My mom and Aunt Bernice weren't the only people visiting me when I got the call from Grand Rapids. My college friends Gloria Walach and Mike Vallone had stopped in Macon, Georgia, along with their two children, Jamie and Maggie, during a spring vacation trip.

I was partly responsible for bringing Mike and Gloria together. We all knew each other during college, but Mike was dating my best friend, Roxane Ziomek, for most of our college years. Roxane finally decided she wanted to date someone else and broke it off with Mike, although he wasn't happy with that. Eventually, they parted as friends and we all got along, although I was the one who stayed closest with Mike and Gloria over the years.

When I was leaving for Montana, Roxane threw a farewell party for me at her place and invited most of our college friends, including Mike and Gloria. They hadn't seen each other for a few years, but after that party, they started communicating. Gloria was going to law school and eventually moved to Washington, D.C., for her first job.

They continued a long-distance relationship, which grew more serious until finally they decided to get married in the summer of 1988. When Gloria told me they were getting married, she said, "You got us together. Your party got us dating."

They had their son, Jamie, the old-fashioned way, but Gloria couldn't have any more children. So they adopted Maggie from China, a quest that took nearly two years. "Maggie" was a combination of their names: M (Mike) and G (Gloria). She was nearly 3 years old when she came to their home in Westchester, Illinois.

So when I got the call from the Grand Rapids Press' news editor Andy Angelo about a job, Mike and Gloria were the first to know. I didn't tell my mom until I had more facts. Both were excited for me. It would mean I'd be closer to my family and friends for the first time in nearly 15 years. And it would mean a big jump in income. I would finally have a decent amount of money coming in.

Now, I did not get into journalism to make a lot of money. Nobody really does. When I was in my high school journalism class and Sister Cathy Campbell had us tell about what we wanted to do with our journalism skills, I said, "I want to be a sports writer for the Chicago Sun-Times and cover the Chicago White Sox." Big dreams for a shy young woman, who had no self-esteem. I had problems talking to our high school basketball players at Guerin High School in River Grove, Illinois. How would I ever talk to a Major League Baseball player?

Sister Cathy looked at me, then the class and said, "That's great, Eileen. But don't go into newspapers. You'll never make any money there."

Truer words were never spoken. I didn't care. I was it in for the thrills. Writing and reporting gave me an incredible high, better than any drink could ever do. And when I moved onto the desk, I got the same feeling from tracking down correct information to fix an error or writing a killer headline. Money was nice, but I loved what I did. That was more important.

But here was Angelo offering me real money, something that could really support me. And here was a major metro newspaper, the second largest daily in Michigan, considering me for a job. I must be worthy, although I never saw myself as such.

We made arrangements for the interview, getting me up to Grand Rapids for a three-day trip in the middle of the week. I had Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, so I was leaving on Tuesday, flying out of Atlanta to Detroit, then taking a puddle jumper to Grand Rapids. I'd spend all of Wednesday interviewing and taking a physical, then fly back Thursday. The idea was to get back Thursday night so I could work.

The interview went very well. Andy got me from the airport and took me to a bed and breakfast in the historic district of Grand Rapids. It was lovely; I had the bedroom and a sitting room that overlooked the garden.

We went to dinner that evening and then he took me around the next day for my physical and drug test (this was pretty serious if I was going through the drug test already). I had dinner that evening with two copy desk staffers, Sue Thoms and Jerry Seim. I felt very comfortable with both, and Sue would become a good friend later. Jerry, I later would learn, played the drums in a local rock band called the Honeytones, which was led by the religion editor Charley Honey and included music critic John Sinkevics. The Press' staff was talented in so many different ways.

I met the paper's executive editor, Mike Lloyd, while there. He asked me how I learned about the job. I told him I found it on Editor & Publisher's online site. I said the Internet was the way to go, everything was going to be online. "You're in print media, how can you say that?" he said. (Mike loved to provoke answers from prospective employees.)

