Linda Torson retires after 42 years at BJ

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Linda (Wiliams) Torson retired from information technology at the Beacon Journal and  retirees and folks who worked with her threw a party at the Barley House in the old O'Neil's building.  Here’s the story by Mike Williams:

By Mike Williams
Linda started in the Beacon Journal classified phone room in the summer before her senior year in high school (1969). She was 16 then (her birthday is in early August).  Helen Becton, manager in the phone room at the time, got a two-fer:  Linda's fraternal twin Cinda Williams started at the same time.

It was a part time job to fund college that just grew.  They arrived just in time for the IBM Selectrics to replace manual typewriters, and sat around a long table in the big second floor room next to Wheeler Alley. There were no sound-deadening partitions: the phones, typewriters and agent voices clashed together all day long, Monday through Friday and a half day on Saturday.  The obituary taker came in on Sunday as well.  They all had headsets and multi-button phones, and some had regular clients who always called when the ad taker was on another call.  The agents used hand signals:  "take a number", "put him on hold", or possibly, "I'm not here!"  They had variations on the signals, and a discussion recently of the gestures among some phone room veterans broke up in laughter.

Linda's sister Cinda wore the headset for nine years, and left in 1978 to be a dietician.  Linda soldiered on in the phone room.  Along the way, she married Tim Torson in 1974.  When she went full time in classified in 1975, she was given a pseudonym: Miss Martin, and later, Miss Allen.

In the early 80s, computers entered the newspaper world, and the goal was go direct to press plate from the keyboard.  Several intermediate steps were taken with typed copy from classified, and the composing room used optical character recognition to get the text into the typesetter. Linda was a quick study during these phases, and in October 1985 accompanied phone room supervisor Marge Lane to train for a computerized typesetting system.  In six months Linda was helping with the System 55 installation for the newsroom.  She eventually became a member of IT and worked with pc's and the phone system for several years in addition to supporting the news and advertising systems.

Some folks knew Linda had a long-standing love for horses, and she received her first horse, Alf Landon, a thoroughbred that could no longer race, from Landon Knight.  She loved all her horses, which over the years included both Arabs and Saddlebreds.  She and her mounts collected ribbons and trophies from English saddleseat competition over the years, and many friends in the sport.

Linda supported pagination through all its permutations, and in 1994 worked closely with Ken Wright in the final step to direct to plate:  to adjust the classified typeset pages to bypass the last relic of stereotype, where paper transfer mats shrink during baking.

Classified over the years accumulated many hundreds of logos, and each had to be resized to fit the constraints of the new classified column widths. The logos had to be moved over and tested between press runs, and Ken and Linda worked from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. that Sunday of conversion to get it all done.  During a recognition ceremony a couple of years later IT director Bob Tigelman was quoted: "it was like overhauling an airplane while it's still in the air."

With the installation of the comprehensive Mactive software, many of the custom scripts and tweaks of the legacy systems were no longer available.  Linda and others in IT worked to make the systems more user friendly.  A major task was the advertising rate conversion for modular makeup.  The day before her retirement, Linda stayed after to finalize an update to the online recruitment booking system.

She looks to a larger role in the national Dock Dog jumping competition in her retirement. Linda and Tim's Labradors, Bosco and Duncan, have competed for several years in the art of jumping for distance and height.  Linda says Bosco is a real competitor. Where else can you run down a catwalk and launch your dog into space above a blue, rippling pool of water, and win prizes for it?

Linda was with the Beacon Journal for 42 years.

Added by Tom Moore:
Attending were:  Sue Robinson, Margaret Samulak, Sue Lindeman, who all spent time with Linda Torson in the classified phone room decades ago. Margaret retired a few years ago, Sue Robinson still works in Classified auto/real estate, and Sue Lindeman is employed in Retail Advertising, though she has worked for Advertising promotion and Production-Mailroom as well as in Classified.

Linda Torson (nee Williams, guest of honor), Bob Wright, Ken Wright, Bob Tigelman, Jim Beard, John Vicars, all IT people; Linda's husband Tim (retired from the Akron-Summit County Metroparks), Michael McCrady Ad Art Dept. supervisor, Laura Barron and Will Christie of Classified Recruitment (Will is the newbie, came to us just a few months ago), and Mick Dimeff (retired from Accounting / Payroll).

Laura Walker (classified obituaries) and her exercise partner (will call her for his name); Tom Moore (retired from the newsroom), Mike Williams (Ad Art) and wife Jane (who works for the VA in Brecksville).  Hope I didn't miss anybody.