Woj Bomb (Courtesy of Schefter)

I remember when my dad retired. Didn't keep in touch with old co workers. I remember my uncle saying that he thought he'd still see old coworkers. He didn't.

Easily the most memorable thing Woj ever wrote is (regardless what widgets we make in our jobs), these jobs,with few exceptions, are just vapor.

 

As someone once said to me, generally speaking:
“They are not your friends. They are your co-workers.”

 

I think about the funerals of two former editors. One I went to and one I didn’t.

My editor in Valdosta died in 2010, seven years after I stopped working for him. That one hit hard because he was the first actual sports editor I worked under after being a one-man band and two previous stops. I was an advertising major before dropping out and never worked on a school paper, not even in high school. So Greg filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge after I had more or less bullshitted my way into a start in the field and did just well enough to move from independent leagues to organized short-season A ball.

We emailed and did the Facebook bit but I hadn’t seen him in years. I was in Birmingham and out of the business by then, but I figured I should go since I was the only one from his time there within driving distance of the funeral in Memphis. The lifestyle columnist back in Valdosta did a fine column on him that more or less became the basis of his eulogy. (He was working in Tupelo when he died, and several of his Daily Journal colleagues came, to their credit).

From Valdosta I moved across Georgia to design and edit news pages in Rome. But the desk chief and I butted heads from the very start and it was clear the chemistry would never work. As fate had it Jim needed a designer (really an ASE without the title) after the last one left and thus a trade was arranged to move me across the room. He didn’t have to do that and he didn’t have to keep me on part time when I decided months later to go back and finish my degree. But he did, and I busted ass to make inspection the best I could.

Jim died in mid-January and I wanted to go to the funeral so badly. But we were working through a final tidal wave of orders from the Fortune 500 client that was leaving us at the end of the month but never worked with us on a plan to gradually ramp down. By then we had laid off or transferred the team I was leading so it was essentially up to me to handle the volume. I didn’t see where we could stand to have me out for even a day, so I didn’t even ask. I still resent that a little.

TLDR: Most co-workers don’t make lasting impressions but some do. And newsrooms way back when had better odds of producing the types of friendships that make you want to see it through to the end.

 

Great post, Dixie.

There have been several people who were good friends and/or mentors early in my career who passed on and I had moved across the country. I would have liked to attend their funeral and show respect for the kindness and friendship they showed to me, but could not.

In one case — the owner of the weekly newspaper I worked at in Michigan’s U.P., who died about a dozen years ago — I was able to write a letter to her son and send a memorial donation, which he appreciated. Still would have been nice to share and hear stories about her interesting life and how she kept a small town newspaper alive as a single mother for 25 years.

 

If they were your friends, you wouldn’t need to be paid to be around them.

 

John Werner was a longtime sports writer at the Waco Tribune-Herald in Texas. His girlfriend-who-eventually-became-his-wife Karen was a news reporter there for a few years before going back to school for graduate degrees and then teaching high school English for many years. She retired a few years ago. John retired just a year or so ago after 41 years at the Trib.

They died this summer. It was ruled a murder-suicide, and it was due to a mental health crisis.

It was heartening to see many, many of their former Tribune-Herald colleagues at the visitation, afterward at the sorta Irish wake at a barbecue restaurant where we all told Werner stories, and the funeral the following day. Several of those attending hadn't lived in Waco for years. A former Baylor SID flew in from the East Coast to pay respects.

 

The great man said it himself ...

 

By the way, this graf kicks ass, too ...

Besides, he knew what his family wanted. Amy was ready for him to go. Years earlier, when Woj disappeared into his phone to report a big story – a DeMarcus Cousins injury, Woj recalls – she asked when she would be one. His kids, Annie and Ben, were ready, too. Just before the NBA draft, Woj called Ben. He was leaning toward quitting and wanted to get his son’s take on it. Ben was blunt. “People think your job is great,” Ben said. “I think your job f---ing sucks. Retire – and go travel with Mom.”

 

Because nothing says "Merry Christmas" like Woj Bomb swag.