MOUNT VERNON — The news of the sale of the Mount Vernon News last week was a stunner, bringing to an end local ownership of a franchise that had run in its current incarnation for over 80 years. But the newspaper’s true history continued further back, in one form or another, to before the Civil War.
At a later point, we’ll do a proper history of the newspaper, but this week, I just wanted to take a moment to share my own history with the News.
In 2007, I was looking for work and heard about the unlikely prospect of a job in Mount Vernon that called for someone who could write that could cover both entertainment and agriculture. I am nothing if not well-prepared for certain odd assignments, and I was born for that one.
On the one hand, I grew up on a farm, and was professionally affiliated with Malabar Farm State Park. On the other hand, I was a writer involved in theater.
I had made the jump into being a writer in 2005, when I left a miserable purchasing job in the corporate world. The company I worked for had been purchased by an international corporation who shut down our operation and moved the business elsewhere. Several of the companies I had worked with asked if I was interested in continuing in the packaging business, but I wanted to do what I felt I was meant to: write.
While I was living off a small severance package, I worked as a tour guide at Malabar Farm, but that job was only seasonal. The job at the News appeared in early 2007 when I was out of work and out of money.
I drove from Mansfield down to Mount Vernon and interviewed with editor Cheryl Splain. As I left, I flipped on the radio and caught the opening of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” one of my favorite, most meaningful pieces of music. I knew that meant I got the job.
I hit the ground running from assignment to assignment, covering local plays, concerts, agricultural issues, the county fair, and more. In the slightly more than three years I worked at the News, I’m pretty sure I hit 95 percent of all the roads in Knox County, and it helped me get to know this place better than I knew my home county.
I fell in love with the variety of Knox County, from rolling farmlands in the west to craggy hills in the east, the whole place rich with life and history.
I did make the mistake of proving that I was competent, which meant that my beat was expanded to include county government. Believe me, there are few things more challenging than staying awake during a county commissioners’ meeting where they are chewing over regulatory minutiae. But I did it, and even managed to make sense of the legal process of agricultural easements, which seemed designed to cause mental meltdowns.
Being on the job in the newsroom was sometimes exciting, when news was breaking. It could also be the lonely place where reporters dragged in late in the day to exhaustedly type up stories before going home for a few precious hours of sleep. I remember one night when reporter Dylan McCament and I discussed how neither of us had more than a dollar in our pockets, though we were both hungry. One of the sports stringers showed up with a $5 pizza from Little Caesars which he proceded to eat all by himself, provoking Dylan to say, “Oh, sure, lord it over us with your fancy $5 pizza.”
The fact is, one does journalism because of a love of reporting and writing. You sure don’t do it to get rich.
Lifestyles reporter Kimberly Orsborn was the one who had originally told me about the job when I met her at Malabar Farm. She is also the one who in some ways is responsible for me doing this column today, because she recognized — long before I did — that historical stories found their way to me so that I could share their story. (Cheryl Splain is the one who is directly responsible for History Knox, though, as she reached out to me, suggesting this column in June of 2018. Many thanks!)
Kimberly told me that I had a duty to tell the stories of long-gone people, because few others had the knack. She also officially declared herself my number one fan, and endlessly encouraged my writing projects. She also taught me a lot about finding the grace the universe has given you, and flowing with it.
Kim, alas, is gone now. But she would not forgive me if I didn’t include one moment of mischief we got up to in honor of a favorite writer. One Aug. 22 — I don’t recall whether it was 2008 or 2009 — Kim decided that as writers, we should celebrate the birthday of the famous Roaring Twenties with Dorothy Parker.
To that end, she snuck a flask of gin into the newsroom, and while editors Cheryl Splain and Fred Main were in back for the afternoon meeting with the publishers, we took a quick look to make sure the coast was clear. We invited proofreader Courtney Lower to join us, and the three of us used our coffee cups for a shot of gin apiece in honor of Dorothy Parker.
