Saturday, May 29, 2010

A weekend to remember

I remember my childhood in Indiana. Memorial Day revolved around backyard cookouts, a transistor radio and the Indianapolis 500. Back then, The Indy 500 wasn't televised live. You'd listen to it on the radio, and watch it the next weekend on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Our family would gather in the backyard, put charcoal in the grill, turn on the radio and hand crank peach ice cream. We really didn't do much to remember our fallen war heroes.
As a journalist and a father years later, my family celebrated Memorial Day differently. I would always volunteer to cover the Memorial Day remembrances for the newspaper. My daughter and wife usually would accompany me to these events.
Usually, the celebration started with a color guard presenting the flags, and a pastor leading those gathered in prayer. Usually, the head of the VFW or American Legion would say a few words, and someone would read the names of local soldiers killed during war. A bugler would close the ceremony by playing Taps.
Often, the crowd watching the ceremony would be smaller than the contingent of people participating in it. Of course, I would return to the newspaper offices, write my story and ready my pictures for publication in the next day's paper.
I never could find the words to describe the lump in my throat and the chill that ran up and down my spine when the bugler played Taps, and I understood the sacrifices my neighbors made to keep me and my family safe and free.
At 9:30 a.m. Monday, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2027 will conduct a Memorial Day ceremony at Sunset Memorial Gardens.
I plan to be there. It would be exciting to see the number of spectators surpass the number of participants.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Changes ahead

The only constant in life is change.
The NewsPress, National Wrestling Hall of Fame and the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University experienced change in the last two weeks.
The NewsPress newsroom moved into its news center this week. The news gathering operation is still in the same building. We've moved upstairs in the portion of the building that once housed KOSU. Readers of the printed newspaper won't notice any changes. Those will come in the e-world. We will have more content for our website -- www.stwnewspress.com. The news center will have a studio dedicated to the production of online videos -- including daily Webcasts of the day's most important stories.
It also will allow us to produce more multimedia projects for the website, including slide shows, podcasts, oral histories and video stories.
On stwnewspress.com Thursday, we broke the story that the National Wrestling Hall of Fame is negotiating to buy the Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute and Museum in Waterloo, Iowa. The Gable museum will be a branch of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame if the deal goes through. Buck Clark, the mayor of Waterloo, says the city supports the merger 100 percent.
Wednesday, I spent an hour interviewing the new dean of OSU's Spears School of Business. Dean Lawrence Crosby has big plans for the school, including a new building at the same site by 2015. Read more about Crosby's dreams for the business school in Sunday's NewsPress.

Friday, May 21, 2010

People best part of my job

The best part of being a journalist is the new people you meet almost daily.
Today, I talked with longtime Stillwater entrepreneur Joe George. He wrestled for Oklahoma State, and has had a slew of businesses over the years in Stillwater. He and Myron Roderick opened the Big Eight Drive-In in Stillwater in 1957. Roderick owned it, but George created the Big Eight-conference based menu. George, who will be 73 soon, says he is on his 15th and final business. He owns Sawgrass Equipment, LLC, formerly Honda Power of Stillwater. Read more about George in Sunday's NewsPress.
By telephone, I interviewed former Cushing resident Laura Shofner from her home in Boston. She was on her way to visit friends at Walden Pond. Shofner credits her small-town Oklahoma upbringing with helping her shine on stage in opera and musical theater. On May 8, she sang the national anthem at the unveiling of the Katharine Hepburn stamp, and will be performing all summer on the East Coast. Shofner said she begged her parents to let her do Star Search, the American Idol of the time. Her parents refused, waiting her to have a normal childhood, she said. "I glad they did. I had so many more opportunities in Cushing that I would have had anywhere else," she said. "I was able to spread my wings because I grew up in a small town." Kids growing up in Tulsa or Oklahoma City didn't get those opportunities. "In Tulsa or Oklahoma there are a lot of kids and fewer opportunities," she said. A story about Shofner is slated in June.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Tornado trouble

Don't know about you, but I hunkered down in a small bathroom under the stairs in my two-story duplex while the tornado sirens were blaring and wind whipped around my building on Wednesday. I live a block off S.H. 51 behind a Mexican restaurant. The TV newscasters were saying the tornado is coming right down Highway 51. I wasn't alone in the bathroom. My two dogs were there too, and I had a portable radio with me in case the TV went off. It did. Stupid satellite TV.
I moved here from Florida last July. I tell you, I prefer hurricanes to tornadoes. Hurricanes give you plenty of warning although they are more fickle about when and where they're coming ashore. If a hurricane was coming, I'd go to the store and buy items for my hurricane survival kit. Food, medicines, money because the ATMs would be down for days, extra cans of gas for the car and generator, batteries, first-aid items, non-perishable food, etc.
Tonight, I'm going out to prepare my tornado survival kit. Many of the same items will be in it.
You know the best part of a hurricane or tornado survival kit. Getting to eat all the stuff in it once the hurricane or tornado season ends. Waste not, want not!

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Taking the bus

Have you noticed the price of gas lately? It's sliding closer to the $3 mark. I wouldn't be surprised if it reached $3 a gallon by the Fourth of July. Last week, I took OSU's community buses to and from work for a couple of days. It costs 50 cents to to ride the bus with free transfers at the multimodal station if you need to go across town. It's a great value. A few thoughts about buses. It takes more planning to get across town. You can't just hop in a car and go. You have to be at the bus stop by a certain time and wait at the multimodal station for a while too. It took me about 45 minutes to get from my door to the NewsPress. It's a trip that usually takes 10 to 15 minutes by car, depending on Sixth Street traffic. The buses don't ride as nicely as a car. In fact, its a bumpy ride. The drivers are really nice. It's a plus to have a bus system in a town the size of Stillwater. Several people took advantage of the service. I'm guessing more will be riding if the price of gas skyrockets.