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I was informed yesterday that my position
as the communications director at UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth is
being eliminated and my services are needed no longer. My last day will be July
31.
For the second time in a decade, I’ve been
laid off, a victim of economic forces beyond my control or the control of my
employers.
In
2011, it was the not-so-slow collapse of the newspaper industry that sent me to
the curb. Today, it’s the wreckage the coronavirus has imposed on university budgets.
HSC faced a 15 percent budget reduction, and I’m to be part of the 15 percent.
The math sucks, but it doesn’t change the
outcome.
Dream job
So it’s time to call it quits. I’ve been
working since the summer I turned 16, when I got a dream job working in the concession
stand at the Jet Drive-In in my hometown of Big Spring. All the boiled hot dogs
I could eat and the chance to watch the last 20 minutes of every movie that
came through.
Then came sacking groceries and checking
out customers at Furr’s Supermarket, where I once demurred when a nice woman
offered me a tip for carrying her purchases to her car. “I get a salary,
ma’am,” I explained politely. “Young man,” she scolded me, “when someone offers
you a tip, you damned well take it.” It’s good advice I’ve had precious little
opportunity to follow.
Because my next job was at the Big Spring
Herald, which I took to like a heroin addict takes to the needle. For the next
40 years – including my journalism-besotted time at North Texas State
University – I would work a succession of newspaper jobs, where opportunities
to collect tips from customers were nonexistent – and considered unethical to
boot. Not that I couldn’t have used a few extra bucks in the early years. My
first real newspaper job after college paid $130 a week. Thank God you could
buy beer for $1.25 a pitcher.
Satisfying work
I’ve spend almost 8 ½ years working in communications
for health care institutions – first at UT Southwestern in Dallas and for the
last 7 years at HSC in Fort Worth. It’s been satisfying work all in all. These
two institutions are training the health care providers of the future and
working to combat the diseases that bedevil mankind.
Here’s the joke I’ve told so many times
that my colleagues can finish it for me: I first got into journalism to make
the world a better place. And now, at the end of my career, I’m finally at a
place that is doing exactly that.
Satisfying work, yes, but I never loved it
with the enduring intensity that I loved, that I still love, journalism.
Newspaper ink still runs in my veins. My heart – beaten, battered and bruised
by 40 years of deadlines – still yearns for the wild energy of the newsroom,
the exhilaration of a well-turned phrase, the smell of ink that permeates the
building when the presses are roaring.
Comes with the territory
When I look at the world, I look at it
through a newsman’s eyes. I have a sense of humor warped by years spent with
other news folk. I have a potty mouth – which alas, I’ve passed on to my
children – forged by the backbreaking pressure of putting out a daily newspaper
and by the daily exposure to the absurdities of the human condition. I’m
suspicious, cynical and distrustful. It comes with the territory.
And when I die, I will die a newspaper
man. Nothing that’s happened in the last nine years will change that. Is it a
blessing or a curse? Who’s to say?
Retirement now beckons, and I’m not
ashamed to admit that I contemplate it with more than a little trepidation.
What the hell am I going to do now? I have no hobbies, no grand bucket list
waiting to be checked off. My kids are grown, and so far no grandkids are
around to bounce on my arthritic knee and to stuff with ice cream. The damned
COVID-19 pandemic has limited my options even more.
A lucky guy
I don’t mean to sound whiny. After all,
I’m a lucky guy. Some of my colleagues who follow me out the door must scramble
for jobs in an abysmal job market. Having been in their situation back in 2011,
when I was out of work for six months, I know the obstacles they face and the
fear they feel deep inside. I pray for their success.
My concerns feel petty by comparison. How
will I spend the days I have left, which I hope to be many and joyful? My
family wants me to write a book. “About what?” I ask. They have no answer, and
neither do I.
Stay tuned. I can’t wait to see what I
come up with.
