Mary Lou Sneyd Gillispie, who went from a part-time sports agate clerk (box scores, etc.) for the BJ to PD editor and line-drawer for 30 years, passed away at the age of only 62 from brain cancer.

Mary Lou worked at the Plain Dealer with her husband of 30 years, Mark Gillispie, until he left for a job with the Associated Press in Cleveland. Mary Lou retired from the PD in 2018.

Mary Lou also was a copy editor at the Ashtabula Star-Beacon and the Lake County News-Herald.

Her brother, Ross, also was an agate clerk in the BJ sports department. Ross became an Associated Press reporter in Vermont, worked at Burlington (Vermont) Free Press and on Vermont Public Radio.

Ross once was the owner/innkeeper of Comstock House B&B in Vermont.

His Facebook page says he’s in corporate communications (code for PR) at National Life Group.

Ross also does cross-country skiing in Green Mountain territory. And is seriously into knitting, including a Russet Potato Sweater he made for himself.

And hangs out with dudes like Bernie Sanders.

Mary Lou’s obituary:

Mary Lou Sneyd Gillispie, age 62. Beloved wife of 30 years to Mark Gillispie; dearest mother of Samuel and Martha Gillispie; loving daughter of the late Paul and Martha Sneyd; dear sister of Frank Sneyd (Debbie) and Ross Sneyd (Warren Hathaway).

Mary Lou was an award-winning editor and page designer at The Plain Dealer for 30 years.

 She was a terrific wife, mother, sister and daughter and was loved by countless friends.

In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate contributions in memory of Mary Lou to The Gathering Place, 23300 Commerce Park, Beachwood, OH 44122.

A Celebration of Life will be held when we can all come together. Interment Private, Lake View Cemetery. Please sign Tribute Wall at: schultemahonmurphy.com 

Former BJ reporter Pete Geiger’s widow, Sandy Geiger, has remarried.

Pete passed away January 29, 2015 only 10 days after Paula and I had dinner in Leesburg, Florida with Pete, Sandy and their son Bill of Detroit.

Sandy married Leonard Hatch in 2016. Both, like Pete, are Eastern Baptist College graduates.

Fairmont (West Virginia) Times editor Eric Cravey tipped me off when we were exchanging emails about a Monongah High Alumni blog that I publish in addition to this one. I wrote a blog article about a Marion County paramedic who got the coronavirus and had just been released from her 3-week quarantine. And Eric, who had Pete as his Clay County correspondent, asked me if I knew Pete. That led to this article.

I had two numbers in my SmartPhone with Pete’s name on them and, in a what-the-heck mood, called the home phone number.

Sandy answered the phone!

She still lives in the Penney Farms Christian retirement community created by department store pioneer J.C. Penney 8 miles from Cove Springs, Florida in Clay County.

Leonard’s wife passed away in the same week that Pete slipped into Heaven in his sleep.

Sandy and Pete have been volunteering most of their lives, including 13 years teaching English in Zuunmod, Mongolia, a provincial capital city of 20,000, where Sandy was director of the college and Pete edited and published a newsletter for American ex-patriate English teachers in Mongolia. They sponsored a kindergarten class for orphans and disadvantaged children.

After Pete’s demise, Sandy got a phone call to help match new Penney Farms residents with old Penney Farms residents.

“I told them I didn’t know if I had the time because I was doing so much volunteering but they said it was supposed to be only an hour.”

Well, Sandy and Leonard got matched up with the volunteer matching up of new and old residents, “I showed him the closest grocery” and “he walked my dog and asked me out to dinner.”

Less than a year later they tied the knot.

Sandy was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, which is only 18 miles from Youngstown.

Pete and Sandy moved to St. Augustine in 2007 when Sandy's quintuple bypass open-heart surgery scrubbed plans to return to Mongolia.

Pete was part of the BJ reporting team that won a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for the general news reporting of Sir James Goldsmith’s greenmail attack on Goodyear that cost millions to make JG go away.

I found out about Pete’s passing from BJ Chief Librarian Norma Hill, who was contacted for information by Clay Today editor Eric Cravey, where Pete was a correspondent in Orange Park, Clay County, Florida.

And when I contacted Eric today in Fairmont, 3 miles from my birthplace of Monongah, West Virginia, another circle of life came home to roost.  

Among Pete and Sandy’s other children, Ginger lives in Canton and Roger in Gainesville, Florida. Pete’s sister lives in Germany.

