Perhaps Jim Hampton was a victim of that old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Maybe he was just lucky, but Hampton's years as a journalist led him to some of the most talked-about news stories of the past 40 years. He was in Chicago for the 1968 Democratic National Convention and at Kent State only a couple of years later. It would be at the Miami Herald, though, where he and his editorial board deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize in connection with their work on freeing 2,000 Haitians trapped at the Krome Detention Center. Hampton was a beloved editor whose troops spoke about him with adoration — and who spoke about the newspaper's reporters in a kind way that was never the norm at the Magic City's largest daily. Once long ago, when a Herald scribe who happens to be editor of New Times now, was at dinner with the kindly gent in Tallahassee after an arduous legislative session, Hampton turned and said, "You know, you guys kicked ass this session. It's too bad we can't get more of [those damn legislators] indicted." Hampton was a brilliant, hard-working, hard-drinking Heraldite who toiled for the paper from 1978 to 1998 through some of the most interesting years Miami has ever seen. It was also he who supervised cartoonist Jim Morin when he won a Pulitzer. And it was he who died — far too soon — in early February at age 73. We'll miss you, Jim.