I remember that conversation, thinking back. How strange that few in the media prepared for the explosion of news online that has devastated print media (and killed my career in the process). I thought so many weren't looking ahead to how the Internet could help print at that time. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 vision, I guess.

On Thursday morning, I got back to the airport for my trip home. It was raining in Grand Rapids, but we got off the ground and back to Detroit with no problem. But the gate was changed for the flight to Atlanta, then the plane was changed because of mechanical issues, delaying the flight. Then the flight was further delayed because of storms in Atlanta.

So the flight that was supposed to get in at 2 p.m. didn't get in until after 7 p.m. And I was supposed to get an airport taxi back to Macon (I had reservations) but the one I reserved left at 6 p.m. and I was sunk. The other group providing this service had one more run back to Macon, and I pleaded with the driver to give me a ride home. He agreed and even drove me back to where I had parked my car.

It was nearly 9 p.m. when I got home. I already called my boss and told her I would be late twice, then told her I wouldn't get in at all that night. She knew I was interviewing for a job so she just found a substitute that night and I took a vacation day. I was tired and hungry when I got home. Kittle and Cinnamon, I could see, were lonely and had missed me.

A week, later, I heard back from Andy, who offered me the job and said he would get someone in touch with me to make arrangements for moving services.

By the end of May, I would be out of Georgia and back to the Midwest.

I know it's been years, but I thought I would check-in on you all. The trouble is I can't figure out how to get anywhere on this site. Things have sure changed in the last 4 years. I got here to post by just hitting buttons to see what they do. Mag

I am thankful for my parents, my friends. I am thankful for my BF and his family. I am thankful for my WLS Becuase it made me get really serious about my health. 

I am thankful to find good people I can share things with. 

I am thankful to be a member of this group.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving... Enjoy your family and friends.  Be thankful for what you have and what you can give to others.  

Have a happy turkey day. !

Hala

After a rough departure from Aberdeen, I rested overnight in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and headed out Sunday with plans to stop in Franklin Park, Illinois, to stay with my mom overnight. She was happy to see me; not so happy to see the cats. But I let them out in the room with the litter box, put ou****er and food for them and closed the door. They were just happy to be out of the car for the night.

The next morning, I got up for breakfast and didn't plan to leave until after rush hour. I watched "Good Morning America" and learned one of my favorite singers, John Denver, had died in a plane crash the previous day. I remembered I had seen Denver perform in Billings, Montana, one year. I was sick with diarrhea that day as I drove and had to make several stops, but thanks to Imodium, I was able to enjoy the concert. And now there were three people I had seen in concert who were dead: Harry Chapin, Steve Goodman and John Denver.

So I got the cats back in their carriers, my suitcase back in the car and after 9 a.m. we were back on the road to Macon, Georgia. It was an overcast day and already starting to drizzle when I left mom's home (my childhood home). The Triple A Trip-Tiks (which is how you got places before GPS) sent me down U.S. 41. Funny, I would be going this way later in my career.

I would have loved to stop and see some places along the way: George Rogers Clark National Historical Park in Vincennes, Indiana, for example. But it was pouring rain as I drove through these areas, and I could hardly see the road at times. I stopped along the way for lunch when it got too bad. Eventually, I turned off around Nashville for the night because my stuff wouldn't get to Macon until a couple of days, so I might as well take my time.

I dragged the cats up to the second floor in this one Days Inn outside Nashville; at least someone helped me and got me a cart to haul up the suitcase, cats, litter box, etc. The next day, I had to do it all over again and bring them down to the car. It would be nice when I could stay in one place.

 As I neared Nashville, I ran into traffic. Turns out there was an accident. That wound up getting me in late to Macon and I missed getting into my apartment that day - we arrived after 5 p.m. and the office was closed, so I had to stay at a motel. There was a LaQuinta Inn across the road that accepted pets, so we stayed there and one of the front desk people got me a cart and helped me get my luggage to the room (at least they had an elevator). They also had free popcorn and a breakfast buffet in the morning. It has been several years and I don't know if the place is still as nice, but I would recommend that LaQuinta Inn.

