What a ride: Reminiscing about 35 years in the news business

It was June of 1978 when I first walked through these doors and asked Dick White for a job. I was just a high school student who had no intention of staying for more than a couple of years. It didn’t take any time at all for a couple of years to turn into 35. On Aug. 2, I will walk through them for the last time as an employee.
Those first few years I worked part-time, typing news copy. I worked many nights alone in the office, but Dailis Moore had taught me to type well over 100 words a minute, so it didn’t take long.
Dick White was so patient and calm, even on deadline day. Back in those days, he would cover a school board meeting on a Tuesday night and write it up on that old typewriter the next morning for that week’s paper. I spent many Wednesday mornings wishing he would hurry up with his weekly column. Once he got through with it, it got passed on to me to typeset and then get waxed and put on the pages.
Some of our best times were spent when everyone in the office gathered in the back to stuff inserts in the newspapers and label and bag them for the post office. It was a dirty job, but we learned so much about each other on those afternoons.
Dick’s wife, Jenny, came to work with us several years after I started working here.  Jenny is so thoughtful, and she is always impeccably dressed. She called some of their former employees several years and wanted us to come over and get our inheritance. You could tell she had spent a lot of time matching the gifts with our personalities and tastes.
Now calm and Jenny don’t always go hand in hand. I very seldom vacuum that I don’t think of her. I can’t even remember what we had done to upset her, but she got the vacuum cleaner out and went to work. She would vacuum a while, then she would whip her glasses off, put them on her head and give us a piece of her mind. Then back to vacuuming she went.
The Whites were great to work for; they treated us just like family. We were devastated when they sold the newspaper, but we coped.
Dave Lewis was the publisher for about a year after that. He decided I might be useful at more than typesetting and began to teach me a little about layout.
Then came Bill Owney, the meanest boss in the world. Don’t worry; I’m not telling you anything I haven’t told him. Meanness aside, I wouldn’t be where I am today without him. He had already integrated me into layout, and then he got sick one afternoon when there was a murder trial in progress. When he said go, there really wasn’t any arguing about it; you went. Turns out, it was a pretty fun assignment. I listened, took notes, came back and wrote it.
“Girl, you can really write,” he said the next morning when he read over it. I figured he was just being polite, but he changed very little.
He took me aside before he left to go back to the Atlanta paper and encouraged me to continue writing, saying I could do this as long as I wanted. My biggest question was: How in the world do you find enough news to fill the front page every week? “News always happens,” he said, “but you will worry about it every week, as you should, because the first time you don’t worry about it, it will be a problem.”
Trust me. I have worried about it ever since. He was right though; there is always news, even in a town this size.
I was named editor of The Pittsburg Gazette 20 years ago this month. In most ways it seems like only yesterday. In 1998, I was named editor of The Steel Country Bee as well. Over that time I have met, and worked with, some great people.
Publisher Debbie Knox and I have worked together so long, we really do read each other minds. That was evident just a few days ago when I asked her what she thought about someone we had just met. While she was still forming the words, I said, “wait, I know exactly what you thought,” and I did.
This has nothing to do with the newspaper business, but this is what pops in my mind every time I think of her. It was when she and Roy owned the bed and breakfast. I have no memory whatsoever of why we went over there that morning or why we thought we needed a gun when we got there, but, like Lucy and Ethel, we did. She gave me Roy’s shotgun, and up the stairs we went. It’s a really good thing no one burst through one of those bedroom doors because we would have killed each other tumbling back down the stairs.
One thing Debbie taught me is how to listen. I learned that skill when we were looking for something way out in the country. We had no idea where we were or where we were going, so she stopped to ask some guy on a tractor for directions. I wasn’t paying attention. Little did I know, neither was she.
Speaking of Roy, Mr. One Man’s Opinion, he really doesn’t work in this office, but I do owe him a big thank you. No, not for making the margaritas so strong he could tell all the good stories the next day, but for showing up at my parents’ door both times after I had surgery bearing a ‘Playgirl’ magazine. We will not even get into those Christmas presents we used to exchange.
Betty Marshall has been at the paper nearly as long as Debbie and I have. She and I think so much alike – right down to the honeydew candles - it’s sometimes uncanny.  Her mother, Donnie, reminds me of my mother in so many ways that I have decided that could be a factor.
