Citizen Staff Report
THE FINAL EDITION
The first day of my first story, then-City Editor Jim Wyckoff told me to go to the scene, every time. Do an interview over the telephone, he warned, and you’ll miss the bullet hole in the window, or the refrigerator magnet, or the family photo that could provide little nuggets of insight. If you want to chronicle human moments, he advised, be there to see the tears and anger and pain and beauty.
I learned about the power of words to nudge and inspire.
I did a piece on a crime victim who needed surgery to save her eyesight. Readers responded with donations to provide the medical care her insurance company wouldn’t.
In that moment of a community pulling together, any sense of victory was tempered by sobriety. What I wrote had the power to move people, to influence policy, to change lives.
I felt awe, then humility, that people trust me to tell their stories and to be an accurate filter of their experience.
RHONDA BODFIELD
Former staff member
Black Friday is my favorite shopping day of the year. I love the deals, the chaos and getting home at noon with all my Christmas and birthday shopping done. I hate getting up before dawn, but justify it with the thought that I’ll get to take a long afternoon nap.
For Black Friday 2007, I agreed to be the reporter out covering the chaos. It meant that I would have to be up at 3 a.m., and also meant dragging along my 14-month-old foster child, Bamm Bamm. I thought he would sleep in the stroller the whole time.
He ended up staying awake for most of the trip, but managed to be the easiest part of completing the story. After our first stop to interview the folks in line at Mervyn’s, I got back in my truck to head to Circuit City.
My truck wouldn’t start. I had four stores to hit in less than two hours and I had a dead battery. At each store, Citizen photographer Xavier Gallegos had to jump my battery. When it came time to file my story, I did it while sitting in my truck in the Tucson Citizen parking lot typing on my laptop with my engine running and my little boy finally sleeping.
HEIDI ROWLEY
Former staff member
On a whim, after spending the 1948 Fourth of July weekend in Tucson, I sought and landed my first post-Princeton job at the Citizen. Elated, I found my desk in the seven-reporter newsroom, sat down, and admitted: “I don’t know how to type.” To which the veteran newsman next to me offered wise counsel: “Fake it.”
I managed to hunt-and-peck my way through four enjoyable stints at the state’s oldest paper for a total of 20 years. Closing my initial stay as acting sports editor, I joined the FBI in 1951, only to return a year later as city editor, 1952-55. Alcoholism slowly had a grip on me, so I wandered far and often until the Citizen gave me another chance as day police reporter (1962-64).
My stories were generally good, my behavior wasn’t, so I disappeared again until finding recovery in AA (9/24/69). By 1971, I was welcomed home for one last fling – as political writer, columnist and editorial page editor – until 1983. Thanks for the memories.
ASA “ACE” BUSHNELL
Former staff member