Three stories and their community legacy
Jeter delivers in clutch at induction ceremony - of course
The Front Page
Morning Update
Friday, September 10, 2021
By Ken Tingley
I don’t know Mary Enhorning, at least not personally.
She’s been posting on my Facebook page the past couple weeks. She wanted to know why the book she ordered had not arrived.
So when it arrived last week, Mary was ready to start reading.
According to Mary’s Facebook page, she is - how should I say this? - a little past retirement age. I hope she doesn’t mind me saying, but she is going to be 80 next year.
After the book finally arrived, she announced she had read half of it already.
Then on Thursday, she wrote, “Finished last half of Ken Tingley’s book last night. Was thoroughly enjoyable.”
It has been a good week for me.
Writing a book is a lot different than writing a newspaper column. You have to wait a lot longer to get any feedback.
I asked people to post selfies when their book arrived recently. The posts on social media started popping up, but those folks had not read the book yet.
Then, I heard from Mary.
It was gratifying, but I wanted to know what she liked about the book. I asked her what were her three favorite stories.
It didn’t take long.
She wrote that she liked the column I did on the folks who ran Maude’s Kitchen in February 2009. It was a typical story about the good work that regular people do to help their friends and neighbors in a small town like South Glens Falls.
And she liked the story on 26-year-old Erica Thomas who was battling MS in September 2008.
Here is an excerpt:
The 26-year old single mom comes to the door of her subsidized two-bedroom Queensbury apartment, looking fit, vibrant and ready for a fight.
There is a cane by the door, a walker by the bed and a wheelchair for the really bad days, but you see the fire in her.
You wonder if the limp is from beating back all that life has thrown at her lately.
What was especially gratifying about this column was finding out that Erica got a lot of help after the column was printed, and that more than a decade later she was doing a lot better.
It is one of my favorites, too.
Where Mary surprised me was with the story about the closing of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. in January 2020.
My son and I made a final pilgrimage the day before the greatest museum you never heard of closed for good. It is testament to the good work that newspapers and journalists do every day.
That Mary chose that particular column as one of her favorites was important to me.
I concluded it this way:
I think my friend and colleague Ken Paulson said it perfectly:
“Unless we understand and embrace the vital role a free press plays in our democracy, we encourage politicians of all stripes to denigrate and dismiss the journalists who daily keep a check on corruption and government abuse.”
Mary obviously thought that was important, too.
It makes me hopeful that people will still fight for their newspapers, that they will demand local journalism in their communities continue.
This is the type of conversation I hope to have with many of you as you read The Last America Editor in the weeks and months ahead.
The stories are not only part of our local history, but part of the legacy of what makes this region so special.
Jeter induction
The Major League Baseball network provided about five hours worth of coverage of the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies on Wednesday.
Thank goodness for the DVR.
I admit to fast-forwarding through the inductions of Marvin Miller, Ted Simmons and Larry Walker so I could relish Derek Jeter’s induction speech.
Like his career on the diamond, Jeter was polished and hit all the right notes.
What I especially liked was that that his Hall of Fame was placed next to teammate Mariano Rivera.
Buy book at Chapman
Many folks have been asking where they can get the book locally. I’m happy to report that the Chapman Museum in Glens Falls became the first outlet for the book on Thursday.
I can’t think of a better placed for the history and legacy of the people in the book to be preserved than at the Chapman.
