Wednesday, February 5, 2003

Looking all the way back to Vol. 1, No. 1

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

Interoffice memo last week: "Sallie, would you consider doing a column on the occasion of our 10th anniversary (first paper published Feb. 10, 1993)? How ignorant we were (are?), how we winged it for months, how you got involved (we begged), etc. Irreverent, light-hearted approach appreciated, especially in regards to current management. Cal"

Good gosh, have you ever heard anyone leave himself wide open quite like that before? Maybe I'm being set up, but I can't resist. What an opportunity.

You've heard the story before, I'm sure. How The Fayette Sun, a pretty good free weekly in Atlanta counties, shut down abruptly in January, 1993. It had carried my column for many years, and at one point was edited by my friend Viki Brigham. We're still close friends.

At the time The Sun set, I think Hatcher Hurd was editor. We're not.

I'd had the heady experience of seeing my own words in print nearly every week since 1979. Recognition, even if it's only local, can be addictive. And now it was gone.

Before I could figure out how I'd fill my newly idle hours came a call from Dave Hamrick. "We have some people willing to start up a new weekly," he said. "Interested in doing your column and some features? Cal's editor and publisher, and I'll be managing editor. First issue will come out Feb. 10."

I was ecstatic. Beth Bostian also wrote for The Sun, so she, Dave and I got together and divided up responsibilities and discussed deadlines. I think that was the first time I'd even met Dave.

And so it was that Volume 1, Number 1 of The Fayette Citizen was in 24,000 residences and 1,700 businesses on Feb. 10, 1993. Can't get much more "first" than that.

Last week I borrowed the bound copies of every paper we published in 1993 and 1994. It was just too much to read in detail, but I did read the first couple of issues and paged hastily through the rest. Vedddy interesting.Let's look closer.

Vol. 1, No. 1 was a little less colorful than No. 2, but little by little, the front page began looking more and more like it does today. But the first issue lacks a masthead. Who's who in this upstart paper? All the ink about how good the paper is going to be had Cal Beverly's name on it, as editor and publisher. You couldn't tell by the first edition whether he was going to write anything else. Anyone so busy patting himself on the back isn't going to be able to do layout, let alone take notes.

The bylines, then, in 16-page Vol. 1, No. 1 are Dave Hamrick, managing editor; Garry Kranz, sports editor; the Rev. John Hatcher, religion columnist; Beth Bostian; and me.

Beth and I got "Special to the Citizen" under our names. I'm not sure why. Maybe it had to do with the fact that we did not work full-time and go in to the office to enter our material regularly. Also, I think we were both paid by the piece and by the photo as published.

Besides being slightly off with his history ­ Cal told me he didn't actually start for at least six months ­ he also had the nerve to make some promises in print. Possibly the first words he had to eat: "We promise not to clutter up your lawn with soggy, plastic scraps ..." This newspaper was mailed in its infancy.

He also challenged readers to scrutinize our work: "Look for errors and typos ... I'll acknowledge your copyediting skills in a special Readers' Box that will start in the next paper." That didn't last too long either, although I assure you, The Citizen was well done.

"It is our policy to print as wide a variety of opinions as possible." That was one that got me in trouble. My first column, in the second issue, was a warm-fuzzy having to do with morning, spring, the whole "new beginning" theme. The fourth, however, related to then-Gov. Zell Miller's proposal that the state flag be folded.

Amazing ­ that issue remains unresolved. I know my even mentioning it today will bring a new flurry of letters. At the time, the responses ran about 10 to one: 10 lambasting me for my anti battle-flag stance, to one who agreed with me.

By the antagonism it generated, I just knew Cal would give me the boot. Dave stuck up for my flag column, although, he said, for different reasons.

Little did I know. Cal loves controversy, and I played right into his hands. His first big flap. It seemed to go on forever, week after week. One advertiser said he was pulling his ads, and I believe he did ­ but by July he was back in.

Another reader wrote that my recent columns "showed an ever-increasing bitterness in the words expressed." She said the saddest part about this whole thing is that I really believe what I write. That much she got right.

Sometimes letters filled an entire page ­ and this was when you wrote letters on paper and paid postage to have them delivered ­ that's pretty impressive.

I think that's one of the most significant differences in the mere 10 years between Vol. 1, No. 1 and Vol. 10, No. 459. No one adds an e-mail address, and except for a picture of a small boy sitting at his school's computer (singular), their impact on our lives was not yet evident. And telephone numbers: seven digits long. No area codes needed locally then.

On No. 1's front page, the color photo (without credit) was of Patsy and Ed Gullett painting the downtown mural that is an integral part of the local landscape in Fayetteville. Patsy was detailing the irises, Ed was on scaffolding painting the roof of the railroad station, and "Tammra Minteer" was painting ground at sidewalk level.

In the category, "The more things change, the more they stay the same" (see above), here's a piece on the redrafting of Peachtree City's golf cart ordinance. It helped that I was on the committee.

I also covered the airport authority meetings, managed to squeeze in a couple of stories about businesses owned by friends of mine. One, the Wild Bird Store, bit the dust; Verlo's mattresses are still going strong.

The Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting generated a lot of copy and two full pages of copy and photos, mostly lineups and grip 'n grins. Like I said, some things don't change.

