Song of Suzies

by Dave Balcom

  I looked at them. “Put it in the notes, at the top. I think we can do something great with that.”

  The next day, I met with Cecily Robb, and shared the staff’s thinking about the possible newspaper event tied to the anniversary of Suzanne’s disappearance. “Cess, I think it’s vital that if we do that, your staff can’t just pick up somebody’s sale ad and slap it into the section.”

  “I agree. I like the way they termed this as an opportunity for the merchant community to commiserate with the entire community. I’m surprised but pleased to see your staff thinking like that.”

  “I’ll pass that on. Do you think this would work? I’d think Doug would have to know we made at least a dollar more than it cost us before he’d okay it.”

  “Oh, he’ll okay it if he thinks you’re behind it. You’re the fair-haired boy.”

  “Thanks for that, I thought there for a second we were going to play nice today.”

  She giggled and started to re-read the memo. “Let’s make a united proposal to him later today. If we’re going to do this, we need to get hopping. The anniversary is just twenty-seven days away; we’ll have to set a sales deadline for what, August nineteenth?”

  “That’s a Sunday. I think you’re going to have to deadline all sales and copy by the Friday. We’ll go to press the following Friday and insert the section into the Sunday paper... actually, we could go to press early on Saturday... but if it publishes on the twenty-sixth, which is Sunday, then the community can be forewarned for the events we pick on Monday.”

  “Who’s going to head up the events?”

  I stopped cold, and then Andy Knewal, the circulation director walked by. “Renewal!” We both shouted at him.

  Andy stopped and looked from one face to another, and then he realized he was an answer and started shaking his head. “I’m not guilty; I didn’t do it; and that other guy said it first.”

  “Come here and become famous,” Cecily cooed at him.

  “Oh, no,” he shuddered in mock fright. “This can’t be good if the two of you are in cahoots.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said with a voice of gloom. “You’re probably not the guy to get involved in potentially the single biggest circulation promotion in the history of the Sentinel-Standard...”

  He snapped to attention and grabbed a chair across from us. “Oh, business. Why didn’t you say so? I’m all ears.”

  “And mouth,” Cecily muttered in a stage whisper. The friendship between the two of them was obvious. I remembered that they’d been working at the paper together for more than ten years.

  “What’s cookin’?” the circulator asked.

  I let Cecily spell it out for him, and it was clear to me that she had grasped the entire promotion and was already working in additional ideas as they occurred to her.

  “What do you need from me other than inserters and delivery people?”

  She looked at me, and I picked up the ball. “We need you and your folks to head up a list of community observations that might be tackled.”

  “Oh, the heavy lifting; why am I not surprised?”

  “We can get you help as you need it, but our staffs are going to be busy pounding the streets for stories and ads plus our normal work,” I started to justify our thoughts, and he cut me off.

  “Of course, we’ll do it. Have you guys started a list?”

  “We’re thinking of projects that the schools might engage, like a memorial ribbon on playground equipment, or painting a mural depicting Suzanne’s life?”

  “That could be cool,” Andy said. “I think I know the exact teachers from our Newspapers in Education program who would run with that.”

  Cecily was reading from Randy’s note. “What about an ecumenical service on Monday night?”

  “Or a community-wide Sunday sermon topic that all the ministers could modify to their own tastes and talents,” I added.

  “I like the ecumenical service idea,” Andy said. “I can see the community chorus teaming up with the church choirs. We could get the high school football stadium, I’m sure. Let’s run with that...”

  Cecily was beaming. “So, let’s book a time with Doug this afternoon.”

  I looked at my watch. “We may be too late for today. Let’s go see Harriet.”

  “He said he didn’t think he’d be back this afternoon,” Harriet said, looking through his calendar. “He hasn’t anything on for the morning. Want me to pencil you guys in for nine?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Just put the topic as ‘newspaper-wide sales promotion proposal.’”

  “That’ll get his attention,” the secretary agreed.

  19

  The meeting with Doug was brief and direct. He loved the idea, and beamed at all of us as we detailed our thoughts.

  “What about a budget?” He asked. “Do we have any idea what we’ll need to invest to pull this off?”

  “Just time and energy,” Cecily answered quickly. “We’ll need to beef up our in-paper promotional space with some kick-ass house ads as soon as we firm up commitments on date, sites and agenda.”

  “Who’ll head up the coverage from News?”

  I looked at a note that Randy and I had created the night before. “Randy will head up the project, and we’ll shift his daily duties to Mary and me for the duration. Cindy Shaul and Kathy will handle the writing chores; Fritz will do his thing with the camera and help composing staff with overall graphic design.” Randy nodded his agreement as I concluded. “It’ll be bitchin’,” he whispered.

  The rest of the group chuckled at his enthusiasm before Knewal spoke up, “We’ll need some great rack cards and flyers. This will be the kind of thing that can really boost our subscription numbers, Boss.”

  “Direct mail?” Doug asked.

  “Former subscribers who have been gone for three months or more?”

