2022

The year 2022 seemed to just flow by for the LaMont family. Looking back we did a lot of what we wanted to do: spend time with family, travel, play music, eat well, serve others and stay healthy.

And there were a few things we'd prefer to avoid: frequent doctor appointments and a continuation of Covid in our community. That's the price you pay for living. Pat celebrated her 80th birthday and I somehow made it to 82. We still think we are around 30, still good looking (Pat)but just a bit slower (me). The good news is that we did not have to give up anything, just made the minor adjustments that come with aging. Here's a look back at our year: Our routine usually includes dinner with the next-door-neighbors and close friends Gary and Jeri. They are theoretically retired, but both work a few days a week, and volunteer even more. They are people with good hearts, and who act on the needs they see around them. We met a decade ago, probably through volunteer work at Habitat for Humanity or church, and have been close ever since.

We host music jams at our house on Tuesday nights with George Haskell(banjo/guitar), John Randlett (guitar), Kylee Harrison(guitar) and Beth Gaisford(guitar/mandolin), and me(mandolin/guitar). We play and sing for fun, but once in a while play at church or the local farmer's market. I participate in a weekly poker game on Thursday afternoons, a tradition that started with my late friend Ken Grassmyer almost 20 years ago. I refer to the players as my "fellowship group" because most of us attended church together. As the years pass, the players change but the $20 buy-in remains the same. We are mostly veterans and retirees and enjoy the talk, laughing and winning. And all are good losers. We have a weekly dinner gathering with five friends (George and Patty Haskell, Joe and Teddi Jackson and John Randlett). Sometimes we eat out, particularly a local Mexican place with outdoor dining (safe during Covid), or at each other's homes. Pat does whatever needs to be done all year for her Parish Care group, often filling her week with helping other people. Parish Care is a team from our First Congregational Church that includes four or so women who take care of people. It may invove a ride to the doctor, delivering meals or just a friendly conversation on the phone. If people need something, they find a way to respond. Her weekly routine includes helping a handicapped neighbor who needs transportation or prescription pickups. One of the disadvantages of our otherwise wonderful town is we have no drug store, no viable public transportation, and limited medical care so that creates a lot of needs. A drug store run involves a round trip of about 20 miles. A trip to pick up someone at the hospital requires about 30 miles.

We try to spend Sundays at church at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, the longest-named church we have ever belonged to, with a small and older congregation that is at the heart of our community. It is the only progressive church in our community of Murphys, a gold rush town turned touristy, which tends toward no-church folks or conservative congregations. We have a few LBGTA+ members, and a lot of mainstream types. In a normal year, which 2022 was not, I would be singing in the choir. This year no choir, and we all wore masks for most of the year due to several friends who are immuno-compromised. That's the routine stuff. This year we got back to travel, starting in early Spring with a long trip in our 2002 VW Camper. We drove an inland route to Spokane, which took us by our old neighbors' home in Idaho. Alan and Ann Christie, and daughter, treated us like -- well, old friends. We camped along the way at a RV resort with a hot spring, breaking up the long journey through the beautiful farmlands of Oregon and Washington. Zack showed us the sites in Spokane, along with several very good places to eat. We met some of his friends and got a feel for his new home.

We headed homeward with no particular path in mind, except I wanted to actually see the historic Columbia River. We hit the river and turned west on the south shore, following the Lewis and Clark route, and camped along the river. We got to see the grand dams Woody Gurthrie wrote songs about ("Roll On Columbia") and scooted past Portland and ended up on the Pacific Ocean camped out along the beach at Cape Lookout. We were working our way South along the coast when our old sailing buddies Michael and Sylvia sent us a text inviting us to come by and see them in their new floating home at Scapoose, Oregon. They have always been, and remain, water people. The home sits atop floating redwood logs on a backwater of the Columbia. he teaches online and he writes and they have added a dog named Biscuit to the family. We went back to the coastal route to Cape Blanco. Those great Oregon parks were detailed in an earlier blog, but in the Spring without crowds it was a wonderful place to be. Summer brought trips to the mountains and the north coast with family and friends, getting as much use out of our VW van as we can.

