Leo Greene, journalist with ALS was 62

Leo Greene chronicled his fight with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis for more than a year in the pages of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, where he was a reporter, columnist and videographer. On Friday, he went to a movie with his sister and passed away some time later that night, with Chalmers Johnson's book "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic" open on his lap. In a column published a year ago today, Greene wrote that "having a notion of when the end might come allows time to prepare, to adjust priorities." A former news director at Fox 11, Greene won two Emmys for work at KCET, worked a lot with former CBS2 reporter Linda Breakstone and shared a Peabody Award for investigative reporting at KARK-TV in Little Rock, Ark.

The Daily Bulletin has up a mainbar, a personal tribute by editor Steve Lambert, a blog of letters to Greene, a photo gallery and the archive of Greene's columns, videos, stories and blog posts about his disease.

From Lambert's piece:

As someone who has lost three close associates to the ravages of ALS during the past decade, I can attest to how badly it's needed.

In his last posting, earlier this month, Leo wrote of an encouraging Italian medical study that showed how the mood-stabilizing drug lithium slowed progression of the disease among ALS patients who were tested.

"These results are fascinating and exciting," Dr. Laura Nist, director of Loma Linda University Medical Center's ALS clinic, told Leo.

With that, he signed off, ending his story with a glimmer of hope.

Cropped photo: Mediha Fejzagic DiMartino / Inland Valley Daily Bulletin