While folks along our border area are mourning the passing of Charles Bowden, why would it surprise any of us that those good people at Narco News are mourning his passing just as much, if not more.

Writer Bill Conroy explains why Bowden's voice remains a loud and important voice, and leaves an authentic journalism legacy that many of us can still turn to when that swift kick in the ass just isn't doing it anymore.

Read Conroy's entire tribute here.

Conroy on Bowden:

When I heard that he had passed, my eyes welled with tears. I’m of stoic Irish stock, so I don’t shed tears easily, but the news of Charles Bowden’s death (1945-2014) was not an easy thing to bear. He had been a mentor and a friend to me for a decade, and his leaving hurts.

He died peacefully, in his bed at his home in Las Cruces, N.M., after complaining of persistent flu-like symptoms that started in early August, according to his long-time companion and colleague Molly Molloy, a Latin American researcher, writer and librarian at New Mexico State University. A recent EKG also showed he had an irregular heartbeat, and he had an appointment scheduled with a cardiologist, she said.

But he never made that appointment. Molly found him at 5:15 p.m. after returning from work this past Saturday, Aug. 30, his life energy gone from his body.

“He was in bed and seemed sleeping, but I could not wake him.,” Molloy recounted in an email sent on Sunday informing Chuck’s friends and colleagues of his death. “I called 911 and did CPR until the police got here. There was nothing we could do.”

But in my mind and heart, Chuck can’t die, not in the eternal world of ideas. He accomplished what every writer dreams of, even if they are too humble, as he was in this sense, to admit it. His words, his reporting, his truth-telling, lives on, rippling through time on the pages of history. His name belongs among the ranks of the great American writers, certainly those yet to be christened in the 21st Century.