Yes It Is, It’s True: Co-workers, bosses and employees

I’ve worked for, beside and supposedly been the boss of plenty of people in my lifetime, but there are some in the now nearly extinct field of journalism who were unforgettable.

I’ve been the boss of two women who were lesbians and not afraid to tell me so. And they taught me lessons about how to treat people who are different with respect.

I’ve been the boss of two women who suffered from bipolar disorder. Both didn’t work out very long. One was nice, but unreliable. The other wasn’t nice and unreliable.

I’ve been the boss of a couple of deceitful employees, one who managed to weasel two “final” paychecks from my employer by having his brother pick up his last check and another who simply didn’t show up for work and lied about why.

I was a co-worker of two female black reporters, one, Stacey, tall, athletic and graceful, the other, Elizabeth, petite, bubbly and feminine. One fellow editor too often called Elizabeth “Stacey,” causing her to depart from her cheerful demeanor to exclaim, “Pete, we don’t all look alike!”

I worked for a narcissistic associate publisher who bordered on sociopathy and who gave me my first taste of a horrible manager who treated his employees like they were slaves on a plantation. He even warned me to stop fraternizing with reporters at local watering holes after work, promising if I wanted to hang out with the hired help he would treat me like one of them.

One of the my earliest co-workers, David Kamysek at the Wayland Globe, used to sell soft drinks and snacks to us. He was both enterprising and hilarious at the same time.

I once had a sports editor who suffered horribly from Type 1 diabetes and one Monday morning he failed to show up at work because he had a seizure at his apartment, hit his head and died.

I had two reporters who were homeless. One was a sports writer who lived in his car and then left because he couldn’t make a living. The other, a woman, asked a fellow reporter if she could park her home/car on the other reporter’s property because she had nowhere else to live.

My first hire as an editor was a middle-aged woman, wife of an Albion College professor and former director of public relations at the college. We still communicate once a year via Christmas cards.

I once agreed to take on a sports writer whose wife didn’t want him working weeknights. I plead temporary insanity.

I once helped a reporter land a job as editor of one of my former newspapers. He didn’t like the job and got out of journalism altogether.

I once sent my sports writer home and lectured him because he was high on marijuana while at work. I told him it was the same as showing up to work drunk and asked him never to do this again. He never did.

I had more than just a few reporters who worked for me who today despise me and told me so when and after they left.

I had one job applicant who refused to take a brief written test I devised, telling me it wouldn’t prove anything. Obviously, I never saw her again.

I had one reporter who disliked me on the job and resigned, but afterward became friends with me and remains so to this day.

I worked with the great David Coverly of Plainwell, best known today as creator of the syndicated cartoon “Speed Bump.” He drew some very controversial cartoons for me when I was editor of the Allegan County News & Gazette.

One of my favorite writers for other papers was the freshly retired Mick McCabe of the Detroit Free Press, who struck up a terrific longtime friendship with Wayland coach Zack Moushegian and with me when I was at Albion. Bless his heart, he never forgot me, one of the little people in the business.

Sports editor Peter Radowick was so poor working for me he left for Beaumont, Texas, and later worked for the now-defunct Houston Post. He told me wisely beyond his years that he much more enjoyed covering high school football than being one of 500 saps in the press box at the Super Bowl.

I knew Pat (“Petroushka”) Staley before she became a member of the writing fraternity, as a young mother and typesetter at ye olde Wayland Globe.

Globe Editor-Publisher Irvin P. Helmey was unrelenting in his insistence for using the five Ws in the lead paragraph of every story — who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how.

I started my career in community journalism in 1972 under the tutelage of Irv and H. Helmey. They both managed to lure me back to West Michigan in 1986 after a 10-year absence. Please don’t hold it against them.

“Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them…”

— “In My Life” The Beatles, 1965