M. Appeal (Mass Appeal)

It’s a treasure chest that unlocks my past and answers my haunting questions. Have I had a good life? Have I followed my desires? Have I been happy and in love?

Or it’s a random collection of mundane daily occurrences, frustrations, petty complaints and mean thoughts.

Either way, what I might find scares me. Or maybe it’s what I won’t find.

That makes opening the box probably a lose-lose proposition if you think about it. So, why do it?

I’ve been holding onto what’s inside for almost half a century because some part of me knew this day would come, and I have to trust myself.

I had forgotten about the letters until my father was suddenly hospitalized a few months ago. “The doctors are keeping him alive until we get there,” my sister said grimly when she called to tell me. Slightly shaky, I walked over and pulled a short stack of ragged envelopes from the box as though they had been waiting there to keep me standing upright as my closet enveloped me the way his arms once had.

This particular batch included letters I had written my Dad over my life and that he had returned to me in a bunch, angry after I confronted him about his drinking and blamed him for my struggles. “I told you I had a stack of letters from a happy and accomplished young woman who once loved me, and here they are,” he said to prove me wrong. I clung to them now as I boarded the plane headed for the task bearing down on me — appearing composed and coherent at his bedside.

Sure enough, my missives were full of humor, accomplishment and professions of gratitude for his help and support.

“To this day whenever I have what seems at the time to be an insurmountable problem,” I wrote in 1976 when my Dad was 20 years younger than I am now. “I have to keep myself from calling you to come bail me out. You’ve always been an endless supply of — knowledge, patience (albeit sometimes strained) and funds.”

They didn’t put the lie to my complaints but reminded me there are many sides to loving someone. They provided inspiration for the short speech I got to whisper in his ear when it was time to say goodbye. I thanked him for the good things he did for me — the time he talked me out of dropping out of college and his unwavering appreciation of my jokes, among them. For the first time, I also realized that, unlike me, he had lived his life without the safety net he had provided for me. His biological father was a mystery to him; we don’t even know where he got the last name we used. His mother was “Sug,” a small-town Texas waitress whose serial marriages did little to keep her afloat financially.

When I told him about my realization just a few hours before he died, he was able to say with a surprisingly strong voice under the oxygen mask and with his eyes closed: “I tried.”

Can any of us really say much more?

Thinking back on that profound moment, I have to believe that I knew I would need those letters, and so I’ve decided to read the rest of these messages-in-a-bottle to perhaps provide additional perspective — for the next phase of life. Maybe they will also help me with my endless battle — the human battle —to accept time and its passing.

I’ll think of it as Throwback Thursday on steroids — not nostalgia exactly, but a way of understanding the past to begin to bring the future into focus. I’ve written about time travel before and it’s not just me who finds it a powerful enhancement to life.

I don’t know what’s in the letters I’ve collected from friends and family over a lifetime. As a journalist, that’s the way I’ve always worked, gathering raw material — interviews, background, description — that may or may not make it into the final product. Most reporters have a sixth sense about when they have enough material to work with, but they usually don’t know exactly what’s there until they sit down to write.

I’ve been looking for a writing project as I stare down the barrel of retirement and perhaps irrelevance. I’ve been eager lately to hear what others say about lessons learned as they approach life’s end. As I mentioned, I’ve had to come to grips with some aspects of death lately — my father-in-law and my own father, with more to come, of course.

These last few years — seeing my children go to college and start their own lives, letting go of some hopes and dreams — have been the hardest. That might be partly because I’ve spent a lot of time in the past on stupid concerns, ways of thinking and bad behavior. I guess I’ll find out just how much, won’t I?

I used to think my life would make an interesting memoir, with me an unlikely product of the Women’s Movement who overcame an oppressive upbringing in the South to become a worldly journalist, college professor, editor and writer. But the internet has made me doubt that. The sheer number of fascinating and heroic human stories we’re now exposed to is astounding. It’s hard to explain to those who have grown up online how little one could know about the world or other people in it before the digital age.