  “That’s your call. You have the stats to know the ripest targets, but I agree it should happen.”

  Andy nodded as he circled something on the tablet on his lap.

  “I’m really pleased with you guys,” Doug said. “Now, you have a lot of work to do, so you probably better start!”

  20

  The newspaper’s entire staff was energized by the plans for the community recognition of Suzanne’s anniversary, and the entire Czarnopias extended family was mobilized to participate.

  All the stories had been filed, the pages were laid out, and Randy, Mary and I were alone in the building on the Tuesday night before the commemorative, tabloid edition was to publish. The “flats,” consisting of the pasted up pages, were actually two pages of the edition, an odd-numbered page on the right and the corresponding even-numbered page on the left. The total number of pages in this special edition would be thirty-two, and thus the sum of the two corresponding page numbers would always be thirty-three.

  Each of us had a checklist of items to confirm on each flat, including that the page numbers were correct, and that those numbers were included in the stylized folios designed specifically for this one-time effort. This also included that the publication date would be accurate and in the selected type face and size.

  Then all the headlines and photo captions were read backwards to ensure no typos and to make sure that they were appropriate to the story or photo they accompanied.

  At about eleven o’clock, we had initialed every page and signed off on the project. There were forty-seven corrections noted on the sixteen flats. Those corrections were flagged with yellow post-it notes, and highlighted with non-reproducible blue marker, complete with the problem and correction.

  “Not bad,” Randy asserted as we turned off lights and made our way to the front door. We were all tired. Mary, whose day had started at five a.m., was concerned. “I can’t believe we found so many mistakes after all that editing.”

  “Get used to it,” I warned her. “By the time we were finishing up, we’d all missed other mistakes just as glaring. That’s why we’ll have another crew in there
tomorrow night doing it all over again.”

  “Who?”

  “I have Angie from classifieds, Cecily, and Louise scheduled. Angie is supposed to be a crackerjack proof reader on legal ads, and of course Louise is real detail-oriented and Cecily is an English major always bragging about her language skills...”

  “You coming in too?” Randy asked.

  “I’ll be here to answer questions on writing, word choices or design issues. Fritz’s design guide for the edition was a great idea. We should do one for everything we do, you know?”

  Randy was all for it. “I agree. It helped keep me on track, and Bernie in composing was really happy with the direction it provided as well.”

  We locked up and headed home.

  “You need a lift?” Randy asked me.

  I knew my house was one hundred and eighty degrees off his path and I declined. “I’m going to walk home. I had Sandy drop me off. I need to get my workout in for the day.”

  I watched them get into their vehicles, and then I started stretching, using the steps to the back door of the building. From there, I’d walk and jog the two miles back to the house, interjecting forms every fifteen minutes or so.

  I was jogging after my second forms break when I realized I wasn’t alone as I made my way up Division, the vertical crossroad that marked the center of town when it crossed Lake Shore Drive. Everything east of Division would be East Lake Shore; and everything west of Division carried the West moniker. You had to go about twenty blocks east and west to find a street carrying a “south” designation.

  Our house was on West Mission, one of the last east-west streets before the northern city limits and the beginning of county roads.

  I was running at about a twelve-minute mile pace and realized there was someone on the other side of the street going about the same speed. I didn’t think much about it as I approached the bus stop at the corner of Division and Fifteenth Street. The bus stop came with a shelter from weather and three nice benches just right for stretching hams and quads.

  I was practicing the forms of t’ai chi when the other runner stopped, “What’s that?”

  “T’ai chi forms,” I said quietly as I focused on my recovering heart rate.

  “Looks like dancing. Why do you do that?”

  “It’s an Oriental form of martial arts designed to help a person develop inner strength, composure, flexibility and confidence.”

  I spoke as I moved from one pose to another with every effort to make the transition agonizingly slow and perfect in its form.

  “Is it like karate?”

  “A distant relative.”

  “Why not just practice karate?”

  “That would be good, I guess, but this is just something that has become a part of my life.”

  I couldn’t see the other speaker clearly as the shadow of a huge lilac bush was covering his face, but I could make out that he was shorter than my six-five frame, maybe just six feet tall. He was stocky, but not fat. My breathing and pulse had recovered, and I prepared to start out again and said so.

  “Mind if I run with you?” He asked.

  “Nope, but I’m not much company while I’m doing this. It’s part of the deal that I remain focused on my t’ai chi throughout the exercise.”

  He didn’t answer that, just fell into step with me as I started running north again. “You live out this way?” He asked.

  “I do.”

  He was waiting for me to expand on that, but I didn’t. I was deeply involved in monitoring my heart rate, breathing and core. I was keeping track of my pulse, and keeping it close to my resting rate even as I exercised. I knew I couldn’t stop it from accelerating in response to my body’s need for fresh blood and oxygen, but my focus could give me extra time before I started feeling out of breath and tiring.

  I had my run up to the ten-minute mile rate and my companion was starting to labor as I turned onto Mission. I stopped at the corner, and started practicing the forms again, focusing on my core, my pulse and breathing as I moved from one defensive posture to another.

