Looking back on 2005

The BJ Retirees blog (web log) has caught on with some of you. We are averaging 28 visitors a day or nearly 200 each week. There have been more than 8,350 visitors since the blog started in July, 2004. There were only 1,120 visits in 2004 (the first six months) and 7,180 visits this year alone. There have been 349 items posted on the blog since the beginning including 88 the first six months and 259 this year. Visitors have taken a look at more than 11,000 pages on the blog since July 2004.

Noteworthy posts in 2005 including many on the possible sale of Knight Ridder; the unveiling of the new BJ clock tower, launch of the freebie 77South paper and a fun reunion in Columbus. We also recalled some past BJ bloopers and old time photos. Charlie Buffum provided a bunch of old clippings of the bloopers and he and Tom Suchan provided copies of old Towers Topics which provided memories of the past. We recalled the old “God willing” addendum to the weather report by Ron Kuhne and located him in Indiana for his recollections..

We ran photos or scrapbook pages on three weddings this year: Rebecca Smith, Rebecca Strong and Roderick McBane and there were no doubt some not reported to us. Many received honors or retired, including Larry Froelich and Charlene Nevada.

Unless we missed one there were 20 deaths in 2005 including Jane Betz, Robert Boyles, Ronald Capretta, Phil Dietrich, Gordon Dix, Milan Dungjen, Charlotte Earll, Bud Fisher, Donn Gaynor,. Paul Grove, Robert Hollister, James Kittinger, Robert Leitch, Ted Milligan, Edna Morgan, Polly Paffilas, Donald Shook, Richard Sweet, Ruben Sweet, Curt Sutliff and Miriam Wise.

We hope to continue in 2006 with more reprints from old Tower Topics and have been promised an inteview with Browser, the BJ mascot. Hopefully we won’t hear much more from the Sherman who started the push to sell Knight Ridder almost like that other Sherman, William Tecumesh, who led a march to the sea during the Civil War.

And the names of more than 500 were mentioned on the blog, many more than once–inlcuding Tony Ridder who was mentioned 14 times. You can see an alphabetical list by clicking on the headline above. It will be available until the end of January. Please excuse any errors or omissions.