The last time we checked, the online docket in the Tribune bankruptcy case had grown to a staggering 1,686 entries. No doubt, accountants and lawyers have their hands full, trying to keep up.

But lest we forget, the case is about so much more than accountants and lawyers. It’s about more than Sam Zell. It’s even about more than the future ownership of Tribune or the Courant itself.

It’s also about real people — people who deserve better — whose lives have been disrupted by the bankruptcy filing, sometimes in big ways.

This story, from the Chicago Tribune, has been out there a while, but it just now came to our attention. If you can, read the whole thing, but, if you can’t, go down about halfway and read about the distressing case of a Mr. Philip Franzese.

Mr. Franzese, the paper reported, worked for a small Long Island publisher of advertising circulars.  The company was sold, and then sold again, landing in the hands of Newsday. And Newsday, of course, became part of Tribune.

Tribune eventually sold most of Newsday, but held onto certain liabilities, among them a deferred-compensation plan that is supposed to be paying Mr. Franzese $35,000 a year over 10 years. With Tribune’s bankruptcy, those payments stopped. The paper reported that Mr. Franzese’s chances of getting what he is owed “are grim.”

In an anguished letter filed with the bankrupty court in May, Mr. Franzese said he was facing foreclosure on his home, he was unable to file his tax returns in April, five creditors were seeking judgments against him, and a utility company was threatening to cut off his electricity.

“I am just a number, left alone, with no help in sight,” he wrote. “Where is the help I now need, while I always answered the call for others? This truly is a death sentence for me, and could have a tragic ending.”

Read the letter here.