Sometimes "bad" is good

By John Olesky (BJ 1969-96)

You don't always know whether what is happening to you is good or bad in the long run.

For example, I was fired in 1969 by the Dayton Daily News for union activities (Cox Newspapers hates unions). That seemed bad to me, and it was, with a wife and three children to support and being blackballed by Dayton management when I submitted my resume elsewhere.

After five weeks, I showed up at the Akron Beacon Journal for an interview, and ran into publisher Ben Maidenburg. I told him why I was fired and he said someone who was a good employee for 13 years didn't become a "bad" employee because of union activities. Ben had sympathy for unions since he helped create the Newspaper Guild chapter at the BJ. So he told me: "Pick a side, and stick with it" and had Dan Warner negotiate my pay, which was a $25 weekly increase over the applicable Guild pay level.

So the firing became a great thing. I had greater financial stability than I ever would have had in Dayton, including wages, Knight stock and 401(k), and State Desk, newsroom electronics coordinator and TV Editor roles that I loved so much I ran to work every day. It has enabled me to travel to 34 countries and 45 states since my 1996 retirement, with a 15-day Caribbean cruise coming up in February.

This is a long preamble to an item on former BJ staffer J. Curtis Brown's blog. Curt felt he had it made when a "bad" thing happened to him. Let Curt explain it:

"I had been on fairly pleasant duty at Fort Knox, working for an entertaining and supportive Major who in a sense adopted me and I was a welcomed guest in his home. I even gave his wife and five of his six children piano lessons and was also organist at the post chapel, playing for two Protestant and two Catholic services in a row each Sunday as an unofficial duty, unrelated to my assignment as a personnel officer at post headquarters."

Then came what seemed like a "bad" thing:

"(The Major) took a week of leave in the summer of '68 and, while he was gone, his boss, a curmudgeon of a lieutenant colonel, spotted the need for a lieutenant at the Advisor Group to the W. Va. National Guard and cut the orders to transfer me. My Major was unhappy and most likely would have kept me at Fort Knox for my remaining year of active duty."

But it turned out to be a good thing for Curt.

In Charleston for his West Virginia National Guard assignment, Curt attended a Unitarian Fellowship and was greeted by a woman named Nancy. This meeting led to her husband, Jim, a Charleston Gazette editor who became Curt's mentor. The Gazette job qualified Curt for Akron Beacon Journal employment in 1971, which led to the contacts that Curt made to land a United Rubber Workers public relations job in 1974 (when the URW merged with the Steelworkers union in 1995, Curt kept his PR duties).

Concludes Curt:

"Being 'shipped' to Charleston paved the way for a long and fulfilling career . . . seeming misfortune (leaving the apparent comfort of my situation at Fort Knox) turned into a lifetime of interesting work and relative financial security."

Been there, done that, Curt.

Click on the headline to the full article on Curt Brown's blog.