  “You picked up the pace pretty good on me,” he gasped. “Why did you stop?”

  “I walk or run for fifteen minutes and then stop to study the forms; then I begin again. This is my street. I’ll work the forms, stretch and then walk home for the night.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Down on Baker, just off Ransom by the elementary school, Eisenhower. You know that area?

  “I do,” I grunted as I stretched into the flower form, dragging my right foot forward and into a kick that took more than a minute to execute.

  I was drenched in sweat but my breathing was back to normal and I checked my pulse just to be sure, and it came in at fifty-five. “Do you run at night often?” I asked him.

  “Sometimes night; sometimes early morning. I run Lake Shore most nights and early mornings, but sometimes I run up Division and out into the country... just depends on my mood.”

  “Well, keep running,” I said as a way of saying good night, and started walking home.

  “See ya soon,” he called after me. Then he turned and crossed Division and started east on Mission. I turned and watched him, his stride was long and smooth, clearly an experienced and talented runner.

  21

  On the Saturday night before the special edition came out the newsroom was packed with staffers and community folks who had responded to the general invitation to stop by to watch the “historic” edition be “put to bed.”

  We in the newsroom had been warned, and that didn’t stop all the staffers who weren’t directly involved from coming to the paper that evening. Doug and his wife had planned a dinner party that night which included bringing all the invitees down to witness the newspaper process, ending with a trip to the press room to see the final edition roll off the press, and take a complimentary edition, complete with the Suzanne section, home as a souvenir.

  He had hoped Sandy and I would be at the paper and as many of the newspaper staff as possible, so I had passed the word, and it seemed every reporter had invited their spouse or a favorite source from their beat.

  The place was rockin’ by nine p.m. with the final deadline at eleven-thirty. Randy was desking the Sunday paper that night when I walked in. “Sure is loud in here,” I said over the racket. “What?” He yelled in good humor.

  “Need any help?”

  “What?”

  We both laughed, and he shook his head. “Go meet and greet. We may never see this sort of thing again.”

  I leaned down to his ear, “Wait ’til you see how I want the November election covered...this is just a taste.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and then got serious, “I can’t help but wonder about the air of celebration here tonight. These folks are acting as if Suzanne just showed up in perfect health.”

  I looked around and considered for a minute, and then leaned down to his ear again, “Reminds me of the dinner after a funeral, when all the family and friends come to grips with their grief and start remembering, telling stories ... you know? I think it’s just the mourning process, and your idea for this anniversary edition is giving the community a chance for that part of the process to start.”

  I clapped him on the back and wandered off to see who was who. Doug had a warm welcome for me, and demanded to know where Sandy was that night. I explained she was home with our daughter, nursing some flu-like symptoms.

  “Summer colds are the worst,” he nodded. “Come here and meet people.”

  He walked around the building, and finally we were in his office where his closest friends had congregated. “I think you know most of these folks,” Doug said.

  I saw Richard Shaw, the realtor, and he was with a woman I didn’t recognize. I extended my hand to her with a smile, “I’m Jim Stanton, ma’am. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure...”

  Shaw jumped up, “Jim, I’m sorry. This is Eleanor Shaw, my wife.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Stanton,” s
he said. “I read your column every week and enjoy your take on our community more all the time.”

  I thanked her and turned to Sally Freemont, president of the Finger Lakes Community College. “Hi, Sally. Good to see you again.” She smiled and Paul, her husband, rose to shake my hand. “Great night for the newspaper and the community, Jim. Great job.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that, Paul. The staff here really came up with this idea and ran with it. I’m personally humbled and gratified to be part of all this.”

  I turned to Corey Brandsted, and he stood to introduce his wife, Trudy. “I’m glad to meet you, Mrs. Brandsted.” She didn’t offer her hand and said nothing. “Corey, thank you for coming. I hope we won’t bore you too much with the tours.”

  Brandsted shook my hand, and turned away; I walked to another guest and his wife, a couple I had seen before, but I didn’t know their names. I introduced myself and the gentleman stood up. “I’m Jake Hardy of Hardy Manufacturing. We’re not sure why we’re here tonight. Doug invited us so we came, but we’re not sure there’s any real cause for celebration at this time in Lake City’s history.”

  I nodded at him. “I know how you feel; that thought is not lost on us in the newsroom, either. But the thought on the part of staff was that rather than just let Suzanne’s memory fade with time, that the community might value an opportunity to commemorate her life even as we pray that she might come back to us.”

  “Sounds like a scam to sell newspapers to me,” Mrs. Hardy said from her chair.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. I really am. Of course the driving force of everyone in this organization and everything we do each day is to sell newspapers and advertising, but we also believe the only thing that makes that all worthwhile is the newspaper’s commitment to community service. We all live here, too; we’re all mourning Suzanne as well.

  “I hope you enjoy your visit; now if you’ll excuse me...” I nodded at them, and walked away. I smiled at others on my way to the door and went out to the lobby area were the crowd continued to grow.