Today is The Day. The big one. The day the El Dorado News-Times publishes my 1,000th column.
That is 1,000 columns relating my family’s activities, history and oddities as well as my personal thoughts on people who have inspired me spiritually, socially and emotionally; a few passing thoughts on the headline news of the day or the lack of services available for the severely mentally ill.
Today is also my 41st wedding anniversary, an event worth noting for the simple reason that my husband originally, absolutely, did not want to be mentioned in my column. I honored that request for many years until he did something so funny, I simply could not resist. He changed his mind and now gives me the go-ahead to write about him. We deal with serious problems behind closed doors, but neither of us has any qualms about admitting our personal foibles.
I began this job in August of 1993. The weekly column is a spin-off from the years of writing letters to my mother when neither of us could afford frequent, long distance phone calls.
In my letters, I would detail my daily routine, weekly accomplishments and my children’s growth, funny sayings and important events. In return, she wrote about herself, my dad, brothers and sisters and their families and any other local news she thought I would find interesting.
Until 1991 our letters often crossed paths. That year the doctor diagnosed her in the fourth stage of ovarian cancer. My mother researched the diagnosis and realized her prognosis. She stoically underwent chemotherapy then visited her family across the nation to say her good-byes before passing early in June of 1992, leaving me without an audience for my musings.
I wrote a couple pf letters to the editor about events I had encountered in the community. Those letters caught the eye of then managing editor George Arnold. He called and asked me if I would be interested in writing a weekly column for the newspaper.
I would and did.
Except for a two-month hiatus when I left to be with a family member during an illness, I have been writing this column ever since. Last fall I pulled out all my columns (I have clipped and saved a copy of each one) and began counting. I double checked the number against my electronic copies and determined, as near as I can tell, that this week I will reach 1,000.
When I began, I did not anticipate staying here this long. However, instead of going to other newspaper offices or working another kind of job, my tasks and responsiblities at the News-Times office have evolved. With the expansion of services via the Internet I no longer need to key in Dear Abby, Horoscopes, community news, most letters to the editor or even many public service announcements.
As I shed those responsibilities I picked up writing stories for special sections, editorials, covering an occasional news event or photo shoot and laying out pages.
Recently, with permission from the management of the News-Times, I sorted through my published columns and chose some for a book of columns.
Because this is a book that will only be of interest locally, it will have a small publication. Hopefully, long before my 1,052nd column, I will have the book ready for any readers who wish to buy one. We’ll see how that goes. I have discovered that there is a lot more to publishing a book than I realized.
Neither the book nor the 1,000 columns would have been possible without the permission of general manager Betty Chatham, our current managing editor Chris Qualls and former managing editors Shea Wilson and George Arnold, my faithful readers who continue to sustain interest and my family’s indulgence in allowing strangers to have an occasional peek into their lives. To each of you I say a heartfelt “thank you very much” and see you next week in this same spot.