Reunions, remembering, revitalizing

Boy, you never know. You go to an Art and Jewish Food Festival at Temple Israel, 91 Springside Drive, Bath Township and a Beacon Journal mini-reunion breaks out.

There were a few quick moments with BJ reporter/food writer Katie Byard, who spent threedays in Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris after her plane was turned back short of Iceland because of engine trouble, and then the Frogs couldn't figure out a way to get get and BJ retiree Sarah Vradenburg back to the USA.

It could have been worse. For Paula when we spent our 8th anniversary there, it was the food at DeGaulle airport. And the unpleasant consequences.

Former BJ reporter Kathy Spitz Lipkin was at one of the tables, selling products to people whose stomachs just had a love affair with kosher food.

Kathy’s the one with two teenagers and a CPA husband. Who knew she would fall in love with a bean-counter.

David Black, sure. He’s crazy about bean-counters. Even if they aren’t Canadians.

I can be a smart-alec about bean-counters because I have four in my family. They'll own Brunswick before long.

Kathy came from Corpus Christi, Texas and went from the University of Texas to Tufts to the University of Akron (community counseling master’s degree) before living happily ever after in Copley.

I had the latkes that Katie was praising on Facebook in her pre-Temple appearance. Pierogis are my thing, having a Polish father and a Polish grandmother who made them sing to your soul.

Katie was “with a bud” – not BJ retiree husband Jim Carney. Ladies night out.

I’ve run into former BJ co-workers in New Zealand (1970s State Desk reporter Cathy Robinson Strong & retired photographer Don Roese) and in Florida (Don Roese; he gets around), including year after year of seeing the late Composing honcho Dave White, whose $2,500 check started the ball rolling toward retirement-day healthcare reinstatement – with a judge looking over the BJ’s shoulder – for 45 retired printers and 5 Guild retirees. 

That was on Siesta Key, adjacent to Sarasota, Florida, on a deck overlooking the beach and the Gulf of Mexico across the street from former printer Bill Gorrell’s vacation complex (Poor Bill's, which drew BJ printers for poker and booze before and after golfing).

Dave’s wife, retired printer Gina White, would be there. She still lives in Venice, Florida.

There also was the late Terry Dray, retired printer who lived in Avon Lake, Florida and who, with co-conspirator Red Reeves, convinced BJ management that I was an asset and not an albatross to wrap an anchor and chair around its neck and throw it into the lake. 

Short story: If I was makeup man Saturday night, the Sunday paper printed early; if I was not, the paper often was late. 

Coincidence? OK, you go with that. Those printers had a lot more control than the college boys in the newsroom thought.

All I remember was Terry telling me: "Don't worry; we'll take care of you." Man, did they!

And another retired printer, Don Pack, who was my late father’s bookie, but who was the pool guy at Sea Castle on Siesta Key, and who spent his vacations in Central America with his main squeeze and drove to his pool jobs in convertibles that teenagers would drool over.

And the late Don Bandy, maybe the best rewrite man the BJ ever had, who would come down from Bradenton where he lived near his sister.

Quiet and classy; that was Don.

BJ reunions are ALWAYS fun, because they remind us of how much joy we got from putting out the paper at Ol’ Blue. Even when they’re as brief as they were at Temple Israel on Sunday.