The Oconto County Board gave me a certificate of recognition Thursday for “50 years of dedicated service to journalism, including eight years of valued contributions to our local community at the Times Herald.” I was more moved than I expected, and I sincerely thank them.
County Administrator Richard Heath described me as old school with solid, accurate and non-hyped reporting. I did always try to be a just-the-facts reporter with my personal opinions in check, at least when sharing the news. I reserved any editorial comments for the editorial page where they belonged.
I always respected the local boards anyway — it was the state and national-level politicians who managed to outrage me at nearly every turn. Government is a weird institution — People don’t need to be governed, a word that means “to restrict or hold back,” we just need to respect one another. At the local level that’s generally the case, but as any institution gets larger it tends to lose respect for individuals. States are no different than any other institution that has grown too large, and don’t get me started on the feds.
County, village, town and small city governments for the most part do public service, and Oconto County has this servant mentality as well as any other local government I’ve encountered. It was a nice place to close out a career.
I’m not done, of course. I still have a voice and a pen and other implements of wordsmithing, and now I have more time to use them.
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See the World! Podcast, Episode 3 — sponsored by See the World!, now available for pre-order.