Betty should have been a rocket scientist. She can fix absolutely anything, from an ad to a computer. If we have an e-mail issue, we call Betty. If the computer is doing strange things, we call Betty. If I’m doing my taxes and am not sure where to list a particular item, I call Betty. And, anyone who needs something decorated, whether it’s an ad, an invitation or a centerpiece, well, they call Betty.
She has helped my dad with so many computer problems that he comes in the office to see her more than he does to see me. I always tell her he loves her more than he does me.
This is Kim Cox’s second time to work at The Gazette. When we had an opening for a reporter three years ago and Kim was working at the Gladewater paper, she was the one I wanted. She can be pretty blonde under all that mane of dark hair, but she is one of the smartest people I know.  Like me, she started working here while she was in high school. Even at that young age, she was knowledgeable enough to cover city and school issues. I know she will not miss hearing this every single week: “Kim, do the corrections before you leave Friday afternoon.”
I have amassed a great deal of documents on an incident that happened in Pittsburg that most everyone says is related to the Kennedy assassination. I gave her a copy of it when she left for college. I think one day she will investigate and make it a bestseller.
Irene Perez has only been here for a year, and she’s so quiet I haven’t had time to gather up stories on her, but she has taught me the biggest difference in Dr Pepper and Coke. Irene has the most pleasant phone voice I’ve ever heard, and she is so sweet people don’t like telling her no when she calls and asks them to buy ads.
I call Marlene Bohr my Tasmanian devil because she moves in a constant whirlwind. She works in the Daingerfield office, and she can write more stories in a day than Kim and I combined. I cannot speak of Marlene without telling one of my earliest encounters with her. She is any dog’s biggest ally, and sometimes she has a tendency to utter “woof” when she’s frustrated. I was over in The Bee office one day when she was on the phone, and suddenly she said “well, woof.” When she hung up I said, “Marlene, it’s OK when you bark at me, but you just barked at the sheriff.”
Marlene’s been with us through thick and thin at The Steel Country Bee. It doesn’t matter if it’s a car wreck, a downtown parade or a school board meeting, she is anxious to cover it all.
There’s no way to name them all, but for those of you who have helped me fill up that front page all these years, thank you. Lately, two of my best sources are Thom Leonard, who keeps me informed on what’s going on in town, and Bill Julian, who fills me in on news out west. Mr. Julian had a few words with me when we started charging for obituaries. I totally understand; that’s one of my pet peeves too, but this day and age newspapers are having to get revenue from sources that were never imagined. Speaking of pet peeves: Twice a year for the last several decades I have told reporters, “If I don’t teach you anything else before you leave, it is Daylight Saving Time – no ‘s’ on Saving.” Television stations inevitably get it wrong.
No column on sources could be complete without mentioning Chuck Johns. Chuck reads ‘Looking Back’ for me every week before it runs. I appreciate him for catching all those mistakes, but more than that, I love the weekly local history lesson he gives me.
As for those dreaded ‘Ask the Editor’ questions, they will continue in some form or fashion. I so appreciate Superintendent Judy Pollan, who never hesitates to answer one of them, and I can never even tell from her voice that it irritates her. The same goes for Roger Ledbetter and Carlos Ibarra with the Texas Department of Transportation. I learned my lesson quickly with those guys. Don’t ask the question until the day before you go to press or the problem will be gone. If it’s something that is fixable immediately, they fix it immediately.
Let me say a little more about those questions. That turned out to be one of my favorite jobs, finding solutions to people’s issues, but sometimes you could cut out the middle man, that being the newspaper, on those. If there is truly a problem, and you’re not just trying to pick on someone, pick up the phone and call them yourself. Most of them don’t bite, although sometimes former City Manager Ned Muse acted like he might. He did, however, have a good point. Sometimes calling the source immediately could make a difference, like the time there was an abandoned refrigerator in someone’s yard. The person who called me was scared a child was going to crawl in it and die. Again, in instances that could be a matter of life or death, just call the people who really need to know.
I could go on and on about some of my favorite stories over the last 35 years, but since in a few days I won’t buy ink by the barrel any more, I will stop. I’m not going far, just down the road to the sheriff’s office, so come by and see me.
It’s been quite a ride, and thank you all for keeping it interesting.