The reason for no photo credits, incidentally was probably that we did not have a photographer, and reporters, sometimes an inept lot, usually took pictures to go along with their stories. There was still no hospital in Fayette County, and controversy about how best to bring that about or even whether to build one, controversy carried over from many years before.

Beth covered then-Mayor Bob Lenox's address to the Fayette County Exchange Club, announcing plans for 1993. Talk about irony. "The highway projects Lenox said he hopes to at least get started include the four-laning of Highway 54 to Highway 74, at the Coweta County line, and the stretch between Highway 54 to Georgia 85."

This is interesting: I looked closely, and admittedly hastily, but guess what? Mayor Lenox's picture made the front page one time, in a series I did on Peachtree City's mayors, and showed up only a few times inside. I'd be willing to bet our current mayor's been front page and in color at least 75 percent of the past two years' issues. Hmmm.

The front page of both Nos. 1 and 2 look pretty good, but the inside of No. 2 has a little better look to it. I'd have preferred a tabloid style but there was some good reason why we didn't. Money, no doubt.

From time to time, we carried a brief index on the front page. I'd like to see that revived, with columnists included.

Ah! At last, in No. 2, a masthead that identifies our staff and what they do. In addition to those named earlier, we have Sam McCormick, advertising director; Diann Cupertino, classified director; Angela Bean, advertising sales; Leslie Watson, office manager.

If you look at today's masthead, with its 31 employees and "regular contributors," you'll note that of the 10 listed above, only five are still associated with The Citizen. Cal, still High Caliph, and John Hatcher, Diann, and Angela.

I wish you could see No. 3's front page photo. Here's this huge shaggy dog named Blue, eyeball to eyeball with his owner, Anne Schlenkert of Peachtree City. The Irish wolfhound with the enormous feet resting on Anne's shoulders had won Best of Breed at the Westminster Kennel Club a week earlier. My story and my photos, and they're pretty good a decade later.

In about a month, Lee Howell was writing political stories, Garry Kranz became news editor while still writing the occasional sports story, and Steve Belli was aboard as sports editor.

The Citizen was there in April when a car flew across Ga. Highway 85 from Wendy's to the Fina station, where it wedged up under a tanker delivering 27,000 gallons of gasoline. Dave Hamrick grabbed a camera and got a spectacular shot of the column of fire and smoke boiling into the sky behind McDonald's golden arches. If memory serves, it was later determined that the 55-year-old motorist had had a heart attack, stroke or seizure that jammed his foot on the gas.

Ted Meier writes a nice golf column ­ he actually makes the game sound like fun. Johnnie Mack was turned away from his senior prom because he was wearing kilts. That was one of those stories that grew legs and was picked up in Scotland.

Suddenly, as that first year flew by, computers appear. Or at least I finally began noticing ads for repairing and selling computers. The May 26 issue shows young Miles Bryant getting "hands-on experience" on the Hood Avenue School's computer. AIS was promoting a Mac as a graduation gift: $1993 for 4 megabytes of RAM, an 80-megabyte hard drive, and a 2400 baud modem.

By now I was on computer ­ a 286, I think ­ but I still had no way to get my copy to the office except to put everything on disk and carried the disk to Diann Cupertino, who lived in Peachtree City. My first modem ran at about 2400 baud, if it ran at all. I pine for those particular "good old days" not at all.

Fayetteville's Melissa Segars needed a heart/lung transplant. The Citizen ran a regular calendar of events trying to raise $1 million. The effort had earned well over $600,000 when Melissa died of complications following surgery late that summer.

By March, the Rev. Dr. Ike Reighard, then of New Hope Baptist Church in north Fayette, occasionally contributed a column. The Rev. Hatcher and, later, the Rev. Bob Tyler were our religious mainstays.

In July, Cal writes a whole-page letter "from the Publisher to You," and it reads like those late night commercials that add on a free set of ginza knives if you buy their grill, and an automatic trout blender comes with it FREE! Again he promises no tossed papers.

He also introduced The Citizen Weekend, which I loved, but which, apparently, was not so loved by readers. It was, however, a precursor to The Peachtree Citizen Review, The Coweta Citizen Review, The South Fulton, etc.

At the end of the year, the masthead still included Cal (now just publisher), Diann, Angela, Dave, and Garry. Shortly after start-up, Leslie Watson, office manager; Sally Hope and Debra Colson, advertising sales; Buddy Grizzard, sports editor; Judy Kilgore, production assistant; and Lesley Beverly, classifieds. Carolyn Cary was adding historic notes whenever she could. Ad director McCormick was the only one missing from among the start-up crew.

Christine Peters became responsible for special sections. But Beth and I remained personae non gratae ­ rating only "Special to the Citizen," which sounds like someone who occasionally drops off prom pictures and club doings. Eventually I got up the nerve to point this out to Dave, who mumbled something I no longer remember, but not much later, we got identified as "Regular Contributors" in the masthead, and "Staff Reporter" in our bylines.

Fourteen churches advertised in the "Religion" listings in the first issue; 62 advertised in last week's paper. Either we're getting more religion, or they're making enough money to advertise now.

Checked up on a few of the names above. Garry Kranz is apparently still writing, but mostly electronically, in Virginia. Beth's teaching school in Winston-Salem, N.C. since her son and daughter are old enough to look out for themselves. Cal's still here, now with a wife who keeps him a little mellower. He's grown a beard since the early days, and I'd advise him to keep it. Those first mug shots ....

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