Janis Froelich, former BJ reporter, lives in Tierra Verde, Florida, near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and 8 miles from St. Petersburg, where I handled stories and page makeup for the St. Petersburg Times sports department in 1966-67.

Janis takes writing classes at nearby Eckerd College and volunteers for charities, her life-long habit.

After her four-decade newspaper career at the Kent Record-Courier, the BJ, St. Petersburg Times, Des Moines Register and Tampa Tribune, Janis became a free-lance writer.

She describes her former husband, Larry Froelich, at the BJ 1968-1980 whose roles included reporter, business editor and national editor, as “a wonderful father plus a good source of common sense. Since I’ve been delightfully flighty I used to rely on his advice long after we divorced."

Former BJ managing editor Bob Giles hired Janis to work at 44 E. Exchange Street.

She didn’t have a driver’s license. Giles told Janis to get one.

Janis went to Akron AAA and took driving lessons. Larry bought her a new green VW with automatic stick shift in 1969.

“I’ve been zooming around ever since,” Janis reports. “I wish I still had that VW!”

I know how Janis feels. When my son was at Cuyahoga Falls High I bought him an old used VW. He drove it home and slapped SIX coats of black rustoleum paint on it. That VW probably is rust-free on the road today!

But that was how my son, John Larry, was wired. When I bought a new Yamaha motorcycle for the family (all 5 of us had motorcycle licenses) John Larry rode it around the block on Morrison and Lincoln avenues, then took it apart and put it back together.

Old habit. When he was 5 he took an old-fashioned non-digital alarm clock apart.

No wonder when he wound up at an Akron airline brakes factory, after a tool and die apprenticeship. Today he’s worldwide projects director for Meggitt Aircraft Braking Systems, coordinating the company’s factories in England, Mexico, Kentucky and other places so that he can run operations on a computer in his office or home.

Back to Janis. When I first walked into the BJ in 1969, after Ben Maidenburg hired me as his latest reclamation project (I had been fired at the Dayton Daily News for union activities in a union-hating Cox newspaper and blackballed by Editor Jim Fain by every newspaper that checked my resume and application; smart, huh?), I looked around and two women immediately struck me as being the most attractive: the late Joan Rice and Janis Froelich. Chauvanism became, rightfully so, unwelcome in America later.

Coincidentally, Joan and Janis, who grew up in an 1853 farmhouse right off Hudson's downtown Main Street, were close friends.

When Janis came to Ohio in 2010 for a book-signing in Hudson of her work about the 1975 murder of her friend, Linda McLain, she had a reunion with Joan, former BJ photographer Ott Gangl and former BJ reporter Pat Ravenscraft Snyder.

Also at the reunion was Janis’ former Kent State roommate Paula Slimak, a former PD reporter. 

Janis wrote another book, “Team Shop,” about the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.

Janis remarried, to St. Petersburg photographer Ray Bassett. Larry remarried, to Free Press reporter Suzanne Dolezal Froelich. Larry passed away in 2017 in Ohio and is buried in Dover Burial Park in Parral, Ohio even though Larry and Suzanne lived in Lexington, Kentucky. Ohio University graduate Larry was born in Dover, Ohio.

Larry retired from the Lexington News-Leader in 2005 as news editor. He came to the Lexington newspaper from the Detroit Free Press, where he went in 1980 to join former BJ managing editor Scott Bosley when he left 44 E. Exchange Street and met Suzanne.

Larry was part of the frenetic and brilliant Pat Engelhart’s squad that brought the BJ a 1971 Pulitzer for its coverage of the 1970 Kent State shootings by the Ohio National Guard that killed 4 students and wounded 9 other students.

Larry’s early career was at the Dover Reporter. His editor was Harry Yockey, father of Nancy Yockey Bonar, a BJ reporter in the 1960s. While visiting Harry Yockey in his Dover office, Harry told Larry that the Dover job his old job was his for the taking since Larry was ending his military career.

Larry told Harry that he wanted to work for the BJ. So Yockey called BJ publisher Ben Maidenberg while Larry sat in Harry’s office and Ben hired Larry sight unseen.

Larry Norman Froelich was the father of Bowling Green graduate Mark Froelich, Britta Froelich Spanke and Eric Froelich, and five grandchildren. Janis is the mother of Mark and Britta. Suzanne is Eric’s mother.

Larry’s brother, Steven, who taught journalism and English for 35 years at Findlay High School, passed away in 2012 in Findlay, Ohio.

Larry’s father, Francis Froelich, was the right-hand man to Buehler Stores founder Edward Buehler and worked in Buehler stores in Wooster and Orrville. Larry was buried near his parents.

Lexington to Akron also is a familiar journey for Stuart Warner, at Ol’ Blue Walls 1979-1999 till he went to that newspaper up north, the PD, until his 2008 buyout.

Stuart and another former BJ editor, Debbie Van Tassel Warner, moved to Arizona in 2013, where they still live.

If you want to Catch Up With Janis Froelich yourself her email address is janisfroelich@yahoo.com