Three and a half months. That’s how long it has been since I last wrote this column.
It was a fiery, direct call to action regarding our local Christmas parade. And it worked. A vibrant community conversation happened, and a local business stepped up to take the reins.
There is something to be said for making a strong point and sitting quietly to let events unfold. That’s not something I do naturally, and it wasn’t intentional this time.
Sometimes — even in a small town — life happens so fast and so robustly it leaves even a newspaper editor scrambling to find words.
Over the last 90 days, we have held record-breaking fundraisers. Willow Springs’ population swelled for a day to witness Hannah Harper bring her magic to the local stage. A long-awaited overpass opened in West Plains. Our community rallied to make sure all local kids had the opportunity to have a magical, memorable prom night.
We have a vivacious, thriving community, woven tight and worth celebrating. These moments of joy make the hardest days of my job lighter. If only all I had to do was celebrate our community’s wins.
But that’s not the job. My job is to tell the whole truth of a community, and sometimes that means reporting on the aftermath of storms. And, folks, we have weathered some pretty harsh ones this season.
I’m not just talking about the tornado that blew the roof off of Lori and Andy Logan’s barn (though, I breathed a sigh of relief to find their donkeys were unharmed). I’m talking about taking the time to attend the funeral of Carol Mayfield, who brought her joyful, conversational spirit to the Quill’s print shop every day for nearly 50 years. I’m talking about the loss of Marideth Sisco, an investigative and environmental reporter for the Quill for two decades who took me under her wing 11 years ago. She became a close friend whose garden I helped tend and whose stories, music and laughter I never tired of hearing.
But the hardest hit of all, the storm that took the air out of my lungs, lasted for three weeks. It began on April 20, when Annie Noblin — one of my closest, most sacred friends — was involved in a head-on crash while driving home from work. It ended the night before Mother’s Day when her mother texted me that she was gone.
Annie wasn’t just one of my best friends. At only 44 years old, she was the author of 10 books, the latest planned to be released in fall, and one optioned to become a Hallmark movie. She was a professor with ties to Arkansas State University-Mtn. Home and Missouri State University-West Plains, and a woman with deep roots across the Ozarks.
In the weeks between the crash and her death, I kept my sanity by keeping communication open between her many friends and her family, trying to preserve their peace. The hardest part of it all, though, was breaking the news to the community by way of this newspaper’s pages.
There is nothing that makes a seasoned reporter second-guess her role more than a situation like this. I knew details that were not publicly available. It agonized me to tell her family that I had to follow through with my job and report the news, and to ask them what details they wanted the public to know. I held the line for them, trusting that, when the time is right, the whole story will be told, because I never wanted to break their trust.
And, as many brilliant poets have pointed out, when someone dies, the birds still sing and life goes on. We still had graduations, historical events, employer lockouts and elections to cover. And, to tell you the truth, if you were to ask me about any of that news, I really don’t remember it. The last five weeks have been a blur. I had to switch between roles — grieving friend, publisher, mom, spouse — so quickly, I didn’t have time to grab hold of anything.
The beauty of hometown journalism is that it is written and photographed by people living these highs and lows right alongside you. We live here. And that also means we hurt here.
Over these last few weeks just putting out a paper has been a monumental win. This is the time to give a shout out to my incredible team. I couldn’t tell you specifically who did what or when, but I can tell you they anchored me. Because of them, the paper didn’t miss a beat, even as they grieved their own losses.
I owe you a thanks, too. Thank you for continuing to support the Quill, for giving us grace and allowing us to be human right alongside you.
The dust is beginning to settle now, and the fog is beginning to lift. The ideas are coming faster than I can write them now. I’m back at the keyboard, and just in time. Next week, we’ll be cheering our youth on at the fair, and next month we’ll be celebrating 250 years of U.S. independence.
And I can’t wait to tell you all about it.