TWO newspaper chains before football season?

There may be only TWO major newspaper chains left in America before football season starts!

Six months ago, there were five: Gannett, New Media’s GateHouse, McClatchy, Tribune Publishing and Alden’s MNG Enterprises.

Today, there are four when GateHouse swallowed Gannett but kept the Gannett name.

Gannett stock has freefallen to EIGHTY EIGHT CENTS a share. That makes it a penny stock.

Tribune and MNG are expected to merge by June.

Staggering McClatchy is a prime target for Gannett or a merged Tribune/MNG.

In 1995 there were TWENTY newspaper chains. It took only 25 years to wipe out nearly all of them.

Listing them in order of their circulation totals there were Gannett, Knight-Ridder, Newhouse, Times Mirror, Dow Jones, New York Times, Thomson, Hearst, Cox, Tribune, E.W. Scripps, Hollinger, McClatchy, Freedom, MediaNews, Washington Post, Central, Morris, Capital Cities/ABC and Copley.

Vanished like the horse and buggy. But far more important to democracy.

2 creditors set floor for sale price of McClatchy

McClatchy’s largest creditors offered to buy the bankrupt media company Thursday as a strategy to set a floor for the media conglomerate's sale price.

Chatham Asset Management and Brigade Capital Management offered “well in excess” of $300 million as a “stalking horse,” meaning no one else would be allowed to offer less.

Any settlement will free McClatchy from pension obligations, dumping that cost onto the federal pension protection program.

Knight Rider was acquired by McClatchy in 2006 but sold the BJ almost immediately to Canada’s Black Press. Gatehouse Media bought the BJ frm Black Press in 2018. John Knight inherited the debt-ridden BJ in 1933 from his father, Charles Landon Knight.

McClatchy has controlled the company since the California Gold Rush.

To read the entire article, go to

https://news.yahoo.com/creditors-move-buy-mcclatchy-opening-130622641.html



Retired BJ printer Sid Sprague, who moved to Loveland, Colorado with his second love, Nancy, after Sid's wife, Sandra, and Nancy's husband passed away, has been cruising through life . . . literally.

As in sea/land cruises to Alaska where he actually got to see Denali, for years called Mount McKinley (Paula and I didn’t see it because it was obliterated by clouds the day we were there, as it is most days being 20,310 feet in elevation).

And inter-island cruises out of Seattle that include Vancouver, British Columbia and its  beautiful miles of flowers in 1,000-acre Stanley Park, which Paula and I enjoyed immensely during our meandering through northwest Canada. Stanley Park is the 3^rd-largest park in North America.

And Caribbean cruises, one to Eastern Caribbean and another to Western Caribbean. Including a stop in Puerto Rico.

And the “Mexican Riviera.”  Riviera Mayo stretches from the fishing village of Puerto Morelos to the biosphere reserve of Sian Ka'an. It is 1,320 miles from Mexico City on the Yuatan Peninsula. Think Cozumel, the island where cruise ships dock before you take a tender to the mainland and the “Mexican Riviera.”   

Sid’s Nancy is from Canton and Sid lived in Cuyahoga Falls. But they never met till Sid and Sandra moved to Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Sid knew Nancy and her husband about 9 years before Sandra passed away. After Sid's Sandra and Nancy’s husband both passed away, Sid and Nancy mourned and moved in together in 2005, as 25% of American couples do these days.

Sid moved from Cuyahoga Falls to Pawleys in 1997 or 1998. BJ Accounting Department retirree Harold McElroy and wife Linda joined them in 1999. Retired printer Dick Latshaw, who passed away in 2018, and Dick’s wife for 57 years, Pat, joined them in 2000. They all lived on the same street, which is only three blocks long. It was BJ south.

Harold and Linda joined Dick and Pat in Hawaii in 2011 for the Latshaws’ 50^th wedding anniversary. BJ friendships are, indeed, golden.

Sid and Nancy moved from Pawleys Island, where Sid and Sandra lived for 9 years, to Colorado in 2005.

Incidentally, when Sid and I were talking on the phone, it was snowing in Loveland and Tallmadge at the same time!

Sid said:

“We had to evacuate (from Pawleys Island) every time there was a hurricane and that was a disaster. So I told myself, one more time and I’m out of here. The next hurricane came, a big tree fell on my house. As soon as I fixed the house, I sold it and we moved to Colorado.”

