Hundreds of friends, family and professional colleagues remembered Deborah Howell at a memorial service at Central Presbyterian Church in St. Paul Saturday. Howell, a pedestrian, was killed in a car accident in New Zealand on Jan. 2.

Howell became a board member of MinnPost and attended her first meeting just a month before she died. We have already published two pieces by journalists who won Pulitzer Prizes under Howell when she was leading the newsroom at the Pioneer Press: John Camp and Jacqui Banaszynski.  So I decided to get a different kind of memorial to publish on MinnPost.com this morning: the lighthearted video by family friend John Kaul that was shown at the service.

I asked Kaul for a copy during a reception after the service. He had just handed a CD of it to Howell’s sister, Pam, who was still standing with him. He said he would have to get me another copy later. I asked, “Could we get it in time to publish Monday morning?” 

Kaul paused. Pam, whom I had just met, tapped her finger on the CD in her hand, and said something like, “Deborah is telling me to give this to you so you can make your deadline.” And she did.