My journalism journey, part I

A look at my life in newspapers and the journey I took through many places and newspapers.

My first newspaper job almost never happened. I had a job interview after regular business hours on a February evening at the Cardunal Free Press (and yes, that’s right: it stands for the communities of CARpentersville, DUNdee and ALgonquin in Illinois) in Carpentersville. Ken was the sports editor of the paper and this was my chance to do what I really wanted to do: be a sports writer.
But I was early, a good half hour early (a family trait, from my mom’s Delort side), and there was no one around. The place was locked. I pounded on the door several time and no one was coming to the door. Well, I’d wait 15 minutes at least. You must understand, this was 1979 and there were no cellphones. If I wanted to call, I’d have to go down to the Big Boy and call the paper.
So I went back to wait. Finally, a janitor answered the door. He said no one was there and he didn’t expect anyone to be there. I was devastated. I think I actually cried on the drive back to my brother’s home in Hanover Park where I was living. I thought I had been stood up.
When I got home, my brother Gary told me the sports editor had called to say he wondered where I was; he came at the appointed time, not long after I left. Well, we rescheduled the appointment for the next day and this time I was on time and so was he. And eventually, I got the job.
Back then, I was certainly a novelty. I certainly didn’t read sports stories written by women growing up, and there was only one woman reporting sports on TV in the Chicago area. But this was all I ever wanted to do.
My first assignment was to cover Elgin in a district boys’ basketball game (we had two newspapers that came out three times a week; The Elgin Herald and The Cardunal Free Press). The sports editor of the Elgin Herald, Ken Veloskey, told me the game was at Lake Park High School, which was in Roselle, Ill., and the game started at 7 p.m. Remember, no GPS, no Google, all I had was a map.
And I had bad information. There were two Lake Park campuses, it turned out. I went to the wrong one. When I got there, just minutes before the game was supposed to start, I didn’t see a lot of cars or crowds of people. So I asked someone where the gym was. “The game is at the West campus.” Oh … well, you can imagine what I said. So I got directions to this campus and hurried over there. I got there by halftime and got first-half stats from the scorekeeper, then settled in for the second half.
When the game was done, I had to deal with getting the coach to come out. The Elgin coach, Bill Chesbrough, was nice enough to come out of the locker room and conducted the interviews for all the reporters at one time. And “Ches” was just the first coach along the way who would come out for the interviews. I was fortunate in that regard.
Chesbrough also was nice enough to give me a quick recap of the first half, even though the other reporters snickered a bit when I asked. He said he understood going to the other campus.

It was the start of my career. The first of many basketball stories, of many interviews with coaches, players, of sitting in gyms. I’d be a sports writer from 1979 to 1996. And even after that, it seems I could never really leave sports behind.  As a copy editor, I also worked many years doing sports pages, because often I was the only one who had any sports knowledge. 

Reviews

[PoeGirl100]

I love the sense of immediacy in your writing. I feel as if I am right there with you. Your sense of frustration is catching. I felt frustrated for you!