A mini-reunion of longtime friends took place Saturday when Kay and I met six former Fort Worth Star-Telegram colleagues of mine for lunch at Istanbul Grill in downtown Fort Worth. Couples Robert and Marilyn Bailey Philpot, Ann Thompson and Joe Guerrini, and Susan and Steve Wilson braved the rainy weather to join us at the long-overdue gathering.
For two and a half hours, the eight of us caught up, laughed, reminisced and lamented about how, like the rest of the newspaper industry, the S-T has fallen on the hardest of hard times. Several of the group, including Ann, Joe, Robert, Susan and Steve, worked at the once-proud newspaper for not just years, but decades. Steve, a platforms editor, along with columnist Bud Kennedy and reporter Liz Campbell, are the only journalists remaining in the S-T newsroom from the bygone era that would be classified as the heyday of newspapers.
I started working at the S-T in April 1987 as a still-fresh-faced 26-year-old Features copy editor/page designer. I wanted to do something different after wrapping up nearly four years as a sports writer at The Odessa American, my first job after graduating from Texas A&M in 1983.
A few months later, I was recruited to the S-T sports copy desk, and the following year, Susan, who earlier had worked part time at the S-T, also joined us on the sports desk full time. Robert and Joe arrived at the paper as editors in 1989, and Robert went on to become a top-notch, respected arts/entertainment reporter before leaving a few years ago. He now works as an editor/historian at the Army & Air Force Exchange Service. His wife Marilyn, who worked as an editor at the S-T for 10 years, is now the copy chief at the awesome print and online magazine Texas Monthly.
I wound up staying at the Star-Telegram for just short of 13 years – a very brief stay compared to my other friends who met up with us Saturday – before moving to The Dallas Morning News in February 2000. It’s been rare that I’ve had the chance to get together since then with some of the dear friends I made at the S-T, but I’m glad that when we do, it doesn’t really feel like so many years have passed. It is sad that most of the time when we’ve seen one another in recent years, it’s been at funerals for our friends and former colleagues.
For years, Robert, Joe and I were golfing buddies, along with our incredible friend and colleague Doug Brown, who sadly passed away in October 2002. I’m pretty sure Joe, Robert and I haven’t played a round together in 10 years, since Memorial Day 2014 with our friend and former S-T colleague Perry Stewart, whom we also lost several years ago. That round, at Stevens Park in Dallas, was in memory of Doug as we did regularly for years. Of course, we reminisced about our golfing days at lunch Saturday, and we decided we definitely need to get out on the course this year, old-age aches and pains notwithstanding.
I hope we can find more opportunities to spend time together as the days and years go by – and the same goes for the close friends I made at The DMN during my 22-plus years there before leaving for UT Southwestern Medical Center in September 2022. After all, when you spend 35 years at two newspapers in the same area, you build quite a family, and you cherish and don’t want to lose those bonds. ❤
A Life of Words 