John Olesky Jr., a career newspaperman and ardent keeper of the BJ Alums blog for the past 10 years, died on May 19 at age 91. Burial services at Northlawn Memorial Gardens in Cuyahoga Falls were private, according to an obituary posted by the Anthony Funeral Home.
A native of Monongah, W.Va., John began his 43-year career during his final semester at West Virgnia University, working as a sports writer at the Morgantown Dominion-News. After graduation in 1954, he continued writing sports at the Williamson (W.Va.) Daily News, Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail, Dayton Daily News and St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.
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| John Olesky (right) with mentor and BJ Alums blog creator Harry Liggett. |
John joined the Beacon Journal as a State Desk reporter in 1969, covering Stark County, and it was at 44 E. Exchange St. that he found his true journalistic home, and where he thrived. “It was as if I had been swept into heaven before my time,” John once wrote of his hiring by publisher Ben Maidenburg after having been fired in Dayton for union activities.
He relished his time on the State Desk, where he rose to Assistant Editor, working with its chief Pat Englehart and also Harry Liggett, creator of the BJ Alums blog. “[I] joined the BJ at the age of 38,” John wrote in a blog post, “but Pat and Harry in less than a decade taught [me] more about how to be a good newspaper editor than [I] had learned in all [my] previous years combined.”
When the State Desk was absorbed into the Metro Desk, John shifted to the role of Makeup Editor, the Editorial Department’s quarterback in the Composing Room, then still producing pages in hot type.
In the late 1970s John took on the role of Technology Editor, leading the newsroom’s conversion from typewriters to video display terminals and eventually cold type. “Enter VDT, exit pencil” was the headline on John’s article about the electronic advances in the July-August 1977 edition of employee publication Tower Topics.
John again displayed his technical wizardry shortly after being named Television Editor, upgrading the Beacon Journal’s TV listings as cable TV began to emerge. His most prominent accomplishment was creating Channels, the paper’s Sunday TV magazine, with made it debut on Jan. 25, 1981. It featured a more compact format and many reader-friendly improvements such as redesigned grids and the addition of cable position symbols next to channel numbers. "The technology still was crude, so it took someone skilled in formatting to handle Channels," John explained in a blog post. "And it turned the remainder of my career from been-there-done-that boredom to fresh excitement."
John continued as Television Editor for another 15 years, retiring in 1996. Channels lived on until 2014, when onscreen channel guides and sophisticated remotes made paper guides passé.
I had the pleasure of working with John for 24 years at the Beacon Journal, and later provided backup to him on the BJ Alums blog. He loved the craft of newspapering and admired and respected those who did it well and with vigor, as he did. He cherished the camaraderie and close relationships that are such a special part of a newsroom, especially a high-achieving one like the Beacon Journal's. “These talented, caring people are among the main reasons that I RAN to work at the BJ for 26 years,” John wrote in a blog post about his Features Department colleagues.
After Harry Liggett died in 2014, John continued to display his affection by reporting news of colleagues from across the company on the BJ Alums blog, diligently and with zeal. Just this month, at 91, he made blog posts about former graphic artist Susan Miller's recent travels, an upcoming BJ Advertising Department reunion, and a memorial service for former BJ chief artist Art Krummel.
I’m not sure if the BJ Alums blog will continue without John Olesky, but it will never be the same.
– Ken Krause
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