I remember the morning we wrote that first story. After making her morning calls cops reporter, Tahlia Ganser, discovered that a climber had been left behind during the previous day’s rescue of another climber who fell and was airlifted to a Bellingham hospital. The weather was terrible and the stranded climber was trapped on Mount Terror until the weather could clear and a helicopter could get him out.

A view of the Picket Range from Newhalem Visitor center, click the picture for mountain names.

She drove up to Newhalem to find and talk with friends and relatives of the stranded climber, Jason Schilling. Soon she called the newsroom during the 4 p.m. editors meeting to find a reporter who could drive to Bellingham to interview the man who fell, Steve Trent. A photographer and I drove up there and were invited into his room with his parents to talk.

Here is the finished story.

For the second story, Trent and Schilling were kind enough to accept me and a photographer into Trent’s home so we could talk with them about their experience. Trent’s home was a shrine to his love for climbing. It had a huge picture window view of the North Cascades, and climbing magazines and books sat on a coffee table.

It was really interesting to interview Trent, his friends and family about his passion. I won’t be at all surprised if their story somehow becomes an action movie.

Photo used by permission through a Creative Commons license. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brewbooks/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

I reported on Burlington-Edison School District’s quest for a construction bond for the better part of a year. March 10 was the culmination of all of their hard work and planning. Economic concerns probably caused many voters to reject the proposal. Here’s a link to the short item we posted on the Web site the next morning.

Story text below:

Voters reject B-E bond request

In late January, a photographer at work told me about an unusual basketball game. It was just a normally scheduled game, but the stands were packed, everyone was dressed in school colors and the atmosphere was electric.

Turns out it was a rivalry game, but not just any rivalry game. Anacortes High School had asked Burlington-Edison High School if they would be their rival. The story is here, but the short version is Anacortes has lost students over the years and their previous rivalries have disappeared as Anacortes has moved down a league or two. School administrators and students wanted to ramp up school spirit.

I decided right then and there that I had to write a story about it.

A secret: I am a huge sucker for school spirit. This may brand me as a dork or a nerd, but I always dressed up as whatever spirit day it was when I went to high school. Wear green and gold day? Check. Injury day? Leg braces, an arm sling and crutches. By the time senior year rolled around, I was voted as “most spirited girl” in the senior superlatives. This was a huge surprise to me because I thought I wasn’t that popular.

So in short, the nerd in me was intrigued. I thought it was cute that another school would ask another to be its rival.

Reporting the story was a challenge because the game had already happened. Not only that, when the photographer worked the game, they were shooting a basketball game, not the fans. It took me a couple of weeks to get all of the reporting done. I had to find snippets of time between my other assignments to fit it into my schedule.

In the few days before it ran, I kept poking and prodding the story: twisting a sentence here, changing a phrase there, double and triple checking my spelling. I actually woke up in a panic the night before it ran because I was afraid that something was wrong.

I was really happy with the finished story. Turns out a lot of the staff had read it before it went in the paper and they started sharing stories of their high school days (who knew we had three former cheerleaders in our newsroom?). One person even said they wished they could have gone to the game after reading the story.

This post is the first in a monthly series, Story of the Month.

Anyway, some of my favorites from the past few months:

• Regifting: The art of ditching those bad gifts
• Feature on a local production of the Nutcracker and the search for a man to play the Prince
• How many valedictorians do you really need?
• City government rules against home for troubled boys

Enjoy!

Final Salute by Jim Sheeler (Rocky Mountain News)

Sheeler with the Rocky Mountain News followed a Marine casualty assistance officer to the doors of families who were about to hear their soldier had died in the line of duty. Final Salute won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, and Todd Heisler’s compelling photos also earned the accolade (Heisler later went on to the New York Times).

After you spend an hour and half a box of Kleenex reading Final Salute, read the interview with Sheeler on why he decided to write a book. The interview itself is a powerful reminder of why journalists need to write these stories — and that we are people, too:

What emotional toll did writing this book have on you, after having already devoted so much time to the original story?

There were times when I’d be interviewing somebody and I’d start crying, and times when I was sitting at the computer late at night and it would happen again. There are scenes that will shake me all my life – hearing Katherine (Cathey) scream on the tarmac (as her husband’s coffin was removed from a plane). It’s a sound no one should have to hear, but, in a way, it’s a sound that everybody should hear. I know I’ll never forget it.

I hardly read the Rocky anymore now that I’ve moved to the Seattle area. After I read that story back in 2005, I emailed Mr. Sheeler and told him how the story made me feel. My husband, Eric, was in the Navy for six years. And while the Navy is not nearly as dangerous as the Army or the Marines, parting was always hard. Before each deployment I made Eric wear a shirt around for several days. While he was gone, I’d smell the shirt to remember him. I felt compelled to tell Mr. Sheeler that story. Mr. Sheeler saved all the emails he got and let us know when a book was coming out.

Here’s a link to the book: Final Salute on Amazon.com.

Enjoy the read. 

Also, I think this is the first time I’ve used first person that wasn’t in a column. Kudos to Bev Crichfield for help in brainstorming this story and for her editing suggestions.