I remember yearning to know what went on in other people’s lives. The only chance you had was if you spent time with another family in their home, but that was rare. People were only what you imagined them to be, and I usually imbued them with what I realize now were impossibly high standards of intelligence, generosity and kindness. Now, thanks to the internet, we know, for example, that being rich and famous is no vaccine against stupidity. Even Olympic athletes have identity problems.

As a kid I would wonder if this life with its inequities was the way it was supposed to be. Is allowing only children of a certain color to live in a certain part of town, a father who often belittled and laughed at his children, mothers who spent their days mopping floors and washing clothes — was this okay with everyone? Did we all agree that this was fine? I questioned.

What were other people’s thoughts? What did people think of each other — of me? We didn’t know like we do now, thanks to the age of too much information.

The nearest things we had to looking into others’ minds, even as near in time as 20 years ago, were letters, hand-crafted — artisanal! — communication devices. When I look at the stacks of them from the various eras of my life — middle school, high school, college, young adulthood and beyond — I’m amazed that people sat down to write, address and mail them, just to keep in touch. Many of them are from my oldest and dearest friend — the handwriting as familiar to me as my own.

I’m writing this now with paper and pen as a way of trying to relive the experience (and also because I inadvertently and perhaps auspiciously walked out without my laptop on my way to a writing getaway).

It’s not painful. It allows time for gathering thoughts and I’m forced to slow my pace. The writing isn’t coming easily; not that it often does. But the gathering part of my life is more over than not. I’ve got the story. Just heading back to the office to write it.

I’m having regrets that I didn’t stand up and speak at my former UPI boss David Wiessler’s memorial service. Dave would understand that I composed this after the fact because he appreciated the written word over speeches and he wouldn’t judge me for a missed opportunity.

Remembering Dave’s life reminded me how lucky I was as a young woman to have had the great bosses I had in the beginning. When I started out in journalism, women were just entering the workforce in big numbers and it was new territory, although I didn’t think of it that way at the time.

It was a challenge for a woman like me, who came from the South, where we were often told to sit quietly, look pretty and for God’s sake, not say anything offensive. I didn’t have an Ivy League education, mentors or sponsors.

When I went to UPI what I did have was a couple of years of experience at a newspaper in Monroe, LA, where I worshipped my Lou Grant-type boss who occasionally yelled but also liked my leads and gave me a baseball bat for protection before putting me on the police beat. When I got one of my first big stories, he took me to the basement of the building to watch the papers roll off the presses — my name on Page 1.

Later, I couldn’t believe I had convinced UPI to hire me. At the time, it was one of the most recognizable news organizations in journalism — a venerable wire service with bureaus around the world. Few knew that when it faltered financially in the 1980s it was the canary in the coal mine of journalism.

But, by the time I got to Dave I had some experience, though not in Washington, where I had longed to be since I watched the Watergate scandal unfold while in college. UPI had no training for managers — not unusual in journalism — but I had already had a lot of good ones, and Dave kept up the tradition.

Dave was tall and he was the boss — which was enough to intimidate me. But he had a way of hunching his shoulders, thoughtfully rubbing his chin and pushing up his constantly slipping glasses that lessened the effect. He was quiet, but he wasn’t unassuming. He was calmly and thoughtfully in charge.

A lot was said yesterday about the way Dave led the Washington team in covering the shooting of President Reagan by John Hinckley in 1981. UPI was the one major news organization not to report that White House Press Secretary Jim Brady had died, winning a Pulitzer Prize nomination in the process (but coming in runner-up). I wasn’t there but after I got to Washington there were plenty of other examples of Dave’s leadership in handling disasters — the Challenger explosion, the Iran-Contra scandal and my attempts to be a reporter on Capitol Hill.

It was a given that Dave was there and I took him for granted, frankly, until I left UPI for other news companies.

That’s when I learned just how special Dave was because what followed was a long line of bosses who weren’t measured or calm, and oftentimes, not even in charge. Usually they ruled by ego, self-interest and their own fear — examples of the typical asshole boss with whom I thankfully hadn’t become familiar until later in my career.

A few years ago, I had my own opportunity to become the boss. I immediately found myself harkening back to my days at UPI with Dave, Ron Cohen, Billy Ferguson and others under whom I had worked. I used them as my models. When issues came up with the young reporters I managed, I often asked myself, “What would Dave do?”

