Eric Sandstrom retires

Former BJ reporter Eric Sandstrom is retiring from the Colorado Mesa University faculty in Grand Junction, Colorado, where is a mass media professor.

Eric is the advisor for the CMU student newspaper, the Criterion.

He has applied for still another career, as a park ranger in Rocky Mountains National Park.

He has been published in the New York Times, Denver Post, High Country News, and the Daily Sentinel. He was named Colorado Journalism Educator of the Year (2014) by the Society of Professional Journalists Colorado).

He worked for newspapers in Ohio, Illinois and Nebraska as a reporter, editor, photographer, columnist and sportswriter.

He has run 38 marathons, and several ultramarathons, including a 100-mile race. And searched for dinosaur fossils in Dinosaur Monument, which straddles Utah and Colorado on the northern edge of the Colorado Plateau.

Eric also has done a bit of elk hunting.

 

Eric worked at the Beacon Journal from 1986-1998. He once was managing editor / marketing & communications at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland.

His wife, Monica, once taught math at Roswell Kent Middle School in Akron.

When I asked Eric for more details about his life after Ol’ Blue Walls, he responded:

John,

In answer to your question, I retired in December at Colorado Mesa University after 10 years as  journalism prof. In addition to teaching at CMU, I was faculty advisor for the student newspaper, which is like herding cats that had too much to drink. In 2014, the Society of Professional Journalists honored me as Colorado's Journalism Educator of the Year. It was very humbling.

 

For several summers out here, I worked as a park ranger at Colorado National Monument, giving talks about wildlife, and taking visitors on hikes in the high desert canyons.

 

Prior to moving out here to Grand Junction, Colo., I worked at University Hospitals in Cleveland for 10 years, editing physician publications, pitching stories to the news media, and performing brain surgery whenever our neurosurgeons called in sick.

 

My wife, Monica, was a math teacher in Akron during my years (1984-1998) as a reporter for the ABJ. She retired, moved out here to Colorado (where our kids Angela and Nick also live) and manages a small furniture store. She loves her work, and also is an avid skier and hiker. 

 

With 20 years in newspapers (first Nebraska, then Illinois, finally Akron), I've never quite managed to get ink out of my blood. Today,  the newspaper here in Grand Junction published my op-ed about some of the generous folks who live and work here.

 

I volunteer for National Sports Center for the Disabled as a ski instructor in winter, and as a misguided cowboy in summer for kids who want to ride horses. Last summer, I worked as a volunteer in Rocky Mountain National Park, helping visitors on the back country trails and trying to keep them safe.

 

I applied for a job as a park ranger at Rocky, and am hopeful they will hire me to work in the back country, where mountain lions and moose reside but two-legged wildlife are the most unpredictable species.

 

Thanks,

 

Eric Sandstrom