You will be mssed, old friend

Dave Boerner--Goodby to a great friend and colleague..you made the world a bit better..

Dave and Me

    The price of getting old.
    Now another great friend and colleague is gone...one that I was closer to then most.
    We had a lot of deadlines together when he was news editor and I was his assistant. It was a great relationship. We found we agreed on a lot of issues and had the same judgment when it came to placement of stories in the paper..
    It takes a certain type of newsman or woman, to be a true news editor..weighing the value of the tons of stories that poured in from at least six  different news sources plus the local stories...all vying for Page One or to get into print.   
    It can't be just tossing a coin...and filling space...it's reading a couple of paragraphs and, because of those deadlines, deciding what to do.
    I first met Dave in 1966. He was on the copy desk and I rejoined it after a six months leave of absence.
    We immediately hit it off.
    I took the wire editor's job and that led to us getting the news editor jobs.
    A fellow was brought in to fill the assistant news editor's spot. He didn't exactly do a good job, as least in my judgment.
    Once his had set his pages, he couldn't or wouldn't change stories for the latest news....often not even in the next edition.
    The final blow came when out vice president of the time was speaking and forgot which Great Lake bordered the city in which he was speaking.
    Our friend just  wasn't interested in a story that that made all the media.
    I got fed up and when into the managing editor at that time and complained about his news judgment. And I told him that I would like to try out for the job (I had held that job in Columbus) and I thought Dave also would make a good news editor.
    We did out job for more than 90 days (that was a deadline set by the Guild) and didn't get a formal announcement of our promotions. But we were drawing the extra 10 percent for the job.
    So I went into the managing editor and reminded him of the Guild contract.
       Shortly after that, we got the title and all the headaches that came with it. Things went along smoothly and then a new news editor took over. He decided he wouldn't do the grunt work anymore. So the daily operation of the paper fell to Dave and me.
    Then the news editor became the managing editor and a new news editor was named: Dave.
    And I was his assistant. But that was no problem. We worked well together and for awhile we didn't have a second person to put out the paper.
This came at the time I was to attend a seminar at Columbia University and it appeared it would be canceled because I was putting out the paper.
    Dave would have no part of it. He said he'd do my job while I was gone.
    And upon my return to the job, we worked well together. When the one star was put to bed, we'd go to lunch together...our favorite spot was the Brown Derby that used to be on West Market.
    If there was flack from some quarter Dave took care of it and it never trickled down to me.
    One time we were both called into the ME's office about noon. He had heard on the radio that there was a garbage strike in Cleveland and wanted to know why we didn't have it in the paper.
    We told him that when the garbage starting smelling all the way to Akron, we'd put in on Page One.
    It was a good arrangement until somebody came up with the bright idea that the “local” newspaper should assume all the trapping of a metropolitan daily, similar to Philadelphia, Detroit and New York.
    News Editor Dave suddenly found himself “promoted” to assistant to the Editor.
    So dawned the age of assistant ME's for most departments.
    We got an assistant ME for news. And then we got an executive news editor who only responsibility was to put out page one. He had an assistant to deal with the inside pages whereas Dave and I were doing both.
    And these new positions weren't filled from within. New people, unfamiliar with the paper and the communities, were brought in.
    As far as I'm concerned, that was the beginning of the end for the Beacon Journal as it was known over the years.
    When the editor left Dave was assistant to no-one at the time and told me later he wasn't sure if he still have a job or not.
    Of course he did. But out of the news loop. He joined the editorial page staff and finished his career there.
    After we both  retired we got together
 for lunch and discussed the old days and what was happening to the place where we spent most of our lives.
I have always thought that if the BJ hadn't quite promoting from within to bring in so-called “hotshots” to fix something that wasn't broken, Dave might have wound up as editor and we wouldn't have lost so many good people to other newspapers.
    But hindsight is always easy...
    Dave was a great problem solver, never lost his cool and handled each situation with no grumbling or gripping.
    One problem he had a home was the early morning we had to get up to come to work. A bit of a sleeping problem with 3 small sons in the house.
But he solved it...he put a cot in the basement by the furnace.
And sleep came.
    Dave, old buddy, I will miss our great gab sections and your companionship. Now you're reunited with a lot of our old friends. Say hello for us still left, and a special hello to our dear Fran.
                            -----Tom


        

anniversary

happy 50th anniversary Bob and Sandy Roeger and happy 75th birthday to Sandy--great friends and I wish them the best.

This is the photo that ran in the Beacon Journal with their announcement.

I got to know them through, of all things, a heart rehab class at City Hospital.

I had had a quad bypass, while Sandy had a double bypass after suffering a heart attack.

She was in my rehab class and we would chat now and then when neighbors on the machines.

She said she and husband Bob walked at Chapel Hill mall, so I decided to join them.

That's when I met Bob about 11 years ago.

And we have become very good friends.

When I don't show up for walking for a while, I'll get a call from Bob to make sure I'm OK.

Bob is going under the knife for a knew replacement, so I dug into my collection of movies and came up with a bunch to keep him entertained while he's on the "limping" list.

And  we hope he'll join me for that walk at the mall once day soon.

 

Meeting an old friend......here's lloyd bigelow, retired beacon journal printer. that's daughter Becky Hermann on his right and son-in-law Tim Herman on his left.

 You never know who you might run into....

