It never came easy for Greg Kane. A sort of tough love was what he knew from his childhood and it defined how he saw the world and responded to it. It came from his mom.

His last Thanksgiving column was about his much-loved mother who had passed away in August 2013, and it included a telling passage about how in his early childhood she once saved his life in the hospital. He’d eaten bad crabs and awoke in the hospital with an improperly inserted IV.