The next day, after chowing down at the breakfast buffet, I packed up and headed over to my new home. The apartment complex wasn't too far away. I got there not long after it opened, brought the kitties inside with me after I told the leasing clerk about them in the car and we dispatched with signing the lease. Then we went over to the apartment.

Later that day, I would learn my stuff wouldn't be delivered until the next day. So I'd spend one day sleeping on the floor. I told my new boss, Alan Gibson, about that, and he said the paper could put me up at the hotel where I stayed when I interviewed. But then the cats would be alone. So I spent the night in the apartment on the floor listening to music and reading with the cats.

Alan did take me out to lunch with some of my new colleagues to welcome me to the area. I was enjoying some Southern hospitality already.

My first couple of weeks at work was spent in training. I already knew how to use QuarkXpress, which was the Telegraph's pagination program. But I had to learn their database and writing program, so I could edit and transfer the stories over to Quark. We wouldn't get a pagination/database system for another year. It would be called DTI/Pagespeed.

I got along well with my new coworkers. I sat between two women, Ella and Jackie, who were the black. Ella was a very interesting woman. She contracted polio as a very young child and was in the hospital as an infant. Of course, it was the black hospital because Georgia was segregated at the time. While in the hospital, a deadly tornado ripped through the area. Her parents were killed. She was brought up by her grandmother. Ella was picked as the March of Dimes child one year and some in Georgia, of course, weren't happy.

Jackie also was an interesting person. She had been a paste-up person but when the paper started paginating, she was going to be out of a job. She learned to paginate. At times, the wire editor who gave her work would stand there and spell things out for her instead of just giving her the page as he did for me as if she couldn't do the job. But Jackie knew her stuff.

Then there was John, who liked to talk like a pirate. "Let's edit like a pirate," he'd say. Or, "Let's edit like Elvis." He'd keep us laughing.

Jenny Gordon did obits as well as some other pages. I got to be good friends with her, and she helped out with cat sitting when I went home to Chicago.

One night, after we had gotten PageSpeed and were working on the night's work, the system suddenly went down at about 7 p.m. We were a morning paper, so this wasn't good. Plus, we had a 10 p.m. edition to put out. Well, it turned out the DTI people in Utah thought it was a good time to update the system. Because it was in December, some of us went out to look at Christmas decorations. The system went back up at about 9:30 p.m., and we hustled to get out the first edition.

And of course, now I had time to get to know my new cousin, Doug Briesch. I learned Doug used a wheelchair because of a childhood illness. We went to movies and dinner together. We both liked science fiction movies (Star Wars and Star Trek) and sports, and he liked my cats. Any guy who likes cats is a winner. And we got to Turner Field for a baseball game. Another thing about that game: Andruw Jones of the Braves was pulled from the game when he didn't hustle.

I moved into a former editor's house after a year at the apartment. She was moving to a new job and didn't want to sell the house yet. The house was great. It had two big bedrooms, a Jacuzzi and walk-in shower, a screened-in porch, a fireplace and built-in bookcase and built-in cabinets in the dining room. I loved the house. So did the cats. They'd beg to go on the porch.

Not long after I got to Macon, Kittle was diagnosed with diabetes. It took awhile, but I got his blood sugar near normal as I learned to give him insulin shots and learned to check his blood sugar. The first veterinarian I went to didn't want me to test his blood sugar myself; she said I could damage his ears (I took the blood from his ear tip). The second vet was OK with my testing; he said it was probably better if I did it. Kittle got used to it and would even purr when I did it. His blood sugar went down from 600-plus to 150. He even caught a gecko (or some kind of lizard) crawling around the living room bookcases. I always said it was a newt (hey, we were in Georgia ... you know, Newt Gingrich).