Late summer brought more camping trips, with friends and family.

Fall brought a trip to Santa Cruz for a wonderful relaxed week watching the surf and surfers, cathing the slightly weird vibe at a beach happening where people played body harps, and eating very well. That whole section of beach towns, including Capitola, has become a favorite for us.

Christmas at home was low key, and we spent a day at Ruth and Brian's home just two miles away and celebrated with grandson Connor, pictured with Ruth in Christmas attire, and granddaughter Delaney and husband Cooper who came west from Boston where he is in medical school and she is working on her PHD in bioengineering. Our final plan for 2022 is a multi-generational New Years Eve celebration at our church, welcome the New Year at 9 p.m., and tuck in to get ready for a wonderful 2023. Have a great year.

Great editors remembered

Fifty years ago I was enjoying myself immensely. And a bit nervous. I had accepted a new job, and a completely different role, moving from being newspaper chain's writing bureau chief to an editor at a newspaper. After more than ten years of reporting and writing stories and loving it, I was taking the chance that being an editor -- stuck inside the building instead of pounding the streets -- would hold personal and professional satisfaction. It worked out well. I was asked to move from Tallahassee, Florida, where I was the bureau chief for the six Gannett newspapers in the state, to the Southwest Florida community of Fort Myers and it's daily newspaper the News-Press. My job description was initially vague -- I was a "senior editor" despite being 32 years old-- which corporate Gannett's way of saying I might end up in charge if I didn't fail.

My boss was the Managing Editor Bob Bentley, (pictured above with daughter Reid) in charge of the news operations and sent in by corporate to build the paper into something great. I had worked for Bob at TODAY, where he was in charge of the newspaper's coverage in the late 1960s. When I asked him about the Fort Myers publisher, a conservative holdover near 70 from the old ownership whose claim to fame was that he was commodore of the local yacht club, Bentley said "Ignore him. We can do what we need to do." And we did. Bentley had corporate's blessings and money to increase the staff, be more aggressive in coverage, and look for exceptional talents among young journalists coming out of colleges or wherever he could find them. He already had significant success at Florida's TODAY newspaper earlier, leading the staff through the Apollo moon landing years, and building that paper into a significant force in Florida.

He was 33, a star in Florida journalism. The first person Bob introduced me to was Joe Workman, then city editor, and the very best of a local staff that had struggled for several years. He was, a Bentley said, a great city editor who simply needed editors who did not get in his way and reporters willing to learn. He fit into the "Lou Grant" model: tough, smart, skilled, hard drinking and he knew where all the bodies were buried. He was a West Virginia native, who relished in pretending he was just a poor country boy. Years later he made a post-retirement fortune in Florida beach real estate, outsmarting lots of city slickers. Bentley and Workman each decided that sharing what they knew about newspapering, was the most important thing they could do. The dividends came to me. Joe taught me how to deal with all kinds of people, from irritating car dealers to crooked politicians. Bentley taught me how to spot and develop talent in young people, hiring only the best from good schools and smaller newspapers, selling them on the idea that living on the beach and working for a good newspaper in Florida was worth accepting the low wages we could offer. He also encouraged people to move outward and upoward when their chances came along. Bentley's particular skills were as an editor who controlled the design and stucture of the paper, skills he learned earlier at The Miami Herlad and TODAY. He was always open to good ideas, even if crazy, and knew how to put the right people in the right spot. When there were failures, and some happened, he knew how to cut his losses. He once convinced the advertising department to take a news photographer (who had zero news photo sense) into the ad staff where he was happy for years. He was also willing to tell people who struggled unsuccesfully that they would be happier elsewhere, and they usually were. He rarely fired anyone, usually just pointed them in a better diretion and they left.

