“I think it’s very true when you’re a writer and you sometimes have to spend time poking at part of yourself that normal, sane people leave alone.” ~ Vikram Chandra
A 2012 photo of me that Dustin Barnes entitled, “The Murder Zone,” as I pounded out another story of mayhem and murder.
This morning I forgot my I.D. badge. Again.
This happens at least once a month, and usually three times. When I had it on a clippy thing, I’d forget to unclip it from my jacket and I’d leave it at the house. When I moved it to a lanyard to wear around my neck, I’d forget to take it off and leave it in the car, and then I’d forget it because it was on my bedside table.
So the last few weeks I’ve just been carrying it alone, just the card. Of course, this morning it’s in the pocket of the pants I wore yesterday.
Then, walking to lunch with Ruth and Alex and Dustin, I tripped on a hole in the sidewalk and did a full-on belly flop onto the pavement.
It’s fitting, though, as today is the last day of my tenure at the Clarion-Ledger. It only makes sense that I would leave my badge at home, because it’s one of the things I have been so good at through the years. And falling down. Everyone knows I always fall down. It makes me lovable.
As I was driving in to work, I was thinking about the long and winding road I’ve taken that’s led me here, and of all the talented journalists who have left the Clarion-Ledger before me. I feel like I should have stayed a lot longer so I could live up to the likes of Grace Simmons Fisher, or Chris Joyner, or Rusty Hampton (or so many others — I definitely don’t want to leave anyone out).
And then I thought of all the people. Because that’s what journalism is about: People. So many people I’ve cried on the phone with when they lost a loved one and they were trusting me with the story, believing me when I said I’d write something that would do their loved one justice.
So many people I cried with in person, that I hugged as they cried on my shoulder though we’d just met. And they trusted me, because I was there to tell the world who had been lost. Not just a name, but a little bit of a glimpse into the life that had been cut short, because they deserved to be remembered as more than the latest crime statistic.
I have looked into the eyes of people who still haven’t accepted what has happened, and I have eaten dinner with some who just wanted to sit down with me, one on one, in case I could tell them the details the police couldn’t on how someone they loved died. I am still friends with some of those people.
I have seen bravery in its deepest and most basic form: The kind that forces someone to go on, even though their whole world has been ripped away by someone else’s evil, or by a freak accident that could have happened to anyone. The kind that gathers what’s left from the ashes, be they emotional, spiritual or physical, and begins to build again.
And I did what I could to relay it to you, my readers. At times it has been a lot to carry. But you know what I’m thinking about today? The things I didn’t finish. The girl who called me because her mother was the victim of a serial killer who was never convicted. The homeless man killed when he was burned all over by coals from a grill, and lived long enough to tell everyone who did it, but his killer was never arrested. Every single person who died and I was too far under a mound of work to update when their killer was indicted. Every single person I tried and tried and tried to find more information on, but they had nobody to tell me about them, so all they had to memorialize them was a short blurb in the crime briefs. All the people who called me, asking me for help, trying to get me to write a story because it might bring light to some injustice, or something the police wouldn’t look at, or something that’s just being hushed up, and I didn’t have the chance or the time because breaking news is a fast and unruly animal.
There are names I will never forget:
Romerion Rhodes, a toddler killed in a drive-by shooting.
Jonathan Ojeshina, a guy from Texas who had moved to Jackson and was shot in his yard. When I looked up his facebook, he had one facebook friend, and when I contacted her, she didn’t know he was gone.
Dianne Hearn, whose daughter and I are still friends. She was killed by her ex-boyfriend, though she had just found a man who truly made her happy. Maybe because of that.
Mike Walter, Eric Smith, Meme Stamps, Coater Debose, Eddie Dycus, James Craig Anderson, Larry Thomas, Jim Bevers… and all the others (believe me, just because I don’t name them here doesn’t mean they aren’t absolutely a part of me now. They all are, every one of them). Reporting the story of who they were and how they died and what they left behind was a very personal thing for me, and I tried to make it very personal for you too.
Today I went to a gas station on Bailey Avenue to report on a carjacking. It only makes sense to a crime reporter or maybe a cop, but there’s something comforting and beautiful about some of these neighborhoods that “society types” shun. The people are very real, as is their emotion: their fear, their pride, their pain. As real as anything anywhere else, but there are those who are frightened by those places. I have come to love them.
Now I’ll be working in the public affairs office at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, which is a big change, but a good one. I love helping people, and I know I’ll be able to make a difference there too. The news business is changing, and the days of street-hard newspaper reporters seem to be dwindling. But one thing I got from being a newspaper girl is that at some point I got involved with a volunteer fire department, and that has provided the passion and the bridge I need to go full-time into public service.
I leave behind an office full of people I love, and a calling I believed in. This, at one point, was my dream job, and most people don’t get to say they’ve had that in their life.
I told Grace Fisher two years ago that the only reason I’d ever leave the Clarion-Ledger is if I could go do public affairs for a law enforcement or emergency agency. So I’m lucky to say now I will have had two dream jobs.
And I got to do this (on my lunch break, of course, since the powers that be frown on death-defying experiences):
I leave you with this thought: There are still people who get into this business for the right reasons. There are reporters who want to make a difference. I worked at the Clarion-Ledger with so many of them.
And now I’m crying real tears for the first time today. I think it just became real to me that I’m leaving. Thank you all, readers, coworkers, and critics, for making this the toughest job departure I’ve ever had. I will always be proud to have been a part of the Clarion-Ledger family, and to have been touched by so many of you.
See you at the next disaster, and God bless.
Therese
John 15:13
“I don’t think you can compromise, news either has integrity or it doesn’t. It either is accurate, balanced and fair or it isn’t.” ~ Richard Parsons