25 random things, but not a chain letter

This week my boss, Gazette Co. CEO Chuck Peters, “tagged” me in a Facebook application called “25 Random Things.”

As closely as I work with Chuck, I learned some interesting things about him through the 25 facts he posted. I saw that I was supposed to post my own 25 random things, then tag Chuck and 24 other people. I didn’t mind sharing some facts about myself, but the tagging process felt a bit like a chain letter. Plus I was busy when Chuck tagged me, so I knew it would be a few days before I would be able to compile my 25 random facts.

Then yesterday I saw that John Robinson, editor of the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., noted in his Twitter feed that 25 Random Facts was “officially dead” now that a newspaper (the Charlotte Observer) had written about it. The story explained both the upside I had noted, learning interesting facts about people you sort of knew, as well as the downside, that chain letter thing.

I tweeted back at John, asking whether I needed to tag my boss back if he had tagged me before the game officially died. John responded with some sound advice for anyone whose boss is active in social networks: “I always respond to a tag by the boss.”

So I’m doing my 25 random facts in this blog and I’ll link to it in a Facebook update for any friends there who are interested. But I won’t do the chain-letter style tagging. So here are 25 random things about me:

1. I’ve never been to the town that’s my official birthplace, Romulus, N.Y. (I was born on Sampson Air Force Base, but births were registered in Romulus, a town out the back gate of the base.) When Mom and Dad went to “town,” they went to nearby Seneca, out the front gate, and Mom is sure we never went to Romulus, even though that’s what my birth certificate says. I’d like to get there someday.

2. One of the highlights of my six years in Kansas City was when Mike Waller, editor of the Star and Times, gave me his tickets to Game 2 of the 1985 World Series (last time the Royals sniffed a World Series). Charlie Leibrandt pitched eight great innings. Alas, Dick Howser left him in for too much of the 9^th inning and the Cardinals came back to win that game. But the Royals came back to win the Series.

3. The first paper I carried (Columbus Citizen-Journal), first paper I wrote for professionally (Evening Sentinel in Shenandoah, Iowa) and one of the papers where I was an editor (Kansas City Times) are no longer published.

4. As a kid, I dreamed of being a newspaper reporter when I grew up. I listened to University of Utah basketball games on the radio at night (when my parents thought I had gone to bed) and I took notes and wrote sports stories for an imaginary newspaper of which I was publisher, editor, sports columnist and sole reader.

5. I married my high school sweetheart, Mimi Johnson, after my sophomore year of college. We have three sons, Mike, Joe and Tom, all grown, and two daughters-in-law, Susie and Kim.

6. I didn’t understand Twitter at all the first time I checked it out. But I gave it a chance and I have tweeted more than 3,400 updates, gathered more than 700 followers and become a persistent and probably at times annoying Twitter advocate. Since I started in this business getting paid by the inch, I think it’s good that Twitter’s teaching me to make points in 140 characters.

7. The Catholic archbishop of Omaha testified under oath that one of my stories (that he didn’t like) was accurate.

8. I first started writing for publication as a sophomore at Reynoldsburg High School in Ohio, joining the staff of the Doubloon, the school paper.

9. My first newspaper training gig was at the St. Joseph News-Press and Gazette in 1984. After I decided in 1997 to make training a serious pursuit, my next gig then was at the York News-Times (not to be confused with the New York Times). Since then I’ve trained journalists and newspaper executives in 41 states, eight Canadian provinces, Mexico, Japan, Germany and Ecuador.

10. My college newspaper at Texas Christian University was the Daily Skiff (sorry, I can’t explain why). I was editor for two semesters.

11. I got a fan letter from “Dear Abby” (the original, not her daughter, who’s writing the column now) for my reporting on the Social Security “notch,” an issue that was hot for people of a certain age group but never gained traction with the general public or Congress.

12. I grew up on and near Air Force bases. My father, Luke Buttry, a chaplain, was stationed in New York, Florida, England, Utah, Japan and Ohio.

13. I spent 364 days as editor of the Minot (N.D.) Daily News in 1991-92. I am hoping to last longer at The Gazette. When I got fired, the readers were much more upset that the publisher also dropped Mimi’s columns. Four other North Dakota newspapers quickly picked up her columns. The Omaha World-Herald eventually picked me up.

14. My grandmother, Francena H. Arnold, was a successful novelist and the best storyteller I ever heard. I used to volunteer to “wash” the dishes with Grandma when she visited, which meant that Grandma washed dishes while I stood around with a towel that never got wet, spellbound by her stories.

15. My first writing job was covering sports for the Evening Sentinel in Shenandoah, Iowa, my senior year of high school, hired by Chuck Offenburger.

16. I coached my oldest son Mike’s soccer team for one season when he was in second grade. We didn’t score a single goal.

17. Yankee pitcher Ron Guidry asked me to take his picture at Royals Stadium in the 1977 American League playoffs. I can explain to you sometime if you like why he should be in the Hall of Fame.

18. I pioneered user-generated content for the Fort Dodge-based Hometown section of the Des Moines Register (a hyperlocal-news pioneering project) and for the Minot Daily News with a weekly “Your Page,” featuring reader-submitted writing, photography and recipes.

19. When I carried the Columbus Citizen-Journal as a youth in Ohio in the 1960s, I would awake at about 4 a.m. to read stories of space travel, racial strife and the Vietnam War, dreaming that I would be the person to write those stories someday.

20. A retired English schoolteacher, Mrs. Shaw, taught me to read and write (and to love the written word) when my asthma made me too sick to start school. I have a painting by Mrs. Shaw hanging in my office. “Old Yeller” was my favorite book that I read for Mrs. Shaw, though I don’t like dogs (I guess no other dog could measure up to Yeller). Years later as a freshman at TCU, I covered the author, Fred Gipson, when he came to speak on campus.

21. I have interviewed or personally covered five presidents (Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 43, Obama), five Nobel Peace Prize winners (Jody Williams, Henry Kissinger, Mikhail Gorbachev, Carter and Al Gore) and Pope John Paul II. I guess I thought that was impressive when I dropped Gorby’s name once to a class of sixth-graders. One of them asked who he was.

22. I spent nearly 10 years at the Des Moines Register in two hitches spread over four decades. I was there for the 1982 death of the afternoon Tribune, 10 days after Tom, my youngest son, was born.

23. I had a cancerous tumor and a section of my colon removed in 1999 (10^th anniversary coming up in August). Another section of colon was removed in 2006, but the lumps that prompted the surgery were benign.

24. The first time I visited the American Press Institute as a discussion leader, I thought it would be a cool place to work someday. Three years later, I worked there (for a little over three years) and it was a cool place to work. I was delighted to be back there for a visit this week.

25. I am only four degrees separated from Kevin Bacon (my middle son, Joe, was an extra in “Election,” directed by Alexander Payne, who directed Jack Nicholson in “About Schmidt.” Nicholson starred with Bacon in “A Few Good Men.”).

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