Of course, if we had gotten caught, we all could have been fired, but it was an important bit of bonding for us, and it was well-timed so that no one saw us.
Naturally, I checked with Courtney to make sure she didn’t object to having the true story of our antics told publicly for the first time, and she said she’d be honored to have it told, and that it was one of her favorite memories from those days.
“I’ve never had another drink of gin after that day,” Courtney added. “I burped pine trees for days after that.”
Speaking of coffee cups, mine was notorious in the newsroom for the patina of coffee bean oil built up inside of it. I washed it every year or so, as needed. It was also soon determined in the newsroom that I should not be allowed to make the coffee, as I had a slight tendency to make it a tad stronger and thicker than anyone else.
“It’s fine,” I’d say, then offer a pair of scissors. “Go cut yourself off a cup and see.”
Incidentally, those rare weeks when we were all flush with cash, we’d upgrade to the Kroger store brand. Most of the time, we were so poor, we used the generic off-brand, which I suspect was made with the twigs of the coffee plant instead of the beans. But coffee — lots of it, black — fueled the newsroom, so it kept us going.
These were also the glory days when Virgil Shipley was running non-stop as the News photographer, backed up by videographer George Breithaupt. I’ll never forget the day when Virgil had a cold but was working through it. At one point, Virgil was in the old darkroom and emitted a shrieking roar of a cough that sounded like a gate being wrenched off a wrought-iron fence. It was so loud, everyone in the newsroom turned and looked at each other in the silence that followed.
Suddenly, from the back of the newsroom came the tremulous voice of George Breithaupt: “Am I the Mount Vernon News photographer now?”
But Virgil was fine, and continued on until his retirement, just a year or so ago, at the age of 137.
I ended up sharing a house with George in Gambier. One day after work when I was moving in, I warned George that I’d be arriving late that night with a friend helping me move my prized heavyweight possession – a piano. George said, no problem, he’d probably sleep right through it.
The moving was laborious, and we didn’t get the piano to Gambier until almost midnight that night. My friend Dan Feiertag and I were moving the piano, and it was a heavy beast for just two fat guys to schlepp about. There was much thumping and banging and cussing, but we finally got it in there. I figured I’d just have to apologize to George the following day for all the noise.
George and I got up and went to work at different times that next day, because of our coverage schedules, so I didn’t see him until we crossed paths at work.
“I see you got the piano in,” George said. “Or I guess I should say I didn’t see it. But I sure found it with my toe at 3 a.m. when I went through the living room to the bathroom.”
He had slept right through the whole moving fracas. Fair’s fair though, I slept through his cuss storm after he ran into the piano in the dark.
George was also the one who blew up a clip-art purple heart and presented it to me. It was the famous “No-Pants Purple Heart” medal, bestowed after I endured an awkward telephone interview early one morning with a certain county official who had been up late the following night, tending to an emergency.
No fewer than four times during our interview, the official informed me that he didn’t have any pants on because he had been asleep, but that he was going to put his pants on and head to the office to write an official press release about the emergency, instead of answering my questions. I omitted the lack of pants from the news article, but the newsroom sure got an earful that day.
City and business reporter Dylan McCament and I had desks back-to-back in the newsroom, which ended up being Nerdvana, as we were both former English majors who loved talking about writing.
Once he upped the ante by quoting the opening of the ancient English epic “Beowulf” in the original Old English: “Hwæt we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum, þrym gefrunon” (“So, the Spear-Danes in days gone and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.”)
Without pause, I fired back the opening of Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” in the original Middle English: “Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote, the droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote.” (“When that April with his showers soaks, the drought of March is pierced to the root.”) Like I said, Nerdvana.
We particularly loved to challenge each other to write the perfect lede, which is the opening line of a news story. Write it well, the reader is hooked. Write it flat, they move on to something else.
That started a habit of shop talk that Dylan and I continue to this day.
I remember the countless times I — and others — brought in photos for stories only to have photo editor Terry Gardner laconically drawl, “Is this all you got?” before sighing and using the picture.
