Time with The CR was a good ride

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from Aug. 25, 2004. He was celebrating 30 years at The Commercial Review. This year would have been 50. For a guy who only planned to be here for a couple of years, Jack truly made an impact on his community in the nearly 48 years he spent at his hometown newspaper.

Some anniversaries pass quietly. You never really notice them.

Others smack you upside the head and make you wonder, “Where did the time go?”

Thursday’s one of those for me.

Thirty years ago Thursday was my first day as a reporter in the newsroom of The Commercial Review. Thirty years. That’s longer than far too many lifetimes.

The plan was — if indeed it could be called a plan — to work on the family-owned daily in my hometown for a couple of years. After that, specifics were kind of fuzzy, but they didn’t include three decades of community journalism in the place where I grew up.

I’d been working — after a fashion — as one of the editors of a quasi-underground weekly in Indianapolis. And since that job paid in bylines and fun but not in dollars and cents, I’d been looking for something a little more traditional.

That’s when an opening popped up at The CR. It was one I was qualified for, though just barely, and I had the advantage of knowing the community. Or at least I thought I knew it.

There’s a world of difference between growing up in a place and having to cover it — on deadline — as completely, as accurately and as fairly as possible.

Fortunately, I was a pretty fast learner.

And though 30 years is a lot longer than I thought I’d ever stay, it’s been a darned good ride.

If you love to write and you like chasing sirens into the night, there are few jobs better. Floods, fires, murder trials, strikes, political squabbles and public scandals can make for a great news smorgasbord.

But the real reward has been the people I’ve met along the way.

Newspapering gives its practitioners an opportunity to be nosy. We get to sit down with interesting people and ask them countless questions. We get to help them tell their stories. At best, we help share their lives with our readers.

I think of a memorable visit with the late O.H. “Doc” Schwanderman at his farm out in Madison Township when we prowled through his endless collections. I think of regular chats with Woody Turner, the first one on that first day of work as I tried to put together a re-cap on the engine show; the last one in his nursing home room in Portland not long before his death.

And on and on. Business people, farmers, kids, politicians, criminals, the elderly, teachers, students, people with funny stories to tell, people with tragic stories to tell. Personality after personality, story after story, deadline after deadline.

As I said, it’s been a darned good ride.

Thanks for your patience. Thanks for your friendship. And thanks for reading.