Writer, reader break bread six years after chance meeting outside the newspaper
Castelli won’t run in 2024, shows concern about local newspaper coverage
By Ken Tingley
Bill Herrmann lives over by Kensington Street School in Glens Falls. It’s about two miles from where I worked at my newspaper. It’s the other side of town, really.
Six years ago, our paths crossed - literally.
And quite by accident.
Even now, it seems ridiculously serendipitous.
At the exact moment when I was getting out of my car in the newspaper parking lot on Cooper Street, Bill Herrmann was chugging down the middle of Cooper Street toward Dix Avenue while on winter break from teaching at South Glens Falls. For whatever reason that afternoon, Bill had decided he needed a change of scenery and found himself on the other side of town as the editor of the local newspaper was getting out of his car.
He read the newspaper religiously.
And regularly read my column.
I wasn’t really paying attention as he jogged by. Then, I heard a voice.
“Thanks for the newspaper,” he called out.
It caught me off guard. I wondered if the jogger was being sarcastic. This was 2017 and newspaper people were being called “enemies of the people” and their reporting “fake news.”
Watching him jog further down the road, he turned his head back and said, “Thanks for what you do.”
Serendipity.
After so much negativity in recent months, I guess I needed to hear that; something to confirm my dedication to the work; something to acknowledge there were readers who appreciated the effort.
I wrote a column titled, “Sometimes you are handed a bouquet.”
A few days after the column ran, Bill sent me an email to confirm he was the mysterious jogger and explained. He confirmed the newspaper was important in his house. It was left on the kitchen table each morning - Bill and his wife were both teachers - so his two sons might stumble on it during their morning routine.
I wrote a second column - “Tale of the unidentified jogger revealed” - and explained Bill’s unsolicited encouragement.
He explained what the work of the newspaper meant to him and his family.
It was important to them.
This past month, I started putting together columns for a second book of columns to go with “The Last American Editor” I published in 2021 and stumbled across the the mysterious jogger column. I decided to catch up with Bill, but I couldn’t find him.
He was no longer listed among the South Glens Falls teachers.
Finally, I found his wife’s contact information on the Queensbury School District website.
Bill had taken early retirement and I suggested we get together for lunch.
Two strangers, but not really.
Bill was waiting outside the cafe when I arrived.
It was the first time we had met.
I was just looking to get a few biographical details for the book about his life after the column ran. I wanted to know what he was doing now and how things turned out for his kids. Considering the current state of newspapers, maybe I was hoping for another pep talk.
We talked about that odd first meeting and how happenstance it was.
He told me that after a lifetime of teaching, he had suffered burnout a couple years later and eventually decided to retire. He was now tutoring high school students part-time.
He told me that he had been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2011 when he was just 44 and after beating it back, he was undergoing going a second round of chemotherapy.
I told him about my retirement, the decline of the newspaper and my worries about the community.
The conversation came easy. Like we had known each other for a long time.
Lunch lasted more than an hour.
I ended the first column six years ago with this: “And every once in awhile, some stranger will race past you and hand you a bouquet.”
And sometimes, you slow down a second, share a meal and talk about life’s twists and turns.
Castelli not running
Matt Castelli, the Democrat and former CIA officer who took on Elise Stefanik in the last election, announced he would not run in 2024.
Castelli described many of the headwinds he had in campaigning around the enormous 21st Congressional District, but he singled out the lack of community newspapers as a problem.
“At a certain point in the campaign, it seemed like we were issuing daily press releases but rarely did they make the news,” Castelli said. “Resource constraints and the consolidation of media markets have led to the unfortunate reality that local press is dying across America. Its demise carries the rising challenge of maintaining the well-informed electorate our democracy requires.”
Remember, Rep. Elise Stefanik refused to debate Castelli. In the past, that would have resulted in community newspapers publishing editorials demanding debate.
“The advantage of incumbency becomes that much greater when the institutions of the free press we rely on to provide a check on power are too under-resourced or afraid to do so,” Castelli wrote. “For the few outlets in NY-21 that are interested and able to take this responsibility seriously, “Stefanik Fatigue” certainly hinders the persistence necessary to fact-check every lie, spin, and false claim of credit her communications machine churns out each day.”
It is a message that I have been talking about for the past six months while promoting my book “The Last American Newspaper.”
Girard visits
According to Adam Zagoria on Twitter, Joe Girard III will have home visits with Clemson, Norte Dame and BYU over the next few days. He has already visited LSU, Butler and Stanford.
An uplifting story. Thanks for sharing it. I'm sure all your readers will join me in wishing Bill another full recovery.
I’m very sorry for his diagnosis but it was wonderful hearing how much somebody, especially a teacher, values a newspaper like the Post Star. It is music to my ears. I really appreciate and value people like him and his wife.