When Richard H. “Dick” Weiss was my editor at the Post-Dispatch, he told me a big part of what makes a great story is a great character. The person doesn’t have to be rich or famous, he said, but rather someone who is both extraordinary and ordinary.

In the time since Dick left the paper as part of a buyout in 2005, two years before I departed on similar terms, he has managed to piece together a tremendously productive, fulfilling career as a writer, teacher, researcher and mentor. He even finds time to serve as a Jewish Light trustee.

Dick’s latest project is that of author, with Charles E. “Charlie” Claggett. The two collaborated under the auspices of the Missouri History Museum on a recently published biography about Max Starkloff, a champion for disability rights. Many of you probably remember Starkloff, who was paralyzed from the neck down as the result of a car accident, as the founder, along with his wife, Colleen, of the St. Louis-based non-profit Paraquad. The group advocates for people with disabilities and provides them with services for independent living.

The way Dick explains it, he was approached by Charlie, who started working on the book not long after Max and Colleen helped start the Max Starkloff Disability Institute in 2003. “By the time we met in 2010, Charlie had a well-researched and well-written 500-page manuscript that only got to the year 1980,” said Dick. “He asked me to edit the first 500 pages and help him write the second part of the book, which I did over a two- to three-year period.”

The result, “Max Starkloff and the Fight for Disability Rights” (University of Chicago Press, $27.95), tells how Starkloff, who barely had a high school education, became the leader of a powerful disability rights movement and helped establish the concept of independent living for people with disabilities. When Starkloff became a quadriplegic at age 21, doctors doubted he would live longer than a few days. If he survived, the hope for his quality of life was predicted to be minimal.

“When I started the project, I already knew Max was an extraordinary guy who had accomplished so much in terms of disability rights,” said Dick. “What impressed me the most was his great desire personally to lead a ‘normal’ everyday life raising children (he and his wife adopted three), having a good marriage, doing things we take for granted as body-able human beings.

“What also impressed me was that something so off-limits in the 1970s to someone who was a quadriplegic is now possible to do. A lot of that has to do with technology but a whole lot of it has to do with the way people regard and treat people with disabilities. Max was a pioneer. He really changed attitudes.”

Dick and Charlie Claggett will be signing copies of their new book, which Dick describes as “not academic, more like a very long feature story,” at 7 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Missouri History Museum and at 7 p.m. Dec. 4 at the St. Louis County Library Headquarters in Frontenac.

In addition, Dick wrote the foreword for Edna Gravenhorst’s new book “History of Famous-Barr,” which the author dedicated to Dick’s mother, Helen Weiss, who was in charge of public relations and special events at the department store chain. She worked there from 1962 to 2007, until she was 81, and passed away a year later.

I long considered Helen a second mother, and even wrote a piece about her last year, which contributed to me winning a Rockower Award earlier this month for excellence in Jewish journalism. For Helenistas such as myself — and I know there are hundreds out there — Dick’s foreword is a must-read. It’s too long to include here, but worth checking out at stljewishlight.com/Helen.

Next up on Dick’s list is finishing – and finding a publisher—for his own book, “Call Me Dick,” which looks at what it means to be a guy named Dick. His plan calls for interviewing some of the most famous Dicks nationwide as well as solving the age-old question, how you get Dick out of a perfectly normal and dignified, Richard?

“Through this book, the world will know what it means to be a Dick,” he said. “And I shall leave a legacy for my children, all of whom are females, and none of whom are named Dick.”

Stay tuned.

Picking up the pieces  

Tuesday morning I received a text from my 28-year-old stepdaughter Megan. It read: “I’m so sad and disturbed by the images from last night in Ferguson. And on South Grand. I have so many great childhood memories in that area. I love this city because of you. You showed Jess (her brother) and me all the cool nooks and crannies. So I just want to say I love you because I know it breaks your heart as well.”

Later that morning, a couple of colleagues and I drove to Ferguson. We wanted to see the aftermath for ourselves. The only bright light we spotted was the number of people helping downtown shopkeepers board up their stores, which had been vandalized and looted. Glass littered the streets. Mannequins from one shop lay along the sidewalk.

Police barricades blocked us from driving onto West Florissant Avenue, where multiple businesses were burned to the ground. So we pulled into a nearby church parking lot up on a hill. A handful of TV reporters were doing live shots. The street below us resembled a war zone. The air smelled like a stale campfire.

We spoke to two, young African-American women who couldn’t get to work because of the violence that had ensued the night before. One said her brother’s girlfriend was pregnant and they couldn’t leave their apartment because of street closures. The women planned to collect food, clothing and toiletries for them and other Ferguson residents who were forced to stay inside. Both women seemed sad but not surprised by what had happened.

When we got back into the car, I reread my stepdaughter’s text. I thought about how much I have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. I also thought about the two women and the hundreds of others directly affected by the street violence and destruction, in Ferguson, on South Grand near where I lived for 13 years, and elsewhere in the area.

Regardless of our feelings about the grand jury decision, it is, in fact, a decision. The only thing we can do now is to pick up the shattered glass, and start to fix a society so broken by racism and social and economic injustice. Then maybe, Megan, our hearts will mend.