I recently marked my 50th anniversary in my writing career by thinking about the past and musing how words have always been important to me.

My career began as a new reporter at The Hutchinson News following my graduation in 1974, with a journalism degree from Kansas State University.

For almost three decades, I was a small newspaper journalist (reporter, news editor, senior writer), mostly at The Olathe News for 24 years along with two separate years at The Leavenworth Times in addition to three years at Hutchinson. For going on 20 years and still counting, my career was settled at Johnson County Government in various roles, including being editor/writer at The Best Times since 2015.

It has been an interesting, sometimes challenging, always rewarding career. Time flies when you’re having fun in learning/enjoying/sharing the “write” stuff.

My best guesstimate on what five decades of writing means in words comes down to putting together a newspaper story averaging 420 words, five times a week, 50 weeks a year, for 50 years. It adds up to 5.25 million words. That would almost equate to 10 “War and Peace” novels with 1,215 pages and 587,287 words. Most stories, articles and other writings were far, far longer, meaning far, far wordier.

Life is full of stories to tell, write about and share with others. Some stories (traveling with the Bicentennial Wagon Train, writing about an Amish wheat harvest and vanishing farmland in Johnson County, covering local politics when the Johnson County Commission had only three members, reporting the trial of a serial murderer, participating in a Rotary mission to Belize that led to the creation of Heart to Heart International, etc.) are well remembered; most are not.

I now have the pleasure of mentoring and working with a very talented staff representing a new generation of writers/communicators. Most of them are half my age or younger. They have an ongoing challenge of teaching an old dog new tricks at getting the word out using new communication methods and changing technology. I still do not tweet on Twitter (now X) but have done a few podcasts in recent years. One podcast received a Kansas Press Association award this year. Go figure!

I have totally enjoyed being The Best Times editor along with my other writing duties at the county government. This allows me to continue practicing basic journalistic skills, meet interesting people (especially our aging veterans) and put together words that I hope are read, valued and beneficial for the magazine audience. I have appreciated the audience’s patience as I personally digressed about a few cancer and other health challenges, high school reunions while encouraging folks to stay active in every way possible in aging.

Over the years and even now, I’ve always liked seeing if I still hold a candle (or maybe 76 candles at my age) to writers and communication peers, locally and nationally. My career has been blessed with many awards, state, regionally and nationally, but I take pride in joining the ranks of Walt Bodine, Larry Moore and other remarkable KC-area journalists in receiving the Kansas City Press Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

As an old-school journalist and writer, I have always tried to stay out of the story except now in posting this FYI for anyone who might be remotely interested. Let’s face it, 50 years is a long time to do anything.

For many years, it was a tradition among old newspaper cusses like me to type “-30-” at the end of each article for the conclusion of the story. It signaled to the editor that no more pages would be coming. That all the words could be edited and finalized, put into print and publicly shared.

For now, at least, I don’t have an ending yet in my writing career. So, I guess, I close with: -25-