I think I pleased Terry once: I went out to accompany the county commissioners as they looked at a bridge on the bike trail that needed repairs. Not normally an exciting photo op, right?
But as the commissioners talked with the engineer, I wandered under the bridge and caught a photo of commissioner Alan Stockberger from below, through a hole in the bridge. It was a great photo, not that it pleased Alan. That hole sure got fixed quick, though.
I also enjoyed interacting with commissioner Bob Wise, who was far too outspoken and unfiltered to be a politician, often getting in trouble for his straight-shooting remarks. When he lost his re-election bid in 2009, I could see he was crushed when he received the news at the board of elections. I figured, what the heck, it was a moment for setting aside my professional demeanor. I walked over to him, shook his hand, and whispered to him, “Don’t take it too hard. You’re just a little too honest for this line of work.”
I think we became firm friends in that moment, whatever our personal political differences may be.
I was also there in the county building for the sad occasion when Tom McLarnan retired as commissioner because of advancing dementia. He had started having serious trouble keeping on course in meetings and finally realized it was time to step down.
He attempted to give a farewell speech to the assembled crowd at his retirement party at the Knox County service building, but got confused and had to be led away by his wife. I left that out of my article covering the event, because sometimes discretion is the only way to save a person’s dignity. Tom later passed away.
I once had a woman call the newspaper and complain because I hadn’t condemned people selling truckloads of old horses at the animal auction in Sugar Creek in an article I wrote. I tried to explain to her that I hadn’t been writing an opinion piece. In a news article, it was my job to present the facts and the reader’s job to decide what they think about it. It isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the reporter’s job to pass judgment.
I think this country would be a whole lot better off if we went back to factual reporting and outlawed opinionizing, outside of columns like this. This is the place for opinions, not in the news. But that woman was so high up on her high horse, she didn’t even listen. That same article later won an Associated Press award.
The most memorable photo I ever saw in the Mount Vernon News remains the one Virgil Shipley got of a vendor at the Dan Emmett Festival picking up his booth after a sudden summer storm had knocked it down.
Virgil had rather indelicately taken the picture from directly behind the bent-over vendor. Terry wasn’t thrilled with that photo, either, but it was the only one Virgil had taken, so it was used. Editor Fred Main, rushing to get the paper down for the day, headlined Virgil’s article (with the photo of that vendor’s rear-end pointed right at the camera) “Wind damages festival.”
When I pointed out the unintentional fart joke after the paper was printed, Fred just smacked his forehead and turned beet red before coming down with the giggles.
So many memories. Education reporter Pam Schehl, sports reporters Joe Huddleston, Geoff Cowles, and Zach Tuggle, law reporter and general madman Anton Hepler, video department editor Samantha Scoles, reporters Kenesha Beheler, Eric Burdette, Nathan Washatka, and so many more were all part of the memories.
I’m proud of the full-page article I wrote about the history of Mazza’s Restaurant when the original downtown location closed. I’m proud that the renowned novelist P. F. Kluge liked the profile I wrote of him so much that he bought multiple copies of the paper to send to friends and associates. I’m proud of the Associated Press awards I won.
I’m glad that I still remain friends today with many of the people I met and interviewed in those days. I miss my co-workers who are already gone, in addition to Kimberly, including proofreader Linda Frazee, and reporter Melissa Raines. Melissa and I planned at one point to do an investigative article about rural puppy mills by posing as a couple looking to purchase dogs. It would have been great, but we never quite got around to it, and now she’s gone.
I left the newspaper in 2010 to pursue new opportunities, but I have never regretted the intense, in-depth way I got to know Mount Vernon and Knox County in those days, and, of course, it led to the History Knox column I write today (with, incidentally, my former News co-workers Cheryl Splain and George Breithaupt as current co-workers at Knox Pages).
The world keeps changing, but there will always be a need for local perspectives. Long live local news!