He could spot talent. He always claimed that he spotted the talent of Randy Wayne White, pictured above with Joe and me at a reunion, while Randy was working climbing power poles -- a kid from the mid-west who could not find a job. Randy has since written more than 60 novels. Working at the News-Press was a crazy experience in many ways. Many of us worked very long hours, from 9 a.m. to midnight. Once the presses started rolling we would adjourn together to our favorite local bar Pate's for a few drinks and food. Once he warmed up Bentley would take over the piano and start leading the singing: "Delta Dawn" was a favorite. Workman would tell West Virginia stories, tall tales we never knew if trhey were true. It was true he had one glass eye, which he occasionally would put on the bar to provoke a reactio. Other nights he would bet some younger staffer he would eat a light bulb, which they could not believe until they witnessed it and paid Joe. Sometimes as many as a dozen people would close the bar at 2 a.m. and move elsewhere to drink till dawn. We all worked very hard. The paper got better every year, began winning awards and gaining circulation and profits. Despite the differences between the staff's generation and that of the local population -- even then mostly elderly retirees from the Mid-West -- we were honest and fearless, and it succeeded with readers. Old-time elected officials, who once had there way in the community, were being watched closely and their activities exposed, which they did not like. A county commission chairman scolded a News-Press reporter during a meeting because he thought her skirt was too short. Bentley called him up and scolded him for abusing his power. A note about the culture of the early 70s, and Fort Myers in particular. Most of the staff was under 30, single and socially -- what should I say -- unrestrained. With the college hires came some drugs, most of which I knew nothing about, but pot smoking was known to happen and a few of the younger staffers ended up living together. Bentley was divorced by that time and the local ladies responded to his movie star good looks. He delighted in living in a "singles apartment complex" where naked swim parties we known to happen. I was something of an exception-- though not the only one -- being happily married and with two young children at home. I simply could not keep up the pace of late-night drinking. Our mutual friend at corporate, who had been instrumental in both Bob and I coming to the News-Press, once suggested subtly that I was right for the job because I was more normal, less "colorful" than Bob.

Regardless of our differences, we shared a love for the work and particularly the people. As always happens, things changed over a few years. Bentley was promoted and moved to run the ElPaso paper in Texas, and a few staffers followed him there. (A local car dealer called me the day after Bob left to tell me his much-younger wife had left for Texas with Bob and when he caught up with them he was going to shoot Bob. The wife came home, and the guy never shot anyone.) Bob moved from Texas to Atlanta to California and back to his native South Carolina, happily married before cancer caught up with him. He lived his life with passion and was an honest journalist. Joe Workman stayed on at the News-Press, never quite fitting in with the corporate style of Gannett, but becoming a polular local columnist, living out his life in his beloved Fort Myers Beach with his beloved wife Grace, daughter of an Episcopal priest. We remained friends for 40 years. Before my time in Fort Myers came toward the end, I was promoted to be the editor, replacing Bob. The old publisher retired and a new corporate-appointed publisher came to town. He was a classic Gannett publisher from that era, driven by ambition, a desire to always look good to corporate, and in his case -- dishonest. We immediately came into conflict when he continually tried to influence the newsroom staff to be "more business friendly." I ended up leaving within about a year, taking a graceful exit to a Humanities Fellowship at Michigan with John Quinn's support, in 1977. (I left Gannett in 1980, moving to The Bee in California.) But the years in Fort Myers and the people there were among the best and the brightest I have ever worked with, and together we did good work. We sent reporter/photographer teams to big rock festivals in New Orleans, another team to Central America to cover an earthquake, people to the Olympics and always sent people to the nation political conventions. No one ever told us we could not do that, and readers loved it. I learned a lot of about how to be an editor from both Bentley and Workman, and have always felt they are among the very best journalists I have encountered in 45 working years. Newspapers have changed so much in the past 20 years, it is hard to imagine such transformative journalism happening again. But I remind myself that a few dedicated people brought together by common ideals, can make change for the better. Bob and Joe did that for me, and I am forever grateful.

Newspaper reporters have the best time

Working as a reporter, somewhere around 1970

                                                ===============

My nephew Ben  asked to hear stories about the good old days when I was a newspaper reporter. 

They were good. So here goes.

I was lucky enough to be present to witness and report on a lot of different stories from 1960 to the mid-1970s:  Civil Rights activities in the South, hurricanes, politics, science and particularly the manned space program including the first landing on the moon. My journalism years included a era when newspapers were healthy, and growing and trusted -- the last decades of the 20th Century.

