Five years down the road

It had been a nervous, anxiety-filled morning. So when the phone call came, I expected the worst.

For weeks, rumors had been swirling around The Dallas Morning News that yet another round of layoffs was imminent. On the previous Friday, just before the Labor Day weekend, the rumor mill had confirmed that the layoffs would occur the Tuesday after Labor Day Monday. And they would hit the newsroom hard.

Senior managers, who had been carefully briefed on proper layoff procedures, either were tight-lipped or absent on that Tuesday. But everyone knew what to expect. Despite the best efforts of management to keep such information confidential until the “right” moment, the word always got out. Good reporters, and The News still had plenty of them, always found out.

Five years ago today, I left the newspaper business after 37 years. It wasn’t the worst day of my life. The deaths of my parents and of my maternal grandmother were worse. But it was pretty bad. I remember it as if it was yesterday, but I’ve never written about it. Until now.

Being kicked to the curb from the only job you’ve ever had – and ever wanted to have – is a demoralizing, disorienting and defeating event. When it happens a month after your 60^th birthday, it’s terrifying.

I’ve recovered nicely from the dispiriting events of that day a half decade ago. Although I was out of work for six months, I managed, with some luck, to establish myself in a second career in which I’m able to use many of the skills I acquired in journalism and to perform valued work in which I believe.

Some of my present colleagues are former journalists, and we all agree we’re better off where we are now than in the dramatically diminished newsrooms we left, either voluntarily or against our wishes.

I can’t speak for them, of course. But my wife knows the truth about me. The truth that I bob and weave to avoid in my daily encounters, but which I confront head on as I lie awake at 3:30 in the morning and can’t get back to sleep.

I miss journalism. I miss newspapers – the daily deadlines and the heart-racing pressure and the thrill of being in the midst of a big story, when the stakes are high and the world is waiting for the details you and your colleagues have uncovered.

I miss knowing the secrets you can never get into print or online. The details too gruesome to present to a family audience. The unimportant, but highly entertaining, tidbits that never make the final edition, but which fuel many a bar tale as the alcohol slowly dissolves the knot in your stomach and begins to sooth stress-roughened nerves.

I miss, most of all, the camaraderie of the newsroom, the company of journalists who by training, experience and temperament look at the world in a unique way. They laugh at inappropriate things, take delight where others recoil, embrace unflinchingly the essential inevitability of facts and the infuriating and often heart-breaking elusiveness of truth.

They hold themselves apart from the rest of society. Others may plant political signs in their yards and paste political bumper stickers on their cars. But not journalists. Others can support political causes, go door-to-door for candidates, speak loudly and passionately for school bond issues and other local initiatives. But not journalists. They should – and almost universally do – remain removed and above the fray in a largely unsuccessful effort to convince the public of their fairness and impartiality.

Even now, in the midst of a presidential campaign I truly believe is the most important in American history, in which the stakes have never been higher, I can’t bring myself to put a bumper sticker on my SUV or erect a sign in my front yard. The habits of a lifetime in newspapers are stubbornly hard to break.

For better or worse, I still think of myself as a journalist and always will.

That’s why, I suppose, my heart was in my throat five years ago today when I answered the ringing phone on my desk. As I most feared, it was Cindy McFarland, HR representative for the newsroom.

“Kerry, can I speak to you in my office?” she inquired in a carefully neutral tone.

“Of course,” I replied, unconsciously copying her deliberate, impassionate delivery. “I’ll be right down.”

For a few moments, I just sat there, thoughts swirling. What in the name of God do I do now?

Finally, I stood up, squared my shoulders, walked quickly to the elevator and rode down two floors to McFarland’s office. Executive Editor Bob Mong was waiting with her.

The conversation was thankfully brief. An uncomfortable Mong assured me the decision to dismiss me had nothing to do with performance. It was, he said, just a necessary business decision. Clearly, he wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else at that moment. As did I.

He offered to let me come back later to clean out my desk. I looked at him sharply.

“No, Bob, I think it’s best I clear out of here as quickly as possible,” I said, picking up my exit packet and heading for the door. I’m fairly sure we shook hands, but I have no memory of that.

By the time I got back to the newsroom, word had spread about those of us who had gotten the ax. As we dully gathered our belongings, colleagues averted their eyes and carefully avoided our sections of the newsroom.

I was loading some personal files into a box when Rudy Bush, a reporter in my local government cluster, and Roy Appleton, a close friend for more than 30 years, approached. Both looked stricken and distraught. I avoided making eye contact, not trusting my ability to control my emotions.

Soon I was ready. I took one look around, and we headed for the hallway to the back dock. As I moved around the edge of the newsroom, I noticed a small group of metro desk editors gathered in an office across the way. I remembered the times I had been a part of such groups, which instinctively form for mutual emotional support at such traumatic moments.

Fighting a desire to bolt for the door, I swallowed hard and walked over to say goodbye. Knowing that I only had moments before the tears began, I quickly shook hands.

“Happy trails, everyone,” I said, turning to go. “I’ll see you down the road.”

I then joined Roy and Rudy, and we carried my stuff to the car. Half an hour later, I was home in Grapevine, contemplating a bleak and complicated future.

I understand that the DMN newsroom today is but a shadow of the one I left in 2011, which already had been decimated by cutbacks and layoffs. The newspaper career I miss doesn’t exist anymore as print publications fight what I sadly believe will be a losing battle for survival.

I know, with conviction, that I’m blessed today by virtue of the pain I experienced that awful day five years ago. I am comforted by that. Except for the times I awake in the small hours of the morning, sometimes from a dream in which I’m still in the newsroom fighting deadline and telling stories with friends and colleagues.

At those moments, I lie staring at the ceiling and think of how things were and how they never will be again. Eventually, mercifully, I fall back into a troubled sleep.