Sid’s daughter, Suzanne Sprague Rutherford, lives in Costa Mesa, which is 37 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Sid’s son, Jeffrey Sprague, lives in Greenwich Township, on the southwest tip of Connecticut. Another son, Steve, passed away in Middleburg, Virginia at the age of 38 in 2010. He died two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer.

As for Sid, he has recovered from a bout with prostate cancer a year ago and “doing well.” It’s a slow-moving cancer that hits men. I had it about a decade ago. Sid, like me, got external radiation treatment.

In my case, these two blondes told me to drop my drawers and plopped me on a table . . . for weeks. Strangely, years later, when I went to our Tallmadge mailbox cluster at the end of our driveway, there was one of the blonde nurses getting her mail because she had moved into the same Hilltop Terrace condo complex off Thomas Road as us. She recognized me, even with my pants on.

Sid’s daughter Suzanne, son Jeffrey and Sid “have visited each other back and forth across the country.”

Sid and I used to run into each other often at Nicky’s Place on Front Street in Cuyahoga Falls, where we both lived at the time, long after we both were retired. IF I remember right, Sid is 85. I’m 87. Nicky’s was a Greek restaurant in the first building next to the current Falls concert venue at Front and Broad.

Sid is among the 45 retired BJ printers who benefitted from the successful healthcare lawsuit that the late Dave White filed against the BJ that restored retirement day medical coverage.

 

I piggybacked on Dave’s lawsuit by filing on behalf of retired BJ Guild newsroom members but unfortunately only 5 of us qualified because of the different language in the retirement-day letters. The lawsuit has saved me about $40,000 so far in reimbursement and restored healthcare benefits. Thank you, Chandra Law Firm in Cleveland . . . and Dave White, who wrote a $2,500 check on a Florida beach to get the ball rolling. Dave's widow, BJ composing retiree Gina White, still lives in the Sarasota area. 

Sid said he hasn’t heard from any BJ folks since moving to Colorado. His email to me was to ask for the names of former printers who passed away and who still are alive.

So I emailed Sid the BJ Memory Wall that you see on this blog, which gets new names added far too often. And when we talked on the phone I ran some of the names past Sid. There were several that he didn’t know had passed away even though Sid checks this BJ Alums blog regularly, as so many do.

And when I do a Catching Up With article like this one, the hits to the blog spike to double the usual hits per day. Since the late BJ State Desk assistant editor Harry Liggett created this blog there have been 1,113,188 pageviews. That’s right, 1.1 MILLION! BJ folks love to keep track of each other and come aboard this blog every day. It’s my pleasure to be a conduit to keep BJ folks informed about each other.

If you want to phone Sid and catch up on each other’s lives, his phone number is (970) 613-1914. Fair warning: Because Sid does NOT pick up the phone unless Caller ID tells him who it is, he lets the call go to his Voicemail, as he did with me.

So he will call you back once you tell him you’re not a telemarketer or a scammer but a friend from his Ol’ Blue Walls past. Be patient. Leave your name and phone number on Voicemail and Sid will get back to you.

He promised me. And nice guys don't lie.

PD accepts Guild 10’s offers to leave

Without naming names the PD confirmed that the 10 Guild members who offered to leave were accepted.

Check the BJ Alums blog article just below this one for the names.

The Newhouse Advance union-busting is almost complete. PD is down to 3 Guild members. The non-union Cleveland.com with 70 members will take over as the scab operation.

If you want to read the PD management bullshit about “voluntarily” and other propaganda, go to

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/04/the-plain-dealer-accepts-requests-from-10-journalists-to-be-laid-off-voluntarily.html

10 at PD offer to leave

PD Guild members who summited their names to leave the PD are Guild president Ginger Christ, vice chair Rachel Dissell, Laura De Marco, John Petkovic, Greg Burnett, Phil Morris, Michelle Jarobe, photographers Gus Chan and Lisa DeJong and education writer Patrick O'Donnell.

The four electing to stay, all told they wouldn't be made bureau reporters and would continue with current duties, are sports columnist Terry Pluto, a former BJ sportswriter, Steve Litt, travel writer Susan Glaser and reporter John Caniglia.

Columnist Phil Morris, who also could have stayed, chose to leave.

It’s up to Newhouse’s Advance to announce their decisions in the ravaging of a PD newsroom that numbered 340 in 2000.

