a very tough fight with prostate cancer. Those of us who knew him understood pretty early on that his chances weren't good. But Bill and his indomitable wife, Nancy Nelson, threw themselves into every possibility they could grasp. Bill didn't pass away for lack of trying.

I last saw Bill a couple months ago at a birthday party Nancy hosted for him at their home out in Eden Prairie. The cast of characters was pretty impressive. The WCCO-TV staff was to be expected. But John Najarian, MD; boxer Jim Beattie; and others were examples of the range of people with whom Bill and Nancy cultivated long-term relationships.

I got to know them—and there's no way or point of discussing Bill without talking about Nancy, i.e. "them"—via the so-called movie press junket circuit more than twenty years ago. I was the sarcastic snob working for an alternative weekly (the defunct Twin Cities Reader), soaking up free airfare, four-star hotels, and studio booze. They were the established gentry of the small, uh, highly idiosyncratic, community of junketeers that convened a couple times a month in New York, LA, or wherever Paramount and the rest thought would guarantee maximum positive pub. (I swear to God there's a Robert Altman-style movie in that scene, Junket!)

The signature quality of Bill and Nancy was a generosity of spirit untainted by any detectable ego, insecurity, or misplaced sense of status. I don't remember the first time we crossed paths, but it wasn't long after I started showing up. Being a naturally suspicious bastard, I initially dismissed their effusive, yet relaxed, friendliness as "TV shtick," that sales-like thing everyone in the infotainment business learns to do just well enough.

But as time went by, it dawned on me that these were simply two genuinely nice people, devoted to each other and blessedly lacking in the kind of snippy (a Minnesota word), pissy, backbiting that infected so many other people on the fringe of the Hollywood bubble. And that isn't to say they were chumps. They knew their game—Bill's TV news anchor role and Nancy's myriad infomercial ventures—and were plenty hip to the jerks. They paid close attention to politics and had very clear, progressive points of view. What they had, fundamentally, was maturity, self-confidence, and the unequivocal support of each other, a happy consequence of which was that I never had the feeling they dwelled on the snakier side of life.

I think it was on a long, west-to-east, cross-country flight back in the mid-'80s that Bill and I formed a bit of a bond. Leaving LA for New York meant it was happy hour on takeoff, and by the time we crossed over Utah, we were feeling no pain. Five captive hours and free drinks can tell you a lot about a person, and I was struck, "charmed" might be a better word, by Bill's sane, balanced world view. Life is both worth living and enjoying. Problems are to be identified and resolved. There's no limit to the things you can be interested in. The real bastards will eventually feel the weight of the karmic wheel. Every relationship works better if you pay attention and put a little positive energy into it, and humor plays best as a primary ingredient, not an afterthought.

By the time we touched down at LaGuardia, I was convinced that Bill, though in most ways a classic product of the fifties—the hair style, the business attire, the generally proper demeanor— could have been a tie-dyed hippie were he twenty years younger.

I see Don Shelby quoted talking about Bill being a real person in a business not often noted for its sincerity. I get the sentiment, but that might be a bit harsh. Throughout the years, my assessment of TV "types" has actually improved. The vast majority are just working schmoes whose names we happen to know. The majority of the "stars" freely acknowledge the shtick (and the underlying responsibility to their employers). Delusional levels of self-importance might come, but they also go . . . pretty fast.

But very few of them have or will survive fifty years in the business with the level of grace and decency Bill Carlson displayed.