It’s time for what I feel has become a yearly thing, my annual thank Chris Schlaak for everything she does for the paper column. I was asked if I could put together some photos for the school and a lot of it involved going through hundreds of photos, almost entirely taken by Chris. It was a stark reminder of the incredible amount of work she puts into this paper and her community. Thank you Chris, and I should also mention Brandon, her son, for all you do.
It never ceases to amaze me the lengths people are willing to go to in a small town to help when they are asked. There are many examples, but the most recent involved me finishing last week's paper. Oh, it was a nightmare trying to track down so much information last week. Two weeks ago was Memorial Day and this past week, graduation. The amount of information required for both, warrants, hundreds of conversations and I’d wager at least a hundred unique persons.
For Memorial day we ask that the photos included in the paper be requested. This is for two reasons. To try and ensure that only deceased veterans are honored on Memorial Day and living veterans on Veteran’s Day. This doesn’t always happen. The other is because we can’t include everyone we have received photos of over the years. We have more than 350 photos of veterans in our database.
Reed and I do our best to include everyone and this year, I can promise, we received the least amount of disappointed phone calls after the fact than any other year. I only fielded two calls myself and Reed had one that I know of. All I can say is that I made a list of every single person I spoke with who requested photos, as well as everyone who emailed. If I spoke with a reader about a photo request, I was damn sure to include it. I had not spoken with two of those individuals. The one verteran I spoke with, I tried to explain that we would be happy to run his photo in the Veteran’s issue, because, well, he’s alive. He said he would call us back in the Fall. He’s the first name on my list for Veteran’s day.
Graduation. Oh, that was fun! It really was. It was a lot of hoops, but we made it through. Thank you, Deb Bently, and everyone else for your tireless work, both with the school and with us to ensure we have the most accurate possible information. In years past, it was really my siblings, father and myself proofing a lot of those names on graduation because we went to school with those kids. I’m celebrating my five year class reunion this summer and Nathan and Jessica have been out of school a lot longer. It’s harder to proofread names of people you never attended class with.
And then there were the NRAF awards. Thank Laina for putting together the article that she did. It’s important to highlight the great work they did and I’m glad we were able to do so.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people contribute to the newspaper. If readers look back at the last few editions of the paper, there are probably a dozen different authors/contributors of different pieces in the paper. When Panther Press is included there’s more than that. It’s truly incredible. This paper wouldn’t be what it is without the support, backing, and contributions of the local communities. This newspaper truly does belong to the people.