About a week ago PD management announced that 10 Guild members would be assigned to non-Cuyahoga County bureaus if they stayed.

 

This will move the PD closer to the Newhouse Advance goal of making the PD completely non-union. Cleveland.com has about 70 members, all non-union, and will replace the Guild members in handling what's left of PD coverage.

PD: Union card? Leave the county! Firing squad next? 

Newhouse Advance Publications has unveiled its latest union-busting tactic. 10 of the remain 14 Guild employees will be banished to out-lying county bureaus so that only non-union Cleveland.com workers can work in Cuyahoga County or Summit County.

The next step is obvious because it’s been done by management for a century: Put everyone you don’t want into a department or category, then a few months later eliminate the department or category. It’s capitalism version of the firing squad. No bullets needed.

Once the 10 are banished from Cuyahoga County the next step is to close down the PD bureaus in Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Portage counties. It’s coming. Count on it.

Those truncated ten might as well send out their job applications elsewhere. They are living on borrowed time.

With no union protection the final step also is obvious for those at Cleveland.com: Slash their pay. They’ll be lucky if they make minimum wages.

Putin couldn’t be more merciless and effective. At least there are no bullets in the PD firing squad.

The banished union members are investigative reporters Rachel Dissell and John Caniglia, arts and culture writers John Petkovic and Laura DeMarco,  real estate reporter Michelle Jarboe, medical reporter Ginger Christ, education reporter Patrick O'Donnell, features/Friday Magazine events writer Greg Burnett and photographers Gus Chan and Lisa DeJong.

The only exceptions, for now, are superb sports columnist Terry Pluto, once at 44 E. Exchange Street who writes a book a week, or so it seems, about sports; columnist Philip Morris; art and architecture critic Steve Litt; and travel writer Susan Glaser.

To read the excruciatingly painful Cleveland Scene article, click on https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2020/04/07/plain-dealer-put-out-to-pasture-in-final-death-blow-remaining-reporters-given-impossible-choice

30 days of Hell by America’s newspapers

In less than 30 days Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida (one of my stops in my 43-year newspaper career was at Poynter’s St. Petersburg Times) reported this cutbacks, print suspensions because the coronavirus and normal attrition that has been going on for years now collided:

On March 9, The Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer announced it would cut 22 newsroom employees.

On March 13, The Stranger in Seattle temporarily suspended print and laid off 18 staffers.

On March 14, the Portland (Oregon) Mercury announced it was temporarily cutting print and had temporarily laid off 10 staffers

On March 16, DigBoston suspended print publication.

on March 17, salaries were cut at the Phoenix New Times, Denver’s Westword, Dallas Observer, Houston Press and Miami New Times.

On March 18, the Tampa Bay Times, which Poynter owns, laid off 11 journalists

on March 18, Monterey County Weekly in California announced it had laid off seven employees. Three other staffers had salaries reduced

Texas’ San Antonio Current laid off 10 employees.

Riverfront Times in St. Louis laid off seven.

Shepherd Express in Milwaukee suspended its print edition.

The Pulse in Chattanooga, Tennessee, suspended publication.

CityBeat in Cincinnati, Ohio, had furloughs and pay cuts.

MetroTimes in Detroit laid off eight staffers. 

Creative Loafing in Tampa laid off seven employees.

Cleveland Scene in Ohio laid off five staffers.

Orlando Weekly laid off 13 people. 

Oklahoma Gazette in Oklahoma City paused print publication.

On March 19, Isthmus, a weekly in Madison, Wisconsin, announced it had to “go dark for an undetermined amount of time.”

On March 20, Austin Chronicle in Texas went to an every-other-week print schedule.

Mountain Xpress in Asheville, North Carolina, laid off seven and had pay cuts.

On March 23, Trent Stephens reported for The Durango (Colorado) Herald that it had laid off five people

on March 23, Trib Total Media in Pennsylvania combined two print editions and laid off staff

The Times-Picayune/nola.com/The Advocate in New Orleans announced a temporary furlough of 10% of its workforce.

On March 25, The Warwick Beacon in Rhode Island cut one publication day to become a weekly and had eight layoffs

On March 26th, the 13-year-old Waterbury (Vermont) Record reported it printed its last edition.

on March 30, the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, announced it’s cutting print on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday.

The Henrico Citizen in Henrico County, Virginia, announced it was stopping its twice-monthly print edition for April “and possibly beyond.”