I wanted to believe it came naturally for Dave, and maybe it did. (The Reagan shooting is a great example, if you think about it. UPI was willing to wait — extremely difficult under the pressure of breaking news — while the biggest media presences on the planet were reporting one of the biggest “scoops” in history.) But I learned as a boss that being quietly in charge and putting your own ego aside, is the much more difficult choice. Being an asshole boss is easy, and lazy. It’s a parent saying do this because I say so, rather than because I’ve taught you another way.

Dave wouldn’t have wanted anyone on his staff to do what was easy, and I know now that he carried that ethic over to his own management style. He was never once the asshole boss, and I’ve learned to understand how remarkable that was.

After Dave’s memorial service, my husband, Bill Trott, also formerly of UPI, asked me if I thought it was the company’s culture — with its slightly outlaw mentality — or our youth that made our time there seem so remarkable. I have to think now that it was the leadership — the bosses — who at least contributed a great deal to the experience.

Dave and the other exceptional editorial leaders at UPI came from an assumption that their people were good at their jobs. They had hired these folks and they played to their reporters’ strengths, letting go of the rest.

When you talked to Dave he listened. He didn’t criticize, knowing we’d live to fight another day. Until he didn’t. But he gave those of us who worked for him such a gift in the process.

Densie Webb has a new novel out.

If you’ve never gone “Back to the Future,” the author advises it’s not only possible but worth the trip.

By Danna Walker

I didn’t laugh as much as I thought I would at my 40th high school reunion, but I cried a bit more than anticipated.

You think you remember a lot from high school. Actually, you do. But you’ve forgotten a lot, too, so be prepared to have your historical constructions rearranged.

As my son prepares to graduate — in the spring, I hope he can look back four decades later, as I have, and come away grateful for his life and appreciative of the privilege of still being on the planet. Not everyone makes it this far.

First, if you’re planning on going, give yourself a pat on the back for taking a brave step. Also, keep expectations low. It’s probably not the time to right old wrongs. Be prepared to accept one of my sayings: Life is cumulative. Your decisions and actions result in something. Be ready to be grateful, even smug at times, but also to understand regret if it stares you in the face.

The way I got through it all was by taking my oldest and dearest friend along. She moved away before high school but had known many of my friends. Plus, she has an uncanny ability to recognize faces changed by years of who knows what — roads taken or not, decisions made or put off, and too many diets that succeeded or failed.

When I got notification of the reunion, I had recently concluded my lifelong to-do list. It included being a Washington reporter, getting a Ph.D., having a couple of kids and buying at least one brand-new car (that was eight years ago). So, I wanted to see how my list stacked up against my classmates’. I imagined lots of joking and do-you-remember whens.

I knew I had my friend convinced to go when I got the list of attendees. On it was a name we had repeated often over the years: Steve Walters.

Think 14, white-blonde hair, piercing blue eyes with black lashes, calculatedly cool motor scooter, ID bracelet waiting for a “steady” date. My friend and I had both possessed that coveted chunk of silver at different times. He was our first boyfriend, and he was going to be at the reunion.

When we walked up to the check-in table at the meet-and-greet fish fry at Pierremont Oaks Tennis Club in Shreveport, LA, we got so caught up in the hugs and “Oh-my-Gods” that I actually forgot about Steve. But my friend was scoping out the room, and then, in the middle of my bite of catfish and hush puppies, said, “I think that’s him.” I didn’t know whom she was talking about, especially after I took a look at the short, bald fellow who wore Western jeans of an odd green color.
“Who?

“Oh my God, Steve?” I asked, finally catching on. “No, that can’t be him. I think he’s that nice looking, gray-haired guy over there,” I added, noticing for the first time that there was a sea of like-colored heads among the room of about 100.

After a stealth mission involving getting close enough to read his name tag, my friend had somehow seen beyond the years to identify the Steve we had giggled over for decades. We gathered our wits for what turned out to be a disappointing encounter – one in which Steve remembered nothing about either of us, and, yet, seemed eager to want to get reacquainted, possibly immediately at a nearby hotel. It was a short conversation.

