Work in any profession long enough and you’ll hopefully end up working with someone who makes a true impact, both personally and in your career.
I’ve been working in newspapers for more than 30 years now, and my list keeps getting longer. Last week, I got the chance — albeit briefly — to reconnect with one of them.
My first mentor was Jim Anderson at the Enterprise-Courier in Charleston. One piece of advice he imparted always stuck with me. I was 16, young, energetic and ready to work. I somehow talked Jim into giving me a shot as a sportswriter, a move he later said — jokingly I hope — he regretted.
“Where do you think most folks read the sports section?” he asked. “No story should take longer to read than it takes to use the bathroom.”
I’ve had other mentors since then, including Mike Jensen from the Standard-Democrat in Sikeston, veteran sportswriter and columnist Jim Bailey, and former Arkansas Democrat-Gazette deputy sports editor Jeff Krupsaw — along with several others scattered across the country.
Some are gone now, but some are still around and the chance to reconnect occasionally presents itself.
Many moons ago, East Prairie’s own Todd Wilson hired me, a Charleston native, as a sportswriter at the Standard-Democrat in Sikeston. (If you’re from either one of those towns, you’ll know why it’s important I pointed it out.)
It wasn’t my first newspaper job, but it was the one that started me on my official journey as an ink-stained wretch and a lifelong newspaperman.
Last week, more than three decades after introducing me to Friday night football deadlines, the “cliche jar,” and those good old “Trash 80” computers, one of them wandered into my office at the Republic-Monitor right here in Perryville.
Nearly four decades ago, Wilson got his start at the East Prairie Eagle, while I made my bones at the Enterprise-Courier. After a stint back east in Pennsylvania, I got a job as sports editor at the Wynne (Ark.) Progress in the mid-1990s.
When I got there, who did I find behind the editor’s desk? Mr. Wilson himself.