My interest in journalism began while a student at the University of Alabama during my last two years of college in the early 1960s. I was a transfer student, got into a journalism major by accident and discovered a whole new world I came to love.

For something to do I volunteered at the Crimson-White, the campus newspaper. This was in the era of big-time football  and just before the University was forced to follow the law and integrate. Bear Bryant was the coach and Joe Namath was our quarterback. The school was all-white, dominated by fraternities I was not interested in. The paper was a hangout for independent folk, and I liked that.

The idea that as a "journalist" I could go almost anywhere, ask question of anyone, and then write about what  saw and heard, captured me quickly: A license to be nosy, in a polite way of course, and win approval. 

The big story in those years was the expose' by the paper of a campus political machine, based on the fraternity/sorority system, which ran everything on campus. Not much changed, but we felt we were on the side of truth and justice.  But we also covered courts, cops, and everyday people. 

We were not very sophisticated, and marginally effective, but we had a good time, even suggesting in an editorial that the school emphasised football too much. My writing was sincere, but amateurish. 

My first real professional break came as I was winding up my junior year, by then working as managing editor of the campus paper. A senior friend Pat Potter suggested I apply for an internship at the Atlanta newspapers, at that time the biggest and best in the South. (Pat went on to become a very successful romance novelist, but that's another story.) It was a great opportunity. I grabbed it.

That's me, upper left in the trench coat, covering people the FBI said were Communists, and counter protestors, protesting Kennedy's Cuban blockade

Working as a cub reporter that summer on the streets in Atlanta, then the acknowledged leader of the "new" South, was the most exciting thing I had ever done. It did not matter that I was immediately assigned the six weeks of writing obituaries (great training and discipline) or one of five interns. I learned  basics that stayed with me: ask the right questions; assume nothing; organize your notes; keep asking  and then write very fast for the early morning deadlines of an afternoon newspaper. 

I made $45 a week, $5 more than minimum wage, and considered myself lucky.  The low pay meant I had to be creative, boarding at the Sigma Chi fraternity house at Emory University even though I was a not a member or a student there. It was cheap and near the bus line.

Before the summer was over I got to cover police, fire, street protests, klan rallies, general assignment and even was sent out of town to follow a historical re-enactment through the hills of North Georgia on expense account! And the final week I was there was the week in which the Atlanta public school system integrated for the first time, and did so peacefully. Just being there to watch history being made forever cemented my commitment to newspaper work as the only job I would ever want. 

My senior year in school flew by. I was commissioned in the Infantry on graduation in 1962, but had a one year gap before reporting for active duty. 

The Atlanta Journal ("Covers Dixie Like the Dew") hired me back for that year as a staff reporter: at 21 years old and I had my dream job. I was assigned cover government and everything else  north of the city, and spent most of year learning how to cover county and state officials.  It was a year of change and turmoil in the South.

A train wreck was "good news" for a young reporter

I even got one choice assignment to cover a little piece of the governor's race, in which a local restaurant owner and well-know racist named Lester Maddox ran for office the first time, unsuccessfully.  I also covered sit-ins at local eating places, and the first-ever NAACP convention held in the South.

I also recall standing in the newsroom watching the Cuban missile crisis develop on TV, wondering if we would survive the next year. We did. And I was out on the street covering the protest marchers.

I had an apartment right on Peachtree Street, began to have a social life, and even bought a brand new car, a 62 VW bug.

Then the Army called and in May of 1963 I started two years of active duty at Fort Benning, Georgia, about 90 miles from Atlanta. I joined the Army to see the world, but never got out of Georgia. After training I was assigned to be editor of the base newspaper, not the most exciting journalism. 

It was easy duty, with golf breaks at mid-week, so much so I volunteered to become the official Radio/TV Officer for the base. I did daily radio broadcasts, and a weekly television show. I even worked part-time at night for the Columbus Enquirer covering cop stories, until I made enough money ($130 after several months) to buy a decent guitar. Then I quit.

The haircut was for the Army. The skinny tie for the newspaper.

Then a friendly colonel invited me to join an Infantry Company to see what the "real" Army was like. I did, and found that six-days-a-week and 18 hours a day were not that unusual when you are training troops and a platoon leader of an Infantry Company. Vietnam was just a word in the back pages of the New York Times but we worked hard. 

