Kathy Fraze remembering Don Bandy

t was a damp, chilly Saturday night in March 1975. I was squeezed into a phone booth in downtown Columbus. Deadline was minutes away, and I was melting down.

A Canton man had just won Ohio's second millionaire lottery drawing . I had been sent to Columbus to cover the event and I had enough notes and quotes to write a novel. Problem was, I'd never dictated a story on deadline before, and I didn't have a clue how to start.

Don Bandy did. He caught my panicked phone call to the rewrite desk as the clock ticked down to deadline and he calmly led me through the who, what, where and why, wheedled some pertinent quotes out of my jumbled notes and calmly shaped my mess of information into a Sunday A1 story.

I got the byline, but it was all Bandy's work.

He was always my rewrite hero.

Kathy Fraze

(Not a retiree yet. Still copy desk chief at the BJ.)