Update from Larry Froelich

Here's a good update from Larry Froelich. We need more like this:

After leaving the ABJ in in early 1981 for the Detroit Free Press, I became assistant features copy desk chief. I was a single parent with a son, Mark, in middle school, so the day hours worked best for me. Eventually I met and married Suzanne Dolezal, a feature writer at the Freep, in May 1984. We had a son, Eric, about 2 years later. When the Freep and News filed for a joint operating agreement I began to seriously look around for a better situation in Knight Ridder because I wasn't sure the Freep would survive if the U.S. Supreme Court got involved in the issue. The Freep had filed as the failing paper and I didn't want to end up in a job fair if all went bad.

Meanwhile, to make myself more marketable, I moved down to the newsroom as deputy news editor (nights) at the behest of Scott Bosley, who was managing editor at the time. Nothing like having friends in high places. In the mid-1989 the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader was looking for a news editor and by then I'd been doing that job in a secondary capacity in Detroit for about 4-5 years. And that's where I've been since Sept. '89. Meanwhile, Suzanne eventually landed a job at UK working public information for the NCI's Cancer Information Service. And Eric is now a freshman at the University of Kentucky on an academic scholarship to study engineering. (Last weekend, for ESPN's College Game Day special here in Lexington, he and his four closest friends with painted in blue and white in the front row only few feet from UK grad/movie actress Ashley Judd.) My oldest, Mark, returned to the Detroit area after graduating from Kent State and has been working in the auto industry managing an assembly-equipment leasing arrangement with Pontiac. His wife, Christa, is a BGSU grad and media buyer with Campbell-Ewald Advertising. They have two children, Jack, who will be 6 in August, and Lindsay, 4. My daughter Britta is a graduate of the Univ. of South Florida and is in partnership with a high school-college friend in a Web-based wedding invitation business. She is married to a Mich. State grad, Marc Spanke, who works for computer chip after-market company. They live in the Tampa-St. Pete area and have two daughters, Halle, 5, and Clare, 1.

I intend to hang it up on Oct. 31 of this year after 37 years with KR. And, yes, I think I'm the oldest journalist in this particular newsroom. A "dinosaur" as we used to fondly call the old hands. Suzanne won't retire for a few more years, but when she does we'll probably move up to the Detroit area to be near the kids. Eric is thinking about auto engineering so he'd likely return to Motown too. And Britta's husband's parents live just north of Detroit. So, for us, it's a natural if we want to be near family -- although temperature-wise it makes absolutely no sense at all. Still, who cares? There are a helluva lot of grand watering holes in the Detroit environs where I can tip a few with the retired Freepers of my decade there. And I'd love to make it to an occasional BJ retirees' luncheon once I'm not working nights, weekend and holidays.