Anniversaries and other memorable dates usually pop into my skull as they occur.
I’m quite good at remembering birthdays, wedding anniversaries (starting with my own) and important dates that come and go.
But this past Friday, a fairly memorable anniversary slipped right on past me. I didn’t even recall it until two days after the fact.
It was 20 years ago, on Jan. 9 that I started a new job in Amarillo. I reported for work at the Amarillo Globe-News on Jan. 9, 1995 after making a two-day drive from way down yonder, in Beaumont, to the High Plains.
I actually remember quite a bit about my arrival at the newspaper.
I had met the staff with whom I would work on a previous visit. We were acquainted, but I would need some time to get to know them, and for them to know me. I remember thinking how blessed I was to be able to work in an environment that enabled me to actually delegate responsibilities to others and to depend on them to do as I asked. They never let me down.
We published two newspapers then. The morning Daily News was the dominant edition; the evening Globe-Times — despite its Pulitzer Prize-winning history — had become second banana in this market.
But oh, man, was it fun to produce those two editions every day.
My task as editorial page editor was to coordinate the work of two editorial writers, each of whom was primarily responsible for providing editorials for a specific edition.
Our secret weapon was our administrative assistant, whose job was to verify letters to the editor and guest column submissions — most of which came unsolicited. She then would edit them, turning raw text into readable essays. She exhibited great patience with our contributors and great skill in working with the text.
We had a part-time editorial cartoonist who illustrated commentary for the Globe-Times. He was, shall we say, a one-of-a-kind character, as most cartoonists tend to be.
The business would evolve over time from those heady days.
Not many years after my arrival, we debuted an online edition. That’s when the change began to accelerate.
I recall early on in the development of our online edition, the young man we hired to run the digital edition boasted that we had 44,000 visitors to the page in a single month! That was big news for us. Well, the numbers kept growing. I don’t know what they are now, but I’m guessing the paper reaches 44 grand about every hour or two.
The changes kept coming.
The fellow who hired me retired in 2002. The young man who replaced him instituted even more changes.
I’m sorry to say that it became less fun as time marched ahead. One of the writers left the paper; we didn’t replace him. Our cartoonist had retired. Our administrative assistant, aka our “secret weapon,” was reassigned to another department. Then our remaining editorial writer was reassigned to another department as well.
I was left to do it myself.
On Aug. 31, 2012, my time at the paper ended. There was no fanfare. Just a “reorganization.” I was told I wouldn’t be doing what I had been doing here for nearly 18 years and for more than three decades all told. The reorganization plan allowed me to apply for another job. That was fine, except that I was qualified to do one thing, which I had done pretty well — or so I thought. Silly me.
I decided to quit. Then I left.
Maybe it was the nature of my departure that brought so little attention to the anniversary of when I arrived on the High Plains.
No worries. Life has been good. I’m still blessed, but in ways I never imagined 20 years ago.