I was in Georgia a year and a half and I noticed most of the longtime writers and editors at the Telegraph were leaving. That didn't bode well for the paper. Plus, my landlady, Audrey Post, who owned the house, now wanted to sell the house to Alan. And he wanted to move in right away. So I thought if I had to move, maybe I should get a new job. So I started looking.

My mom and Aunt Bernice were down visiting me around my birthday in April, and I was getting phone calls from papers. I had several phone interviews. I don't ever remember being so wanted in my career. One evening, after driving them back to their hotel, I got a call from Andy Angelo from the Grand Rapids Press. Of all the calls I had, this one was the best.

 I might be on the move again.

Somewhere along the path, I got burned out writing sports. I even thought of changing careers. I was getting testy with my editor, Ron Feickert, had run-ins with readers at the grocery story over stories. I was tired of covering games, sitting in bleachers, dealing with parents, coaches, athletes.

Looking back on it, I was probably depressed. I kept applying for jobs and wasn't getting anything. I really wanted to get into feature writing. I did a lot of sports features, so I would use those as my clips, and really, most of my game stories were more like features. But when I applied, I wasn't taken seriously as a feature writer.

So I applied as a sports writer, too. And even then, I wasn't getting any bites. I had been in Aberdeen, South Dakota, for five years and I was desperate to move on. But with 15 years of experience, I couldn't get any takers. I was too old to get a job as a sports writer; larger newspapers wanted a young writer so they could pay him/her less. I didn't want the smaller papers, of course. I wanted to move up.

So sometime in the summer of 1996, my boss, Cindy Eikamp, suggested I take a vacant copy editor job on the staff. I already did desk work twice a week. But on the news desk, I would learn to paginate. I would do the front page and the back of the A section in QuarkXpress. It would be a totally new experience for me. Did I want to give it a try?

Wow! What a decision to make! Did I want to try it? I didn't have to think long on that one. I would be giving up writing, which I loved. But it would be a step on a new path, a new direction.

Yes. I told her yes, right away. In August, I began my training as a news copy editor.

I started doing mundane things such as the people column, where I learned we ran far too many items on Michael Jackson. I worked my way up to the state pages and state briefs, the local page, the obituaries, and then learned QuarkXpress and the back of the A section. And finally A1.

Quark was fun to use, it was so intuitive. I found it was an easy program. We used it on a Mac, but we had to read the stories on our regular computer programs and then transfer the stories over on a disc to the Mac. That was the one problem with Quark back then; it didn't have a good database program for stories. But otherwise, it was a sweet pagination program, the one every pagination wanted to be like.

I did the front page the night the Grand Forks Herald building burned down and the streets of Grand Forks, North Dakota, flooded; and the night Lady Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. I also did the page when Mother Teresa died.

I was on the desk for about a week when Ron's wife, Darlys, had a heart attack. Ron had to take time off from work to be with her in Sioux Falls. It was the start of the football season, and we had hired Scott Waltman as an intern to fill my spot on the staff, but we had no one to work on the desk. So I moved back to the sports desk full time for awhile until Darlys was well enough to come back home.

I also had to pitch in as a reporter during the floods after the winter of 1996 during the spring of 1997. The floods were massive and we needed help making phone calls. I called around to various area law enforcement agencies trying to find out how bad things were.

I remember talking to one woman in the rural Redfield area who woke up to find water coming up to the second floor of her house. She had to call for a rescue off her roof. It was a different kind of exciting reporting than that of reporting from a championship basketball game.

Eikamp assured me that I would find a job elsewhere as a copy editor after a year of working on the desk. She was really close. I started sending out resumes looking for copy desk work in the summer of 1997 and got more than just nibbles. In September, not long after Lady Diana's death, I went to Macon, Ga., for an interview with the Macon Telegraph. Not long after that, I interviewed at the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Both were Knight-Ridder papers, as was the Aberdeen American News.

I could be on the move again, maybe. I waited and waited for phone calls. Where would I go? Or would I stay?