And I learned a lot.

The "real" Army was something I did not want, and reminded me I really loved working for daily newspapers. So I mailed letters to the top journalism/news operations in the country. I did not hear back from Walter Cronkite at CBS or the New York Times, but The Miami Herald called,  and the editor eventually hired me on the phone to come to Florida. (During my last week in 

 the Army, I also heard back from the Associated Press, but I turned down what looked like a job in the mid-west doing rewrites on hog futures on a night desk.)

The Herald had two rules in the newsroom operation at the time: the first, which I dodged, was that you could only be hired after Human Relations Department approved your scores on a battery of psychological tests. When I showed up, the HR people were unhappy but the editor was firm. I skipped the tests.

The second was that new reporters, even with experience like mine, were sent to the bureau system scattered over the state. I was assigned to the Cocoa Bureau, which I had to look up on a map. It was 50 miles east of Orlando, on the coast and next door to Cape Canaveral. The middle of nowhere in pre-Disney Florida. But is was near the beach.

I got an small apartment, traded my VW for a Triumph Spitfire sports car, and went to work as part of a team that was the northernmost outpost of the Herald, then the state's largest newspaper. I was expected to cover everything, take pictures of everything, and write multiple stories a day and get all to Miami by teletype (stories) or Greyhound bus (photos) by early evening. 

I even was required to take pictures of local, mostly teenaged, bathing beauties, for "filler" material. I was not good at it.

It was a great place to continue learning, including lessons not taught in journalism school. From one colleague I learned how to write features, with photos, quickly and with community interests. From another colleague, who had a serious drinking problem at the time, I learned how to move very fast to make sure the regional news page was filled, whether he showed up or not.

I accompanied an Air Force relief flight to post-hurricane Mississippi. But mostly, it was close to home stories. Cops. County government. Surfing contests.

Within a month I discovered I was also expected to report on major events at the then-building space center at Cape Canaveral.  The idea of being paid to go watch missiles and rockets launch into space, and write about it, was like dying and going to heaven.  My first big assignment was to cover the launch and flight of Gemini 4, in June 1966, the mission during which astronaut Ed White made America's first space walk. 

A beautiful young woman was working at the reception desk at the press center. I later married her. 

A typical Herald assignment.

Over the next year between military launches and manned space launches by NASA, I was at Cape Canaveral several days a week reporting. I found that by being at the Cape I had an advantage over the other press that only flew in for a few days, and began to try and convince the editors in Miami   that should be my full-time assignment. They were not interested.

Passes for the Gemini Program

I loved working for the Herald, a great newspaper, but was frustrated at the short-sightedness. Apollo was coming, and they did not understand how important that was. I was running back and forth between the build-up of the Kennedy Space Center, where millions of tax dollars were spent on a national goal of a moon landing, and making sure I checked the police reports at Rockledge City Hall.

Things were changing in other ways. First, I had met my wife Pat, who worked for NASA, and we were engaged. Second, the Army tried to call me back to active duty which I politely declined. Third, a newspaper company called Gannett bought the three biggest weeklies in the county adjacent to Cape Canaveral  and announced they were going to start a brand new daily newspaper to cover the area around the Cape. 

I was invited to interview for a job, and was offered a job by the corporation president, a guy named Al Neuharth, but he told me the space program was already assigned. It was the only assignment I was interested in.  I turned him down and went back to the Herald's routine.

The first week of the new publication, the TODAY newspaper, the new editor Jim Head called and offered me the job of Aerospace Writer for the paper and the parent company's Gannett News Service, at a considerably better salary than the Herald. I accepted and gave two weeks notice, with the agreement I could have a week off to get married in August
and two weeks in June for the Army. 

Pat talking with Editor Jim Head, one of the great Florida editors at TODAY

Almost exactly one year after joining the Herald I joined the staff of Today/Gannett. 

