Like many people I imagine, my opinion of Roger Ebert was mostly formed by watching him as half of the team that defined movie criticism on television when he along with the late Gene Siskel hosted the PBS show “Sneak Previews”. Ebert, whose day job was the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, was usually the more cantankerous of the two, and Siskel, who was also the film critic for the Chicago Tribune, usually seemed to get the better of him when they appeared together outside of their own show.

Their use of giving a movie a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” became a cultural icon, and for a time it seemed nearly every commercial for a movie that included the words “two thumbs way up” was a virtual must-see film.

Ebert carried on with the format, when Siskel passed away in 1999 after surgery for a cancerous brain tumor. Ebert would eventually team with his fellow Sun-Times film critic Roger Roeper to continue the movie review television show, then renamed “Ebert and Roeper At The Movies.”

I always thought the job of being a movie reviewer to be a pretty cushy one. My friend and former colleague from Buffalo, Michael Calleri has been writing movie reviews for many years. Knowing what Michael goes through in formulating his review of a film has changed my perspective on things, and has made me have a somewhat greater appreciation of the work of the film critic.

And in turn, a greater appreciation of the writing of Roger Ebert. The first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. And as it turned out, a much more decent fellow than I would have imagined.

A few years ago, daughter Katy was working on a video project for a college course she was taking. Part of her grade was based on getting as many people as possible to watch a YouTube video her group had made to get people to exercise. Being dutiful parents, we asked everyone we knew to watch the video and get their friends to do the same. (These days this would be called “social networking”, back then it was better known as just “desperate parenting”.)

One of the friends who watched the video was the aforementioned Michael Calleri. He in turn brought it to the attention of Roger Ebert, who was kind enough to say a kind word in a Twitter message to his large group of followers and in turn, got Katy’s video thousands of views, along with a passing grade in the course.

This small gesture would be enough for me to think quite differently about Mr. Ebert, even though I had already developed a new appreciation for him when I had discovered years earlier that he had collaborated in his early career with infamous “sexploitation” filmmaker, Russ Meyer.

But it is Ebert’s own life story, which has become the stuff that movie scripts are made of. He began a battle with cancer in 2002, first dealing with thyroid cancer and then cancer of the salivary glands. His carotid artery exploded at one point, His long recovery and arduous treatments have left him without a jaw and without the ability to speak.

For a man who has used words to build a career, you would think that the ability not to speak has to be an unbelievable turn in a life that has produced so many words. What would any of our lives be, if we were one day rendered unable to speak?

Roger Ebert has, to some great degree, answered that question with a moving address to this year’s TED conference, delivered via a computer generated voice, his own voice via a computer, as well as in the voice of his wife and friends.

It is quite simply, one of the most eloquent things I have ever heard. About technology, about the gift of expression, and about that most amazing of things…the indefatigable resolve of the human spirit.

So, Roger Ebert please forgive me. I had thought that you were just a movie critic. And while you still are going strong at that, imagine my surprise when you also turned out to be someone quite amazing.

Take twenty minutes of your life and be inspired by this voice that may not be able to be heard, but speaks volumes all the same. If you can get though this without wiping a tear from your eye, well than you are a much better person than I.