Thursday, September 21, 2023

SIX ATTEND REVIVAL OF BJ MONTHLY GATHERINGS


                                                   RICH HELDENFELS, JIM CARNEY, DAVE SCOTT, BETTY LIN-FISHER


                                      BETTY LIN-FISHER, KATIE BYARD


                                              JOHN OLESKY, JOAN SUTHERLAND






Monthly BJ gatherings are back! See you next time!

 

Decades after the monthly BJ gatherings at Papa Joe’s in the Merriman Valley ended the custom was revived Thursday, Sept. 21 at the Missing Falls Brewery, 540 S. Main Street in downtown Akron not far from the new BJ newsroom high up in the former Goodrich Rubber building, also on Main Street.

 

Chatting at the BJ gathering revival were Jim Carney and wife Katie Byard, retired reporters; Dave Scott, BJ regional issues reporter and deputy Business Editor before the April 2014 BJ buyouts exodus; Rich Heldenfels, TV critic when John Olesky was TV Editor at the 44 E. Exchange Street site of the BJ; Betty Lin-Fisher, BJ consumer reporter leaving for the same job at USA Today; and John’s lady friend Joan Salisbury who moved into his Tallmadge apartment from Glen Burnie, Maryland.

 

Dave Scott and wife Jane Gaab Scott live in Copley. 

 

Rich still lives in Mogadore. Mark Dawidziak was my first TV critic, then David Bianculli, finally Rich during my 12 years in that position of my 26 years with the BJ, starting as assistant State Desk editor under Nobil cigar-smoking dynamo the late Pat Englehart, best editor I ever worked under in my 42-year newspaper career, and alongside the late Harry Liggett, also assistant State Desk editor who created this blog which I inherited when Harry turned it over to me before he passed away.

 

The BJ gatherings revival will be on the third Thursday of every month in the Missing Falls Brewery, 540 S. Main Street in Akron.

 

Kimberly Barth and Katie set up the BJ gathering revival but couldn’t make it because she had out-of-town family members visiting her.

 

Join the next BJ gathering at the Missing Falls Brewery on Thursday, Oct. 19. Let’s make it a must-do thing the way that the Papa Joe’s BJ gatherings were for decades when Tom Moore, Dave Boerner, Don Roese and I were regulars!


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