Adams Publishing Group, which operates dailies and weeklies in 20 states, announced a cut in workforce hours

on March 31, The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, announced furloughs and pay cuts.

San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly announced cuts in hours and pay to staff.

On April 1, 22nd Century Media, which published community newspapers in the Chicago suburbs, went out of business,

On April 2 and 3, newsrooms that are part of Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group learned of layoffs and furloughs. Newsrooms include The Denver Post, the Boston Herald and several in California.

On April 6, Poynter’s Tom Jones reported temporary pay cuts at The Dallas Morning News.

This is just the Cliff’s Notes version. If you want to read the entire sorry report by Poynter, click on

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/here-are-the-newsroom-layoffs-furloughs-and-closures-caused-by-the-coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR3glJ2eNZL-P-5oOwOH5FdK4lPvIX6y0hp3NBHscjDYSlDPVveC_2FDTdU

My advice to college journalism students: Not a good time to look for a newspaper job. Duh!

Retired BJ Circulation district manager Don Phillips passed away Wednesday, April 1.

Don was at 44 E. Exchange Street for 32 years. Before that he was in the Akron Police Department.

His sister, Sue, is married to Linc Hackim.

Hackims are legendary in Summit County sports.

The first Linc Hackim was the president of the American Amateur Baseball Congress for 17 years who brought its national headquarters to Fairlawn. He is in the Greater Akron Baseball Hall of Fame.

So was Linc Hackim, Jr., who was a Class AA minor league baseball all-star for 13 years.

Linc Hackim III also is in the GAB Hall of Fame and was on Akron A’s teams that won the Roy Hobbs World Series 3 times and helped his father, Linc, Jr., coach at Cuyahoga Falls, Hoban and St. Vincent/St. Mary’s.

I coached in the Dayton Amateur Baseball Association program with its president Dick Burrows. 

My award for my 40 years, off and on, of coaching children in baseball came from the Greater Akron Touchdown Club.

I was Class H (8-10 age group) president and Class G manager (11-12 age group) with the Cougars and later the Camaros for 11 years, then taught my grandson’s pitching staff later in life.

My other coaching years were in West Virginia where I founded and supervised the first baseball program that included children of color in Mingo County on the Tug River border with Kentucky and in Dayton.

In Cuyahoga Falls I spearheaded the integration of girls into the Cuyahoga Falls Amateur Baseball Association program, including Tammy who later was on the Green High girls softball team that made it to the state finals.

In 1987 I became one the first 10 people enshrined into the CFABA Hall of Fame.

Don is on a 1981 list of BJ employees that I have, along with Cleveland Phillips, no relation, who was in maintenance. Cleveland passed away in 2009.

Don’s obituary:

Donald J. Phillips died peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones after a short battle with pancreatic cancer on April 1st, 2020.

Don was born to Richard and Phyllis Phillips of Akron, OH on March 23rd, 1941. He was a graduate of Archbishop Hoban High School class of 1959. Don continued his education at the University of Akron. He joined the Akron Police Department in September of 1968, until the time came for a career change. He was recruited as a district manager for the Akron Beacon Journal until his retirement 32 years later.

Don was a compassionate, loving husband and a kind, patient father. He was a true outdoorsman. He enjoyed hunting, fishing, and camping with his family and friends over the years. Don was also a skilled marksman and an avid bowler. He always enjoyed a good cigar and a game of chess with any one of his grandchildren.

Don was preceded in death by his parents, Richard and Phyllis Phillips, and Troy Metzner, his son-in-law. He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Tricia E. (Osborne) Phillips; and their 4 children, Ellen (Phillips) Metzner of Conway, SC, James (Robyn) Phillips of Springfield Twp., OH, Sean (Janeen) Phillips of Brimfield Twp., OH, Matthew (Catherine) Phillips of Cuyahoga Falls, OH. Don is also survived by his sisters, Sue (Linc) Hackim, Nancy (Bob) Eggers and June (Jim) Meech; brothers-inlaw, Dave (Kate) Osborne, Thomas (Deborah) Osborne and many nieces and nephews.

Due to current health concerns, a celebration of life will be held at a later date.

Yaborough’s PD farewell column

A fond farewell

By Chuck Yarborough, who along with Mark Dawidziak was canned by the PD

 

This is the column I wasn’t able to publish.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In 1976, when I walked into the “newsroom” at the San Jacinto College Texian, I thought I was taking advantage of an offer to use the typewriters because I was too broke to afford one.

