Who's Driving
Page 11
It was a friendship of many dimensions. Besides all things local and journalistic, we shared with the Lightwoods a love of music and gardening and other topics of homesteadery. Sam was a renaissance guy, interested in American history and many social concerns. His wry observations could travel from broccoli starts to street lights in colonial Philadelphia in two minutes flat. Those were some great cups of tea.
Sam died in the summer of 2012.
Then there was Jeano. Often, especially when there was an egregious typo or omission in the CRR, I’d pick up the phone to hear Jean Huddleston’s dry opening word: “Well.”
After letting me know the nature of the journalistic infraction du jour, Jean would tell me stories about growing up in her family’s Copper Center Lodge. She provided additional commentary about whatever I’d put in the paper—land changing hands, businesses, local events. She knew the histories of Valdez and Copper Basin towns in colorful detail and her English teacher criticisms were a boon to the paper. Occasionally, she shared some of her entertaining “Klondike Kate” columns with our readers. She became a dear friend over the several years before her death in 2010.
Pat Lynn, late of Valdez, was an old-time newsman with a pedigree in papers and television news reaching back to 1960s civil rights struggles in Florida and Mississippi. More recently he’d been a journalist for 25 years in Alaska where he’d connected the nation to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. He subsequently became Valdez’s rough and tumble muckraking conscience as editor of the Valdez Star.
Pat had turned over the Star to Lee Revis, its current editor, in 2004, just before I got the Copper Valley newspaper from Sam Lightwood. He had plenty to say to me about small town newspapers. My phone would ring, or I’d get a note on Pat’s characteristic stationary—the recycled backside of some old memo or paper bag. Some of it was about form and features—he hated the way I wrote timid little headlines and left empty white space all over the front page. And did we really need to repeat the same crossword puzzle that had just been published in the Anchorage Daily News?
Pat’s content criticisms made sense to me. If a piece of news was from a certain community, he wanted to see a dateline at the front of the article with that community named—Nelchina, or Copper Center, or Gakona or wherever—so that readers had a geographic reference from the beginning. If I forgot I was writing a news story and rambled on without giving the important details until halfway down the page, he’d make a copy with the who, the what, where, and when, all circled in pen with arrows to the top of the article. Then he’d mail it to me.
Pat hated it when I didn’t note that an article from an organization or agency was actually a press release from the entity’s point of view, so I learned not to omit that information. “People who are reading your paper need to know where this ‘news’ is coming from,” he’d say, “especially when it is not news but ‘propaganda.’” Pat didn’t mince words, although I’d sometimes open a letter from him to find that he had minced mine.
I was thrilled when he liked what I’d written, which happened too.
Pat liked to send me journalism resources, and he bought me a subscription to the Columbia Journalism Review. In the fall of 2010, close to what neither of us knew was going to be the end of his life, he called me on the phone and told me cryptically to go to page such and such of the CJR. He wanted me to cut out the page featuring a painting of a raised fist gripping a pen. He told me to send it to him in a big envelope, “not folded.”
The painting was an image of the black power fist of 1970s, with the addition of the pen. I did as I was told, wondering why he wanted the page when he also subscribed to the magazine. I understood why the image was important to him, though—he believed in the power of journalism to hold communities together and hold those in power accountable to citizens.
A few months later, the last time I visited him, he brought out the page I’d sent him, nicely matted and framed to put on my wall. On the back he had written, “this is an appropriate reminder for you.” On his wall was his own framed copy of the writer’s fist.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people helped with the production of this book, starting with those patient Copper River Record readers who waded through my columns the first time around, some of whom actually asked to see the opinionated things in print again. I want to thank Chantelle Pence, Kari Odden, and Kevin Duff for patiently combing through the manuscript files to identify obtuse language and questionable logic, not to mention wayward grammar and punctuation. In all cases, their suggestions made the book better and more fun. Any awkward moments that escaped their collective gaze are all mine. An additional thank you goes to Kari, a talented graphic artist, for the book cover.
Chantelle Pence, Don Rearden, and Matt and Judith Lorenz graciously offered “blurbs” that would recommend the book to readers. Thanks to Jeremy Pataky and the 49Writers group for encouraging good writing of all kinds around the state. Thanks to the local book club and Senior Scribblers members who keep our community torch lit for writing, publishing and reading. Thank you to Althea Hughes for inspiring all local writers. A thank you to the production experts at Book Baby for making the adventure almost easy.