The new assignment was a dramatic change. I was in charge of my time, the stories I chose to do, and how I went about it. As a first step I began spending a lot more time at the space center, or the adjacent Air Force station, meeting more people, building contacts and covering more minor stories -- way to build contacts for the future. In the mid-60s NASA was building up, and the Defense Department was also developing missile programs of their own. There were launches from the Cape at a rate of one or more per week. 

Running to the TODAY office after a day at The Cape

The city editor, my nominal boss, suggested I should just report to the news editor who dealt with page one because that's where most of my stories were going. I just told that editor what I was doing, and he said go do it. A reporter's dream.

The Army got two more weeks of my time that summer, assigning me to the North Carolina National Guard as air liaison officer, a rather odd assignment, but I was finally done with the Army.

Gannett was pouring money into TODAY to make it a success. All of a sudden I had the ability to travel, including other major space centers around the country and aerospace contractors on the West Coast.  They gave me the opportunity not only to cover the events, but to get to know many of the people -- astronauts, flight controllers and others who made the moon landing possible.

The Gemini Program ended in Fall 1966, and all the effort was looking ahead to Apollo's goal of landing on the moon by 1970.

In between launches I covered other stories, like a hurricane on the Gulf Coast near where I grew up.

Along the levees in Louisiana after the hurricane

Somewhere near Biloxi after the storm

Then tragedy struck at the Cape in January 1967. The phone rang and a friend who worked for NASA said "You better get  to our office right now." 

The big story  was the launch pad fire that killed three astronauts, and put the entire program in limbo. NASA's reaction and investigation took up much of the next six months. These were people we knew, and it was emotionally wrenching. Some nights I would finish writing a story, and then weep in my car before driving home.

I spent the summer of 1967 reporting from the Washington Bureau, an assignment designed to help build contacts with senior NASA officials. (When I complained about being away from my new wife,  the company sent her to join me for the summer. We lived in the then-dilapidated  Willard Hotel.)

Most of the reporting that year was on the aftermath of the fatal fire, and the changes that had to me made. Every detail seemed newsworthy, and more and more of the public was paying attention.

At the NORAD facility in Colorado; That's Milt Sosin on left, a famous reporter from the Miami News, me in the middle, and George Alexander later of the L.A. Times on the right.

Another focus from the Washington assignment, was a series on the impact of space technology across the nation. (I reworked it into a free-lance story for the Washington Post later. That brought in extra income, and my TODAY bosses approved.)

By this time we were building relations with the other Gannett newspapers around the country, meaning that the stories I wrote were on the national wire service and began showing up in papers in New York. Illinois and elsewhere.

In addition to manned flights, I also covered the development of military missiles, including the submarine launched Poseidon. We watched from a Navy vessel offshore as the submarine launched, but it turned out the Russians were interested too and stationed what they called a "trawler" near us to watch and collect data. We had a close encounter of the Cold War kind when the trawler ignored warnings and came within 100 yards of us. Nothing bad happened, but it made an interesting day.

Once we understood they were not going to ram us, the close encounter with the Soviets was amusing.

The Apollo program got back on track and by December of 1968 Apollo 8 had circled the moon, and given the nation confidence the goal might be reached.  Our Christmas tree was never fully decorated that year because I had to back to work.

Earth as seen by the Apollo 8 crew; a photo that changed things

That was the last mission I covered just from Florida, as Mission Control had moved to Texas. That began a routine of trips to Houston with every flight, working very long days, and living in a motel for two weeks or so at a time.

By May of 1969 Apollo 10 was orbiting the moon in a dress rehearsal for the first landing.

By this time the launches were attracting world wide attention, and large crowds. The demand for information was such that I was getting calls from news agencies wanting to buy stories on a freelance basis. In the course of six months or so before the Apollo 11 launch to the moon landing, I had stories appear in the French Press Agency, Paris Match Magazine, the Washington Post, an encyclopedia and several smaller magazines. I was also doing radio shows from the launch pad, providing "expertise" to the Gannett owned local station.

Our lives at home were built around launch dates, space missions.  And a pregnant Pat. She quit her job at NASA and stayed at home.

In the press bleachers for Apollo 11

Apollo 11 was unlike any story anyone could remember. There were more than 4,000 accredited press people present for the launch. The permanent press corps at the Cape, of which I was a part, probably had no more than 20 people assigned.

