"It was as if I had told them I had webbed feet and lived in a cave," wrote Drew Silvern, describing the fascination of a first-grade class on learning he had brain cancer. Silvern, '82, an education reporter for the San Diego Union-Tribune, tracked the children's 1994-95 school year in his series, "Life in the First Grade." It won awards from the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and from the California Newspaper Publishers' Association.
But Silvern's toughest assignment was still ahead. In April 1996, he turned his reportorial eye inward and began another series, "Life with Cancer," a candid chronicle of his hopes and fears as the disease took its course. Even as his condition deteriorated, he continued to write, creating what his editor called "an indelible imprint" on readers.
"When you feel as though the worst thing that can happen to you is happening, it becomes time to give as much as possible to the people around you, and to accept, even demand, as much as they're willing to offer to you in return," Silvern wrote. He dictated the last article in the series just days before his death on June 11, 1997.
A Los Angeles native, Silvern was an oarsman with the Stanford crew team and earned his B.A. in American studies. After graduation, he worked for two years at the UCLA medical school, then pursued his own medical studies at the University of Vermont for a year before deciding on a journalism career.
Silvern worked for the Pasadena Star-News and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. In 1990, he earned a master's degree in print journalism from the University of Southern California. He joined the Union-Tribune the same year. In his memory, the newspaper has established The Drew Silvern Scholarship, which will provide a paid summer internship at the paper for a Stanford junior or senior.
Silvern is survived by his mother, Lila; his father, Rudy; a brother, Eric; and his girlfriend, Beverley Koseff.