We couldn’t wait to get home to tell my mother, who amazingly, also remembered Steve Walters and his motor bike.

On Day Two, we did a walking tour of my high school after a ceremony for those who didn’t live to see their 40th reunion, and there were quite a few of those – Linda Inglehart with the beautifully streaked, waist-length hair whom I used to walk behind and try to imitate; Paul Winters, who took me to prom junior year; Debbie Stinson, of course, whose house was near mine and didn’t live through senior year due to a car accident; and Steve Brandeis, whom I once kissed briefly and illicitly.

As I walked the same hallways they used to walk, I started to experience a parallel universe. I went into the girls’ bathroom and could have sworn I saw myself, staring into the long mirror, measuring the progress of my bangs as I grew them out junior year. I had a four-decade-old urge to sneak a cigarette.

But it was on the way home that the real out-of-body experience occurred. On impulse, I pulled the rental car into the circular drive at our former middle school.

My friend of 43 years and I walked to the outdoor breezeway, taking courage in each other’s presence. The memories came slowly at first but gained momentum with each step.

Shocked at the state of the low-slung utilitarian buildings, which seemed stuck in time, we said nothing as our brains churned out images faster than we could put them into words.

We hurried our pace, trying to keep up with the memories — turning here, then there, accurately predicting the names of the rooms as we approached: Choir Room. Cafeteria. Gym.

We peered through a window to see that the hallway flooring was the same mottled asbestos tile that was old when we were students, chunks of it missing. The home economics room still had its kitchenette where we learned cooking and witnessed a classmate lose control of her bladder and run out of the room, mortified and teary-eyed. Neither of us had remembered that moment until we were there, through the looking glass of our former lives.

We turned to see the playground’s splotchy turf, and I stared at the worn sidewalk with the once familiar runners of St. Augustine grass crawling across its cracks. Then, we cried, too, at seeing the then and now so starkly and the sudden understanding of the enormity of all that had occurred in our lives since we had left that place. We had far exceeded its innocent expectations and that made us both sad and grateful.

If you’ve ever watched one of those movies in which people return to their pasts and you’ve pined to do just that – I advise going back, preferably with an old friend. I took the journey with a spirit of forgiveness for my struggles and mistakes. Look at me, I thought, as I stared at a mirage of myself in the corridors where I had once walked, never imagining where I’d be in the world 40 years later.

There’s something about being in the same physical space in which you once lived such an intense daily existence — rife with new experiences — that allows you to feel the full force of the years gone by.

I was up for whatever came my way the final night of my 40th high school reunion.

We entered the ballroom of the East Ridge Country Club in Shreveport, LA, and at least one member of my old gang was there – my friend, Carolyn, who didn’t go off to college with us but got married, instead, and remains so, to the same man, with a grandchild and another on the way.

I looked for familiar faces and I panicked a bit when I remembered people who didn’t remember me. At the high school that morning I had recalled so few of the teachers and I had forgotten what an amazing football team we had; we were state champions during my tenure.

But then the reverse occurred — some people lit up when they saw my face, though my recollections of them were vague. It made me believe that somehow the universe’s tally sheet was balanced, for once.

Perhaps most astonishing was that I recalled some events exactly right: the field parties in some poor farmer’s cow pasture, the black-light room at Jay Singleton’s house, the crabby English teacher who kicked Kay Miles and me off the newspaper staff.

There were also the weekends when a group of us would explore old buildings in downtown Shreveport, LA, once lying to a cop that we were architecture students and so had business being there.

I remembered the summer parties in an African-American neighborhood during a time of imposed segregation. The Jax beer in tubs was cold under lights strung outside wood-framed shotgun houses. We danced and lolled on the grass.

I had my share of adventures, and four decades later I got to share them with some of those who were there.

The day after the reunion, a classmate whom I somehow missed seeing there called and asked if he could come to my mother’s to catch up. He had a confession to make.

He had tried to find me because he said he felt guilty for years over something he had done in a fit of jealousy in 1975. Upset that I had gone out with a friend of his, he bashed in a headlight on my date’s car, he admitted, and he hoped I could forgive him.