By July 1969 I was spending about 80 hours a week at work, and writing three or more stories a day, all about Apollo. The entire staff of TODAY was involved, and beefed up with editors and writers on loan from Washington and New York. Endless planning sessions, trying to cover every possible angle and possibility, ate up our time.

NASA hosted a dinner one night prior to the launch which I was invited to attend. Present were the usual NASA bigwigs like von Braun and a few astronauts, but Walter Cronkite was across the table and a writer named John Dos Passos was in the seat to my left. The room was crammed with people I had only heard of. I was a 28 year old newspaper reporter. And I worked for the largest newspaper chain in the country.  Life was good.   I listened, and kept quiet.

Doing radio "color" at the Cape.

When the launch finally took place, I had been at my desk at the Kennedy Space Center launch site since before dawn. The press area was a giant bleacher, with built in desks, phones and whatever else we needed. The television networks had their own portable studios in trailers on site. The enormous press contingent overflowed onto the grass and all around the official site.

Apollo 11

When the launch finally came the morning of July 16, it was both powerful and awe-inspiring. More than one jaded journalist said a quiet prayer because we knew how very dangerous it was for the crew. The light fixtures in the roof of the stands rattled and swayed and the low pressure waves beat against our chests. Uncharacteristically, many of the "press corp" cheered.  Pat, pregnant and retired from NASA, watched from the causeway and munched on soda crackers.

At the press site I took notes on my portable Underwood typewriter, and provided some radio comments for broadcast colleagues.

I had already written what we called "'A' matter" for the wire service story, so I dictated a lead for the Gannett News Service that said men had headed for the moon.

Several of us waited until the crew was safely in orbit before heading to a post-launch press conference, and then back to the office on the mainland to write more detailed stories about the day. At my desk in the TODAY office I had wired a communications box so I could hear all the NASA commentary and as much of the astronaut conversations as they would let through.

Because of multiple deadlines I wrote several versions of the launch-day story that afternoon and night, before heading home to pack a bag for a flight to Mission Control in Houston the next morning. I was at my other work desk, at the Mission Control Center in Houston, by afternoon writing the next in a stream of stories from that week.

I worked from my Houston desk, usually wearing headphones to listen to the astronauts. Nearby were friends from Newhouse Newspapers and the French Press Agency. We would back each other up if someone was away for a few moments.

Buzz Aldrin on the moon

I had a copy of the official Flight Plan on my desk so I could see what the astronauts were supposed to be doing every moment. I would write an early version of stories for afternoon newspapers, handing copies to a Western Union runner who would take them to the nearby office inside the building and send the  stories by teletype to New York, the base for Gannett.

After the landing took place safely, my friend from the French Press Agency pulled out a bottle of wine, and toasted America. "You Americans," he said, "do not understand how important this is."

 Stories were constructed in parts, with background or filler material going out first, and then new "leads" as events progressed through the day. I kept a set of carbon copies on my desk to keep track of everything.  For the next eight days I wrote about three stories a day, and then I stayed until the astronauts came back to Houston for quarantine in their specially

constructed  Airstream quarantine trailer.

 

Safely onboard the aircraft carrier

The Apollo 11 mission required all the expertise the nation could provide, and very long days and nights for everyone involved.  There was a sense of accomplishment, and exhaustion.  And the public immediately lost interest.

Benefit of being a reporter: you get a ride in a moon car

For most of the next year I spent my time going back and forth from Cape Kennedy to Houston, covering the subsequent Apollo flights. The scariest was Apollo 13, when no one was really sure the astronauts would survive. The most forgettable was Apollo 17, the last mission in 1972. By then the public had lost interest and stories were mostly back page or inside.

During the time after Apollo 11 I expanded my reporting role to include more science writing, specifically the then-developing world of oceanography. I took a scuba course and talked my editor and friend Bob Bentley into letting me travel and do interesting stories. In between Apollo launches.

Diving to write stories in the Florida Keys and Bahamas was just part of the science writing  job.

That led to trips to the Virgin Islands to write about an underwater habitat, the Bahamas for a story on mini-submarines, and the Florida Keys for stories on the environment and other fun stuff.

