Thursday, September 27, 2007

Tim Chavez loses Tennessean column due to cancer-related absence

The Nashville Scene reports here that Tennessean columnist Tim Chavez has lost his job writing columns for that paper after going on disability leave for leukemia:
Tim Chavez, the love-him-or-hate-him Tennessean columnist known for his advocacy of the poor, afflicted and otherwise marginalized, has survived a two-year-long battle with leukemia that nearly killed him. But while he ultimately managed to keep his life, he couldn’t hang on to his job.

...

“When you go on long-term disability, you lose all rights to your job,” says Chavez, who wrote 16 columns in 2006, the last from his Vanderbilt hospital bed. “And I didn’t know that, and so I was under the mistaken impression that I could come back. It’s my fault, it’s my fault, you know. I didn’t ask enough questions. But you know, when I went on permanent disability was about the same time I almost died, and I wasn’t even thinking of working. I was just trying to live.”

...

Chavez says he regrets more than anything not having a farewell column to thank his readers for their good wishes. “I’m grateful to my friends and readers who have told me they would pray for me,” he says. “And now I’m sort of powerless to tell them how much.”
The Hispanic Nashville Notebook has approached Chavez about writing for this site.

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