See, I didn’t have any money, and my father, a retired career Army officer who was REALLY pissed that I had turned down an appointment to West Point and a free education, wasn’t about to pay for me to go to some fancy-schmancy college. Enter San Jac, a junior college outside Houston.

I’d already tried and failed at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, where Dr. Bratton’s sonorous lectures about organic chemistry and my distinct lack of talent regarding same had doomed my dreams of thoracic surgery.

I was 0-1, and not feeling all that great about my chances. But at least I would have a means to write whatever term papers were required at tiny San Jac, which frankly was smaller than Parma Senior High, where my daughter graduated 22 years later.

But my first Mass Communications 1010 class made me realize that I had found more a place to practice on a QWERTY keyboard; I had found my calling. It led me through a chain of weeklies outside Houston, a tiny suburban daily, and four other newspapers in the Lone Star State, the last being the Houston Chronicle.

From the Chronk I went to what has become what I believe is the last stop on my newspaper career: The Plain Dealer.

As you know, the paper on Friday laid off 18 of the 32 remaining members of Local No. 1 of The Newspaper Guild. At 63 — and tired — I am one of them.

I won’t go into the internal politics of things here at The PD; that’s not the purpose of this column. What I want to do is say thank you to those of you who’ve opened your arms to me in your hometown . . . and pfffft!to the rest.

I learned tons at all my other papers, including how to design a newspaper, how to write headlines, how to screw up someone else’s copy (I don’t think legendary Chronicle columnist Leon Hale, a personal hero, has ever forgiven me for changing “etymology” to “entomology” in one of his pieces) and that I was not, not, NOT cut out to be management.

But it’s The Plain Dealer that has given me the greatest thrills of 42 years in this business, at least so far. To be honest, I have no idea what the future holds, beyond a few plans.

First off, I’m tired. I got my first paycheck job when I was 15, driving a fuel truck at Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport in Virginia, and I’ve been unemployed for exactly 24 hours since then. So I probably will spend at least 10 minutes resting before sitting down in front of a keyboard, because I’m a writer and writers write.

My hope is to do the book that everyone keeps urging on me, one that talks about everything from inviting the soldiers who were on garbage duty into our quarters for coffee and a warm-up in Fort Richardson, Alaska, as a 4-year-old, to doing pirouettes at just under Mach 1 in an FA/18 with the Blue Angels.

Naturally, I’ll rehash the 150 jobs I did for The Plain Dealer during the On the Job Training series — everything from washing front-end loaders to digging basement foundations to repairing tattered luggage to assisting in both a surgery and an autopsy (for the record, they were separate people).

And how could I not discuss talking to the musicians who were my heroes as a kid taking drum lessons at Davy Crockett Elementary School, and even beyond that? I’ve done interviews with every member of Yes, two of the three members of Rush (I missed out on the late Neil Peart!), fumbled over words talking to my “freebie” (granted by wife Liz in ’78 because she knew it would never happen) Linda Ronstadt, discussed having the same drum set and pedals with Ringo Starr, had Slash flip me off with a smile, shared stories with Heart’s Ann Wilson about wearing out the “Dreamboat Annie” 8-track in my beat-up ’63 Impala (primary color was bondo) and more.

I’ve saved all those interviews, so expect to see a lot of that in the book, if it ever gets done and/or published, though there’s no guarantee of anything.

Of course, the time then-Cleveland Recruiting Battalion commander Lt. Col. Randy Stephan got me into boot camp at the age of 45 after writing a column lamenting my West Point decision right after 9/11 will play a major role. That experience was made possible in large part by the Fort Sill, Okla., media liaison Nancy Elliott (who has since become one of my dearest friends, as she and her husband, retired Sgt. Jim Elliott, even visited here and stayed with me).

And because of that, I was able to undertake the greatest, most challenging, scariest and most wonderful episode of my entire career, embedded with U.S. Army troops in Iraq in 2004 in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

So, yeah, in some ways, I can be bitter about what’s happening to newspapers in general and this one in particular. But technology has moved forward and life has changed. I’m a carriage maker in a world of jet cars.

But I can’t be bitter about what I’ve been able to do. I’ve had one hell of a ride in this profession, and I’ve loved almost every minute of it. I hate that it’s over, but I wouldn’t change it, and I know who buttered my bread.

Thanks, Cleveland. I love you.