I haven’t thought about Rachel in awhile.
Rachel was just a teenager with a bright future. She was on a swim team. She was a great student. She was a loving daughter and sister.
But her life was cut short as she was pulled into a rapid one warm spring day while wading in the Chattooga River, drowned, and was swept away. It took months for her body to be recovered. Months of effort, challenges, and tears from her family and from local rescue squads went by.
It was a dangerous task. On more than one occasion, rescue personnel were nearly swept away in rapids themselves. They were putting their lives on the line so that her family could have closure and bring Rachel home.
Her father sought the help of a New Jersey company that made portable dams --- a series of those dams were what finally led to the retrieval of her body.
Months of being underwater took its toll. They first found her swimsuit. A few days later, they retrieved her in pieces.
I was there they day they did that. Myself and a group of other reporters and photogs kept our distance out of respect. We didn’t push people to talk. We didn’t push cameras in people’s faces. We just took in the sad looks on the faces of those workers and of her family. Those told the story themselves.
Recently as I was moving some boxes around the house and putting up Christmas decorations, I found a box full of news clippings.
Save mundane city and county council meetings, and school board meetings, they were articles that I have kept from my time as a newspaper reporter.
I realized that it’s been 11 years this month since I worked as a full-time reporter.
Since then, I’ve done some freelancing here and there – nothing in about two years though. But I got to thinking about a lot of the experiences I had, the people I met, the stories I covered, and the ups and downs of being a small-town community reporter.
Many times it was horrible.
I stood by one day as first responders worked the scene of a multiple-car accident involving two fatalities. A drunken driver, who did not have the right of way and was killed in the accident, hit another car at excessive speed as it was pulling into an intersection.
In the other car, a mother sat in the driver’s seat, as workers cut parts of the car away to get her out. She kept talking to her son Zach, an 8-year-old boy, who was in the passenger seat, as the first responders worked.
Rachel was just a teenager with a bright future. She was on a swim team. She was a great student. She was a loving daughter and sister.
But her life was cut short as she was pulled into a rapid one warm spring day while wading in the Chattooga River, drowned, and was swept away. It took months for her body to be recovered. Months of effort, challenges, and tears from her family and from local rescue squads went by.
It was a dangerous task. On more than one occasion, rescue personnel were nearly swept away in rapids themselves. They were putting their lives on the line so that her family could have closure and bring Rachel home.
Her father sought the help of a New Jersey company that made portable dams --- a series of those dams were what finally led to the retrieval of her body.
Months of being underwater took its toll. They first found her swimsuit. A few days later, they retrieved her in pieces.
I was there they day they did that. Myself and a group of other reporters and photogs kept our distance out of respect. We didn’t push people to talk. We didn’t push cameras in people’s faces. We just took in the sad looks on the faces of those workers and of her family. Those told the story themselves.
Recently as I was moving some boxes around the house and putting up Christmas decorations, I found a box full of news clippings.
Save mundane city and county council meetings, and school board meetings, they were articles that I have kept from my time as a newspaper reporter.
I realized that it’s been 11 years this month since I worked as a full-time reporter.
Since then, I’ve done some freelancing here and there – nothing in about two years though. But I got to thinking about a lot of the experiences I had, the people I met, the stories I covered, and the ups and downs of being a small-town community reporter.
Many times it was horrible.
I stood by one day as first responders worked the scene of a multiple-car accident involving two fatalities. A drunken driver, who did not have the right of way and was killed in the accident, hit another car at excessive speed as it was pulling into an intersection.
In the other car, a mother sat in the driver’s seat, as workers cut parts of the car away to get her out. She kept talking to her son Zach, an 8-year-old boy, who was in the passenger seat, as the first responders worked.
I stood by, with a crowd of onlookers, our photog, and a reporter from another local newspaper, probably 25 feet or so from the vehicles, watching all this happen.
The rescue crews knew that Zach was gone. She didn’t. She kept saying to him as they worked, “It’s OK baby. Everything’s going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
After they got her out, she stood by screaming “Get my son out, get my son out” as the crews retrieved him from the car.
They lifted his body out. The look on the responders' faces as they held the young boy said it all.
“No,” his mom yelled. “NO!” Then she started screaming as she ran to her son and picked up his body from the man. “NO! Not my son!,” she screamed. It was the most god-awful scream I have ever heard.
I can still hear it sometimes. I can’t imagine what she was feeling, the emotions going through her at the time.
Those are experiences I don’t miss.
Then, many times being a reporter was fun and exciting. Sometimes you get to meet people you never would otherwise.
Being filled with adrenaline as a presidential candidate gets off a bus, walks into a building and speaks to a crowd of people all screaming, “Bush! Bush! Bush!” Trying to get that money shot as he’s working the crowds, shaking hands. Being encouraged by an AP photog who has been in this business for years, who is telling you "Just push your way through. Get out there. You're not going to get any good shots by standing here."
Covering the announcement of a new head football coach at your college alma mater. Being up front in the media row, asking questions and taking photos. Watching him in person putting on that orange jacket.
