The day after Bin Laden was killed, I was reminiscing about life when I was a newspaper designer. Since then, I’ve been reminiscing hard core about those days. The reason it’s on my mind is because a few former colleagues are planning a reunion, and I’m designing a digital commemorative newspaper for the event. So I’ve been reading others’ stories as they come in about the fun times they had at The Herald, and of course I’ve been thinking of my own memories.
A challenge I’m realizing I have is condensing 7 years of memories into a paragraph or two. One of the questions Ken (one of the organizers) asked of people is to recall a memorable or funny moment. And for me, there are so many! It really is a reminder of what a wonderful time I had working there.
My coworkers really were like family, a fact that I was told by Deborah would happen when I first started but a fact I possibly only learned after the time was gone. We socialized together. We traveled together. We fed each others’ dogs and gave each other ride and cried on each others’ shoulders. We didn’t always like each other, but what families do?
So, I was asked to tell a memorable moment. Here’s one that I have written so far, and depending on how much space is left in the “reunion newspaper”, I have 1,000,000 more I can share …
Sometime around 2002 or 2003, reporter Lauren Hoyt was given the very difficult task of spending a day on the water and writing about all of the things a person can do while boating along Lake Wylie. She had the boat rental for the entire day, so she invited Eileen Bradway and me to go along. I brought my 70-pound puppy along, and we had a blast. We traveled along the water and took photos and Lauren took notes of all the sights that she wanted to write about. Then we decided to anchor at the sandbar and get out and swim for a bit. Eileen and I jumped in the water, leaving Lauren and my dog on the boat. Lauren decided she wanted to throw my dog into the water. He wasn’t too keen on that idea, and he gave her some resistance, but she finally got him to go in. However, she hadn’t thought to put The Herald’s point-and-shoot camera away before she did this, and when she threw the dog in the water she threw the camera right along with it! She immediately started screaming and we started diving, but it was long gone. Upon returning to the newsroom, we all got teased for the immense amount of beer we must’ve consumed to allow that to happen – it probably actually makes us look worse to admit we pulled that one off completely sober! For years after that, I’d hear a reporter or two grumble about how there weren’t enough cameras for them to check out since Lauren had left one at the bottom of Lake Wylie.
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Of course, there were many, many more memories. Too many to count. I spent about an hour the other night pulling photos from my time there, and I’m sure they won’t all make it into the newspaper, so I’ll share them with you here. And if you worked there and you don’t know about the reunion, please let me know and I’ll make sure you get the details! Efforts have been made to reach everyone but as you can imagine, it’s not always easy to track people down.
And, if we worked together, know that it was a pleasure. Truly.
Comments
One response to “We loved each other. We annoyed each other. We held each other up. We made each other better.”
Oh man!! Great memory and what old photos! It wasn’t that long ago but we look so young. Sorry i missed that reunion!! This all brought a tear to my eye, especially that photo of Virginia.