It began when I picked up the phone in my office.
“I’m not sure you’re the right person but …”
Gail Campbell, the daughter of a life-long subscriber, told me that she and her five siblings were in the midst of overwhelming and emotional tasks so many families face: packing up a lifetime’s worth of memories, selling the family home and moving their 87-year-old mother into an assisted living facility.
Her story got my attention. It immediately took me back in time as my dad, siblings and I sorted through our mother’s most treasured possessions after our beloved mom, Ruth Nordine Chown, died 10 years ago. We’d faced the same quandary. How do we find someone who would appreciate the things that meant so much to mom? We couldn’t just throw things in the trash.
Neither could Gail. So she began to tell me about “Mama.” Gail’s story had hooked me. The next thing I knew, I was driving to Lawrenceville to meet Roberta Lee Whitley and her family.
I pulled up to a small, well-kept ranch home. When the family purchased it in 1965 it was out in the country on just a dirt road. The road is now busy with traffic and new cul-de-sacs sprouting up all along the way.
On this day, there was a flurry of activity outside with handymen fixing windows and repairing shutters. Gail warmly welcomed me and took me to the kitchen were “Mama” was eating her lunch. The counters were full of dishes and glasses. The scene reminded me that we all have more than a few coffee mugs we could all give away. Plans called for the house to be empty by the end of the week.
Gail introduced me to her mother as ”the lady from the newspaper she had been telling her about.” Roberta turned her attention from her half-eaten lunch. I was then invited to join her in a sacred place: at the kitchen table, where she’d read “the paper” every morning for decades.
As we chatted, five of her six children busied themselves with the task at hand, continuing to pack boxes and supervise workers completing repairs on their childhood home.
Roberta told me that her dad learned to read by reading the newspaper and passed the love of reading the newspaper down to her. Roberta’s children chimed in with stories about how their mother and their father had clipped articles from the newspaper and assigned them to read. Gail and her siblings told me the family has always read the newspaper. They were expected to. Reading the newspaper was a family affair and a daily habit. And it still is.
Gail then made room on the table for a large framed photo dated 1931. Her grandfather, Roberta’s father, was pictured among a group of more than 30 ink-covered men. There he was, a young guy right in the middle. No one knew what brought Robert Dunlap and these men together in the printing-press room of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
I had something to share with them too. I pulled out a newspaper clipping from The Atlanta Constitution dated January 28, 1967. It was Robert Dunlap’s obituary. I slid it across the table. Roberta read aloud each relative listed. No one recalled seeing this newspaper clipping before, and the family stopped what they were doing to take a look. I’d given a precious gift, one that we at the newspaper are always thrilled to share: an article that documents part of a family’s story. He was born in Augusta and died at a hospital in Jackson, Georgia. He was previously employed by The Chicago Tribune and was a stereotyper for Atlanta Newspapers. (In newspaper-speak, a stereotype is a cast-metal mold of a page of type that was used in printing.)
We walked out to the empty carport and opened three large boxes that were sitting on top of a cooler. A granddaughter and an old black Labrador retriever joined us as we opened the boxes. Inside was a treasure of historic moments in Atlanta and in the nation. Big events in a family’s history by which they marked time. A testament to their common experience. The backstory of their lives.
Roberta’s granddaughter Cynthia Franklin said she’d never seen these old papers before. She pulled out her iPhone and snapped photos. Men Walk On Moon. The Braves in the World Series. September 11. The Blizzard of ‘93. 346 Dead in Air Crash. Nixon. Ford. A celebration of Lewis Grizzard. A Margaret Mitchell memorial issue.
Pointing at a story celebrating the life of Celestine Sibley, Roberta said: “Oh, how I loved her.”
I asked her why she’d kept these in her cedar chest all these years. She looked me straight in the eye.
“Because the newspaper is important,” she said.
I agreed with her and made the case that it’s more important than ever in today’s world to help people know of what’s really going on.
We looked through the old papers again as we placed them back in the boxes.
The design of the newspaper has changed. The world has changed. Media has changed.
But one thing that hasn’t changed is a newspaper’s mission - to inform our community, record history, report the facts and to protect the public’s right to know through the First Amendment.
I told Roberta that I was honored to thank her for her life-long loyalty as our subscriber. She told me she’s going to continue to read the paper every day in her new home.
As Gail and I loaded those old newspapers in my car, I thanked her too. I told her that meeting her mom reminded me of my mom. Then I said goodbye.
As I pulled away, I realized how much I miss Mom and how gratifying it is to work for a newspaper like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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