 Volunteering as a trainman on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad in our national park, you never know who you'll run into among the thousands of passengers over the years.
    Enjoy talking with everybody and they come from all over. But it's especially great when you run into someone you know and work with.
    Such is the case the other day when  a lady told me that the ride was a 92rd birthday present for her dad, who was sitting beside her.
    We chatted for a few minutes while waiting for the train at the North side station and in the course of things, I mentioned I retired from the Akron Beacon Journal.
    The lady said: “So did my dad.”
    Turned out her day is retired printer Loyd Bigalow, looking fit as a fiddle at his age.
    We immediately began  talking a walk down memory lane..coming up with names of folks we'd work with and recalling a story or two.
    One he told me was about the late printer Bill Ferguson when Loyd and a bunch of printers spend vacation days in Florida at the motel owned by another former BJ  printer, Bill Gorrell.
    Fergie went for a swim and when he came out of the water he asked folks if they had seen his teeth.
    Nobody had and it turned out he had lost his lower plate in the ocean.
    Loyld retired in 1992  and lives in Cuyahoga Falls.
    With him on the birthday trip was son-in-law Tim Hermann and daughter Becky Herman.
    This isn't the first time I've run into a BJ link.
    A while back in talking with a couple, the lady said maybe you knew my dad...Robert Griffin.
    Bob was composing room foreman while I was at the BJ. The daughter was Joann who was aboard with her husband. I've lost my notes on the couple. I wrote them on a scrap of paper and lost it.
    I used to run into her sister, Jeannie,  at Wal-mart in Cuyahoga Falls.
     She recalled that on auto trips, Bob would recite the poem “Cremation of Sam Magee”.
    That led me to tell her a story about that. It was at a retiree luncheon.
    Bob was sitting at the head table. And at the end table sat Craig Wilson. It was around Christmas and Craig was going into his act and reciting “Night Before Christmas”.
    While Craig was talking,  Bob in a soft voice that could be heard by those sitting nearby, recited the cremation.... don't know if  Craig ever knew this.
    But of all the times he came up with poem, none of the kids had a recording of the performance.
    When I mentioned this at one of our luncheons, one of the printer said he had a cassette of Bob.
    I borrowed it and made copies and passed it on to Jeanne who has retired from her Wal-mart job.
    So running into people you would probably never know when you pass them on the street and getting reacquainted is a great bonus of this volunteer job.

THOMAS IS BACK IN THE VALLEY...

daughter featured in college commercial....

youngest daughter Amy is featured in a commercial  for her college which she attended and graduated after losing a job she'd had for 17 years. One of those mergers or tkeovers, or something and she was let go. So 20 years late, old dad and mom are helping send her to college which has really paid off. She loves it.

goodby stu and deb and good luck

A couple of good friends and former colleagues are bidding farewell to the North Coast and heading for warmer pastures. Stu Warner, former columnist (with a hat), sports, and assistant managing editor at the Akron Beacon Journal is going back to the newsroom in Phoenix, Ariz...after a four years absence from the profession. When he left the Beacon, he joined the paper up North as a writer coach and then left there and free-lanced. His wife, Debbie Van Tassel Warner, is going with him, of course. She's leaving a job as an assistant managing editor at the Plain Dealer. I worked with both of them for a lot of years. Both are good at what they do and a real credit to the profession of journalism. And I think that trait was lost on the honchos who came in from the corporation. More than once, I would find “Warner's Corner” column worth page one when I was news editor that day. And Deb, well she started on the National Desk,went on to become business editor when the business pages were all business. But she lost that job when some honcho decided the business editor should have somebody with an MBA in charge. At least that's the way I heard it. Debbie moved on, taking a job as business editor in Seattle. That worked out great for me. Dot and I took six weeks and saw the country...including Seattle. And Debbie showed us the sights in Seattle. She returned to the Beacon and when I retired she was Sunday news editor and I was her assistant. She was easy to work for and respected my decisions. After she left for the PD and I retired, we would have lunch occasionally to rehash old times and talk of family and friends. When their daughter was a youngster, my youngest baby-sat once in a while. Arizona's gain is our lost of two talent journalist and my good friends. Enjoy the sunshine and keep giving our profession a good name. Stu and Deb...you will be missed here.

thanks, charlene...appreciate the attention

A  repost from BJ Alums bio. and greatly appreciated.

Monday, January 14, 2013

'Thank You' words to Tom Moore

 This is a 'Thank You" to Tom Moore from Charlene Nevada:

This is to thank Tom Moore:

  

I haven't thought about this for a long time, but I was reminded recently when I complained about difficulties in jumping from a flip phone to a smart phone. Our daughter, Beth, chastised me, reminding me that when she grew  up, we were the first families among her friends to get computers and cell phones. (We thank our son, Jason, who insisted on a cell phone in 1994 – when he was just in high school but earning enough money cooking at A&W to foot his bill).
 
But for the computers. I don’t exactly remember when Art convinced me we needed to buy a Commadore 20. It couldn’t do much that impressed me. Then the Commadore 64 came along shortly after.

And Tom Moore, bless his heart, spent hours with a computer magazine inputing a word processing program – which he shared on floppy discs with all who wanted it. Somehow Dennis McEaneney got involved and got the home computers to talk to the Beacon computers. The next thing I knew I was able to send a story from my home in Tallmadge to the Beacon!!  Hooking the phone modem up, praying we didn't get a call and watching 0s and 1s spin through it. But it worked.

At the time, the Beacon had a limited number of tempermental remotes. But they were grabbed up by reviewers and sports guys. For a mother with young kids – our day care closed at 6 p.m. -  it was a miracle.  It was late 1983, I think. I could go home, finish writing my story, and send it. It would be a decade before I even heard the word e-mail.

But thanks to the pains-taking patience of Tom Moore, many reporters (and correspondents) joined the digital age.

~ Charlene Nevada