In the Virgin Islands to dive on an underwater habitat.

I left the space coast, and the full-time assignment of covering the space program, and science, when Bentley asked me to move to Tallahassee, Florida, as the chief of bureau for Gannett News Service. We were to cover state government, with emphasis on items of high interest to the Florida newspapers (seven at that time).  My new boss was John Quinn, then head of GNS, and one of the best newsmen in America. In a famous encounter, in answer to a question from John, then President Richard Nixon announced "I am not a crook." Events proved he was.

I continued to write news stories on a daily basis, usually about the workings of state government and what the elected representatives were up to. It was a fun assignment, with competition always present and some Florida scoundrel in public office usually available to make a good story.

I was lucky enough to cover three major events in that time period:  the 1972 presidential nominating conventions in Miami;  the return of the Prisons of War from Vietnam, and Southern politics, including the early skirmishes between Jimmy Carter and George Wallace.

The stuff of covering the legislature.

And it was in Tallahassee that I met a political leader who proved to be honest, and principled, in all the years he served. Reuben Askew, whose campaign for governor I covered around the state, still stands as a public servant who deserved the admiration he gained, and who should have been taken more seriously.

I did a lampoon of the press secretary "polishing" his image, but the governor won the night by singing "An Okie from Muscogee."

I will always be grateful that I happened to be in the right place at the right time as a journalist. I met some great people, like Martin Luther King Senior, or "Daddy King" as he was known, and people working inside the space program whose names never made the news. 

I met and covered some small-minded jerks, like George Wallace  and the Klan leaders on Stone Mountain in Georgia and a few of the Panhandle legislators who made money off public office.

That's President Ford on the right, and me peeking out in the center, at the White House

I met some Presidents, great or maybe not, like Johnson,  Ford and Carter, all people who sacrificed for the public.

I met some arrogant, but smart, people like Wernher von Braun and Al Neuharth. 

And I met many brave and dedicated people like the astronauts that risked their lives  for the sake of exploration and adventure and science and their country, and the people that supported them.

My career as a reporter pretty much ended  in 1973, about a decade after it began, and Al Neuharth gets the credit or blame. After I had been bureau chief for a couple of years, I  attended a gathering of news executives in Pensacola. It was a routine gathering editors and publishers and corporate executives, with too much to eat and drink, and little real work. 

As I was heading for the airport to leave, I ran into Al in the lobby that morning. We chatted about nothing special, and then he casually asked me if I ever considered being the editor of a newspaper. Our mutual friend Bob Bentley was in the process of remaking the Fort Myers News-Press, and could use some help.  I was not overly charmed with the idea, and quickly forgot the conversation.  A few days later Bob Bentley called and asked me to come be his assistant in Fort Myers, with a vague job description and more money.

Once I made that move, I was an editor, a title I held for the next 25 years in three states. 

It took a while to adjust to the idea of working with other writers, and photographers, and page designers. But I liked it. I particularly enjoyed the fact that in my editor years, which covered the next 3 decades  or so, I was able to look for and recruit great journalists, often in the first years of their careers,  people who would later go on to do truly great work. I  knew great writers. Great page designers and photographers. Great editors.  The talent within the big room of journalism at newspapers, comes in many forms. What they have in common is curiosity, honesty and talent.

I love the fact that so many people I hired when they were young are doing well, some as novelists, some as magazine writers and some as newspaper editors. Many moved into other fields with great success.

 I love the idea that while I started at two of the largest papers in the country, it was at mid-sized papers that I had a chance to help develop  such great young talents.

And I love the fact that when, after more than a dozen years working for a fast-growing corporation Gannett that I got a chance to be an editor for a family run company -- McClatchy -- led by people of principle and integrity.

Nothing lasts forever, or course, and things are always changing. Journalism is always changing.

But nothing beat the fun of being a reporter, out there on the streets, gathering the news and putting it down on paper, and seeing it on the front page the next morning. I am jealous of those who still do that. The tools may be different -- iPhones and computers instead of a notebook and pencil and access to a pay phone -- but it remains one of the great professions in the world.