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OPINION Norman Lockman |
It's time to come down for a landing
By NORMAN LOCKMAN
11/28/2004
A few weeks ago, I felt a tiny twinge of regret at having to meet a column deadline instead of being able to tilt back in my power wheelchair and take another nap. I took it as a clear sign that it was probably time to think about closing out my journalism career.
Journalism is like driving. You need to know when to stop doing it well before you become a hazard to yourself and others.
Good journalism cannot be done by phone. It requires being able to scurry around, seeing, tasting and smelling the things you write about from as close as possible without getting mixed up in the story. My chronic illness makes that hard to do, so I'm going to hang up my slouch hat and turn in my press card while I can still bring this old career of mine in for a nice smooth landing. I've seen too many plummet to earth like ruptured ducks from hanging on too long.
For 50 years, I've been what my mother used to call a busybody, peeking at other peoples' lives and situations from the sidelines and blabbing about it in the newspaper.
It began when I was 16 years old and started covering Little League baseball for my hometown weekly in Kennett Square, Pa. Then I graduated to high school sports. I went off to Penn State, but didn't last long because all I did was work at The Daily Collegian. So I went back to filling up the sports page in the Kennett News & Advertiser (known by all in town simply as "the Agonizer").
Except for four years in the Air Force editing military papers, "the Agonizer" was my home base for nearly nine years. It's there I started writing a column called - now I'm embarrassed - "Beyond the Norm." Then I came to work for The News Journal in 1969 and, except for the nine years I spent at the Boston Globe where I got to share a Pulitzer, I stuck around.
Kicked upstairs
The only time I have not written one or two weekly columns in the past 35 years was during the seven years when I was the Journal's managing editor. I was delighted to get kicked upstairs in 1991 to be associate editorial page editor, so I could be a columnist again.
I've been lucky about being in the right place at the right time, like the strange night before President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, ruined by Watergate. I was in the White House pressroom when it was sealed for four hours and the telephones were shut off. Finally as dusk fell, they set us free but by that time none of us wanted to leave. By nightfall, word had spread and crowds were pressing up against the White House fence three and four people deep, silently waiting. We reporters went along the inside of the fence interviewing people, trying to capture history through the eyes of tourists. It was a haunting night hard to forget.
Three years ago, I was with a group of journalists heading to interview Yasser Arafat at his headquarters in Gaza City. An Israeli cabinet minister had just been assassinated and tensions were high. We had just boarded a PLO caravan in pitch darkness at the border when gunfire rattled as we roared off with sirens screaming. Arafat, all smiles, blamed the Israelis for shooting at us (but who knew?), and then spent 90 minutes chewing us out for favoring Israelis and staying in a Jerusalem hotel.
It's been exciting, but I need a rest. It's time to see how much of my 50 years worth of memorabilia is worth keeping. Thanks for putting up with me all this time.
Adios.
Contact Norman Lockman, a Pulitzer Prize winner, at nlockman@delawareonline.com.
