It's sad that the childhood home of Ernie Pyle has been lost. Its continued presence was important for the same reason we preserve the homes of other significant people. We want to visit their pasts to see what it was like for them, what inspired them, even just what they saw out the window on a summer day. But this loss isn't in the "tragic" category, because Pyle still lives and always will in the writings he left behind. Before his amazing dispatches let Americans know what it was like on the front lines of World War II, he traveled the backroads of America, the Charles Kuralt of his day, and he was already well-known throughout the country before he even headed off to war. A lot of people have wondered how he would cover the war in Iraq. I'd just as soon see somebody as good as him on the road again, reporting on the American peculiarities that are still there despite the homogenizing influence of mass media and the popular culture. Bet he'd be a blogger.