Shaking hands with a former vice-president, becoming friends with a governor (who is now one of your Facebook friends as well), meeting the Speaker of the U.S. House, interviewing a musician or an astronaut, getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the Statehouse while it’s under renovation. Been there, done all that.
The rescue crews knew that Zach was gone. She didn’t. She kept saying to him as they worked, “It’s OK baby. Everything’s going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
After they got her out, she stood by screaming “Get my son out, get my son out” as the crews retrieved him from the car.
They lifted his body out. The look on the responders' faces as they held the young boy said it all.
“No,” his mom yelled. “NO!” Then she started screaming as she ran to her son and picked up his body from the man. “NO! Not my son!,” she screamed. It was the most god-awful scream I have ever heard.
I can still hear it sometimes. I can’t imagine what she was feeling, the emotions going through her at the time.
Those are experiences I don’t miss.
Then, many times being a reporter was fun and exciting. Sometimes you get to meet people you never would otherwise.
Being filled with adrenaline as a presidential candidate gets off a bus, walks into a building and speaks to a crowd of people all screaming, “Bush! Bush! Bush!” Trying to get that money shot as he’s working the crowds, shaking hands. Being encouraged by an AP photog who has been in this business for years, who is telling you "Just push your way through. Get out there. You're not going to get any good shots by standing here."
Covering the announcement of a new head football coach at your college alma mater. Being up front in the media row, asking questions and taking photos. Watching him in person putting on that orange jacket.
Shaking hands with a former vice-president, becoming friends with a governor (who is now one of your Facebook friends as well), meeting the Speaker of the U.S. House, interviewing a musician or an astronaut, getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the Statehouse while it’s under renovation. Been there, done all that.
Stuff like that is awesome.
Do I wish sometimes that I still was in the business, sure. Am I glad I’m out of it, more often than not.
Still, I’ve got a bit of it in me. I enjoy the writing I do for my job. I enjoy the interactions I have with our local media.
And I know how they often feel. That helps me do my job.
I read articles and I can tell where the reporter is coming from. Journalism is supposed to be impartial. Trust me, it’s not in most cases. And the journalists who remain are often treated with a look of skepticism, sometimes a bit of distrust, sometimes with ambivalence.
Do I wish sometimes that I still was in the business, sure. Am I glad I’m out of it, more often than not.
Still, I’ve got a bit of it in me. I enjoy the writing I do for my job. I enjoy the interactions I have with our local media.
And I know how they often feel. That helps me do my job.
I read articles and I can tell where the reporter is coming from. Journalism is supposed to be impartial. Trust me, it’s not in most cases. And the journalists who remain are often treated with a look of skepticism, sometimes a bit of distrust, sometimes with ambivalence.
I often find myself watching the news (I worked in a TV newsroom for a few years also as an online editor) and am able to tell when certain people are trying to keep from laughing at things. You know what some of their expressions are about. You can tell when they think someone or something in a story is just stupid. It makes me miss working with them, but I still get to in other ways.
Journalism is a hard job. You make people mad. Sometimes you may have a school superintendent call you on a Saturday morning to bitch about something you wrote. Sometimes you get into arguments with county supervisors about the first amendment….. and the funny thing about that, is sometimes those supervisors later become friends and people you can laugh with about what is currently going on after they’ve left office.
But you work late hours. You get paid squat. You aren’t able to be there for you family at times when you may need to be. It has its downsides.
So to everyone reading, I say, whether you agree or disagree with a news report, even though you may or may not like them, just respect the reporter. Although I did meet and have worked with a few in my time that were pure jerks.
Journalism is a hard job. You make people mad. Sometimes you may have a school superintendent call you on a Saturday morning to bitch about something you wrote. Sometimes you get into arguments with county supervisors about the first amendment….. and the funny thing about that, is sometimes those supervisors later become friends and people you can laugh with about what is currently going on after they’ve left office.
But you work late hours. You get paid squat. You aren’t able to be there for you family at times when you may need to be. It has its downsides.
So to everyone reading, I say, whether you agree or disagree with a news report, even though you may or may not like them, just respect the reporter. Although I did meet and have worked with a few in my time that were pure jerks.
I recall this one time when I spent the day in Columbia with some legislator friends, interviewed both the lieutenant governor and the state superintendent of education, and participated in an executive press briefing with the aforementioned governor. Before he came into the room, during some banter amongst ourselves, one of the reporters (who I'm still not sure who they were) threw insult after insult after derogatory comment around about our governor, who could have walked in at any moment. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. But some people are like that, unfortunately.
Most journalists aren't like that though - at least the majority of the ones that I have worked with and encountered.
Dealing with what you have to deal with as a journalist does often make you jaded. You become really cynical about a lot of things. That's a hazard of the job.
Still, journalism is a tough job, with often little reward. Journalists are people who have experienced many ups and downs in their workday and even spare time because of their job. My hat's off to the folks who do that for a living.
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