BJ still knows how to party hearty

I’ll give Mary Steurer Hernandez this.

She knows how to throw a party. Even for a BJ party it was pretty awesome.

I’m not in the photo because I left before the group photo was taken. I copied the photo from Nikki Ward Hawk's Facebook post. Thanks, Nikki.

John Olesky with Paula

Someone will have to identify the people in the photo and the BJ department they worked in. Email me at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com with details like clothing color, row, etc. and your BJ department history and I’ll add the information to this story.

Among those I know, because they’re old enough:

The guy in the back row with the white shirt is Bob Dyer, Ohio Columnist of the Year a zillion times because he earned it. We ate lunch together in the Blue Room at the BJ for about 20 years. I once edited his column and only changed one word, just to see him come roaring from his desk to demand why!

The second guy to the right of Bob, behind the woman in red, is Mike Williams, who was Johnny Grimm’s Advertising layout handmaiden till Mike got into IT. Now he vacations in Mexico every couple of months, or so it seems, with his wife, Jane. They used to prowl Ecuador till the tremendous heights got too much for Jane. They’ve been married for almost three decades.

Mike’s sister, BJ information technology retiree Linda Williams Torson, is married to Akron-Summit County Metroparks retiree Tim Torson. Linda was with the Beacon Journal for 42 years. Another sister, former clinical dietician Cindy Williams Chima, worked in the BJ classified phone room in the 1970s and writes fiction novels for young adults.

To the right of Mike, her head barely visible and sandwiched between and behind the lady in red and the guy in black, is Susan Miller. She's a former BJ graphics designer who lives in Canton.
 
Sue was at Ol’ Blue Walls for more than 25 years when she left the Advertising Art Department in 2009. She is a graduate of Canton Lincoln High School and Miami of Ohio in Oxford.  

Far left in the second row is Doug Oplinger, who was a babyfaced kid from Green and Akron U. student when he first wrote for the State Desk under its editor, Pat Englehart, with Harry Liggett and I as Pat’s assistant henchmen. After retiring as BJ managing editor (after 46 years at Ol’ Blue Walls) Doug is prowling around to see what the medical profession is up to as part of Your Voice Ohio, funded in part by the Knight Foundation. Opiods comes up a lot when you chat with Doug. Bad, bad problem that cuts across racial and economic lines and city, suburbs and rural areas. Equal opportunity killer.

 

Doug, the little guy in the John Deere cap when he arrived bubblingly at the BJ, was inducted into the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors Hall of Fame.

 

The woman in right in the front row is Diane Lynch, who went from BJ Finance Department to Librarian (where I first met her during my 26 years at the BJ). She told me about the time she was hiking in Yellowstone Park and ran across Tim Hayes, once in the BJ editorial department. Small world, huh?

 

In the Reference Library with Diane were chief librarian Cathy Tierney, assistant librarian Vick Victoria, Francis Crago, Marge Davis, Paul Gna, Tanya Parnell and Dick Vidergar.

 

Two to Diane’s right in red is Karen Chuparkoff, BJ general counsel for its legal department.

Karen, Doug and I had some interesting conversations about today's world.  

Dave Scott, like me, left before the photo was taken but not till after we took turns spilling drinks on Bob Dyer. Bob's shirt must be a wine magnet.

Dave was BJ regional issues reporter and deputy Business editor before he joined the 2014 BJ buyouts exodus to spend more time with his wife, Jane Gaab Scott. 

I’ve been retired 22 years so some of the people there probably were still in school – hell, maybe kindergarten – when I left 44 E. Exchange Street for good in 1996. It was 26 of my best years in the newspaper profession, which covered 43 years and seven newspapers in West Virginia, Montana (don’t ask), Ohio and Florida.

And Thursday night at the Silver Run Vineyard and Winery at 376 Eastern Road in Doylestown proves that North Carolina native and novelist Thomas Wolfe was wrong in his 1940 classic. You CAN go home again.

 

Even if it’s only for a couple of hours at the bar with old friends (but none, I think, as old as me, at 86).

 

A lot of people in that room seemed like kids to me, age being a relative thing. And with the BJ family, everything is relative.

 

Too bad Paula Tucker, who was my reporter in the 1970s when I was assistant State Desk editor under Pat Englehart and has been at my side for the last 14 years, was vacationing in Florida while I was going to Mountaineer Field to watch my alma mater, WVU, play football in October and November.

It would have made the evening perfect.

 

Maybe for the next party? If Paula and I are not in Florida or traveling around the world.