Mark Goodin stood in my mother’s driveway, hemming and hawing a bit, and for a moment I was 16 again, standing barefoot in cutoffs and a t-shirt, feeling freshly powerful. He remembered vivid details of my past, confirming my own recollections and naming names I had long forgotten.

I thought of the possibility that perhaps he and a long-known friend had talked about me over the years, just as my friend and I had done with Steve.

Why do we remember so vividly whom we remember? Once upon a time I would have had to analyze it. But after 40 years, it didn’t matter. Opportunities and connections were made and lost. My past was my own but part of others’ lives, too.

Ultimately what I took away was some knowledge about my place in the world then, an acceptance of how I spent my time and what I was interested in. It was a brief chance to assess an important part of my life and claim it as my own.

This essay was originally published Jan. 2, 2012 on Columbia Patch. A shorter version appeared in the Shreveport Times. Some names have been changed.

Guest post by Sharon O’Malley, freelance journalist

I’m up in the mountains for a few days by myself, and I finally had an hour to sit down and read Obama: The President’s Historic First Year in Quotes from cover to cover. I enjoyed reading it so much–I knew I would, because I find him so inspirational–that I jotted down a few notes about it.

Although the book is about his first year in office, it brought to mind his emergence on the “scene” at the 2004 Democratic Convention. The rapture of his speech that night is something I’ll never forget. Starting then, it was his words that made America notice him; his words that made so many of us fall in love with him and place our hope and trust in him.

Your book is an homage to his words–and so vividly and in a beautifully balanced way, shows his progression (or maybe I should say regression) from Inspirational Obama to Practical Obama to Come ON, People! Obama–from candidate/beacon of hope to down-to-business president to stymied-by-politics-but-still-in-charge potential one-termer.

The quotes you chose to include reveal the breadth of the man: inspirational, tough-as-nails, full of common sense, a little bit funny, a dad, powerful, humble, hopeful and above all, clearly honored to hold the office of president. I’m not sure I “got” that last bit until I read your book. The book captures his elegance and his essence. I think I like him a little better than I did before I started reading it.

Here are my two favorite quotes from the book. Both resonate with me personally:

“I come to embrace the notion that I haven’t done enough in my life; I heartily concur. I come to affirm that one’s title, even a title like president of the United States, says very little about how well one’s life has been led–that no matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.”

I absolutely feel that way about myself (except for the being president part!!!) and how amazing that an icon of world history feels that way, too.

The other one I love:

“One of the things that I think is most valuable about sports is that you can play a great game and still not win.”

I’m reading Tom Peters’ new book, the Little Big Things, and one of his things is to “celebrate failures.” Obama’s quote put that in perspective for me.

Speaking of perspective, I appreciated so much having your notes under the quotations. A quote like the one about his new dog was readable and memorable on its own, but in the context of Truman’s prior comments about his own dog, made so much more sense–and was much funnier.

The other “editing” victory in this book is this: Although the quotations are tiny snippets of speeches and statements, you didn’t stop at the obvious “sound bite.”

In many cases, you continued the quotation to give it context and follow-up. So often as reporters, we stop at the cool part of the quote, which serves our purpose but doesn’t always reveal the speaker’s purpose. That you allowed Obama to ramble just a little added texture and background that really helped engage me as a reader.

The layout and photos are beautiful as well. I know you got stock photos from the White House so they are, of course, all flattering and somewhat staged, but they piece together like a scrapbook of anyone’s special year. We always choose our best photos–and the ones that tell the story the best.

“Scrapbook” probably isn’t a word that you kept in mind when compiling the book, but I mean it as a compliment.

It’s a warm and positive look back at a year in the life. (My favorite photo is the one of Obama saluting with the soldiers. He’s smaller than they are and dressed differently, and it brought to mind the stark reality that he’s the commander in chief of a military that he never served in.)

Thanks for giving me this lovely book. I’m going to save it and offer it to others to read. I hope they’ll leave it, as I did, feeling about Obama a little more like I did when he was using his gift of language to win my vote.