Lenore

Lenore at the Mighty Mezz 13 years ago. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

“I write a blog; been doin’ it 10 years,” I said to Lenore Friend, with whom I worked at the Messenger Newspaper after my stroke.
“Yeah, I remember that,” she said. “You called me ‘Queenie.’”
“I remember that vaguely, but I’m 72 years old,” I said. “I don’t write like that any more.”
We were in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise Gym. I just finished my workout, and she just began hers.
The Canandaigua Daily-Messenger still exists, but the Mighty Mezz I worked for is gone.
It was owned by the Ewing (“you-ing”) family during my tenure, and they had to sell after I retired.
I’ve said it before: best job I ever had.
My pay was a pittance, but sometimes it’s better to work for a great place.
We were a happy ship: snide remarks and sick jokes. I fit right in.
Beachballs flew around the newsroom, and nerf-balls bombarded the office television when “Teletubbies” came on.
I started after my stroke as an unpaid intern, but soon was employed.
They had the moxie to allow me to try things which contributed to my recovery.
During my time there the newspaper switched to computer generation of pages, and I reveled in it.
I always say what remained of my brain after my stroke took off, and they encouraged it.
My official job title was “typist,” but I never typed anything. I figured out computer-tricks with Microsoft Word®, among other software. I generated reams of copy that might blow an entire page.
Like school honor-rolls or wealth management columns. Once we got contributors to e-mail — and that was a struggle — I could process with Word and have ready to publish in a day or two.
My wife and I developed a way of doing our stockbox in five minutes instead of two hours.
Editors were amazed by some of my tricks.
“No way can you do that stockbox in five minutes!”
“Can too,” I said.
A stroke rehab counselor visited to suggest he could get my job back driving bus.
I refused.
My biggest fan was our Executive Editor.
He eventually left when ownership changed to become head public-relations honcho at a nearby community college. He hired away Lenore.
I always think highly of him because he took me on when I was a wreck from my stroke.
He since died of a heart-attack, leaving Lenore to become that college’s head public-relations honcho.
I always liked Lenore. I suppose there may have been a time I didn’t; I don’t remember.
I know it’s also possible I was perceived as negatory. I’m not approachable. This may have been exacerbated by my stroke.
But there we’d be late Saturday night, putting together the last of the Sunday paper. Lenore was Sunday Editor, and we were still doing paste-up. I was pasting-up back then, and it always seemed Lenore and I were finishing the Sunday paper — except for Sports. Lenore left.
My calling her “Queenie” was actually veneration, although it could be perceived the other way.
She’s a newsy, and I like that. She also could write well.
No wonder that previous Executive Editor hired her away.
What really did it was as follows:
A stringer faxed us a story about a town-meeting.
Since I became proficient at O.C.R. scanning, a news-editor asked if I could scan the fax. They wanted to run it on the front page.
A stringer is someone not on the newspaper staff, who gets assigned and paid for filing a report.
O.C.R. scanning is producing computer-text of a typewritten document. Optical-Character-Recognition, a computer software.
It’s a lot quicker than retyping into the system.
“When you’re finished,” the editor said; “give it to Lenore.”
So I scanned it, and it was dead.
What appeared was the stringer’s story rewritten by Lenore. She gave it a kicker, and made it more lively.
Lenore saved the story! I was impressed. —And only the stringer’s byline.
My guess is “Queenie” was when I first began blogging.
Just about every superior I worked with at the Messenger was venerable: best job I ever had.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• RE: “Paste-up........” —Back then newspaper pages were pasted up on full-size cardboard page dummies. Story galleys were waxed in back and stuck to the page dummies. Those completed dummies were later photographed to produce a full-size negative of the newspaper page, with which a printing-plate was produced. Production of the story galleys was computerized, but it was an ancient mainframe based system.
• A “kicker” is the first line of a story. It’s meant to attract readers.