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Whew. A week we will not soon forget at 125 N. Johnson St.
A range of emotions and circumstances ... shock, dismay, disbelief, perhaps even denial ... adrenaline-fueled days to get the stories written and the pages together ... phone calls and emails to answer ... visitors from out of town ... eventually, reality won’t be denied, but there’s joy at the response from the community (well, perhaps “joy” is not the right word, but there are certainly feelings of satisfaction mixed in with the sadness) ... and at some point, fatigue settles in as the events and demands of the week roll on.
Part of the stress of the week as well as part of the joy was in the tributes we received from our readers. (Ask, and ye shall receive; and boy, did we receive! Thank you.)
Even our press, I am convinced, made its feelings known. As our press crew cranked things up for Monday’s press run with the news of Jim’s passing, I went back to watch the first copies come off (something the I enjoy doing and wish I could do every day). Usually, it takes just a few minutes to get the settings right, get the ink and water balanced correctly and get the registrations lined up before good copies come rolling off. But not Monday.
The crew had to scramble. When one setting was fixed, another would go out of whack; just when they had that one fixed, something else would go wrong. Where normally we might have somewhere between 200 to 300 waste copies, Monday we had 2,600 waste.
We thought maybe Jim’s ghost was playing a few tricks on us, just being ornery. But as the week wore on, I got to thinking. A pressman who has been around will tell you that each press has its own personality. If that is so, I figure, then why can’t a press have feelings as well. Perhaps the press read the headline, that the person responsible for their being purchased and erected in Bluffton, Indiana, was gone. So, it protested; it simply didn’t particularly like what we were printing Monday.
Could be.
So, one week later, after numerous pages of tributes (and more to come), several dozen pictures and about a dozen articles, is there anything left to be said about our friend?
Well, I think so, and it is simply this: Jim Barbieri was a real piece of work. Of course, I mean that in a very positive sense. Let me explain.
Just a few months ago, when Jim’s health was still pretty good, there was a column in the Fort Wayne newspaper concerning a big topic of the time, particularly in newspaper circles, about Judith Miller, the New York Times journalist who went to jail rather than reveal her source in the Valeri Plame case.
The columnist was giving a perspective on who Judith Miller is and what impact that had on her reporting. He referred to her as a “real piece of work” and defined that as follows:
“There’s one at every workplace, a larger-than-life figure who gets away with anything, who inspires others to shake their heads in admiration and outrage.” He went on to describe them as “sometimes cognizant that they’re coloring outside the lines,” but “self-doubt is an alien concept.” And he concluded, “If you disagree with that sweeping statement - if you’re thinking there’s nobody who remotely fits that description at your office - then I’m afraid the piece of work is probably you.”
Jim and I had a number of frank and interesting discussions during the past nearly-nine years of working together - never a cross word, but there were disagreements - and we had been discussing the Judith Miller case quite frequently and very much so on the day before this column appeared in a Sunday edition.
While I don’t usually go into the office on Sunday afternoons, I needed to stop in for some reason. No surprise, Jim was at his desk. After I had read the column, I couldn’t wait to get his reaction, being fairly certain he had read it as well. So I stuck my head in his door.
“Jim, did you read that column in this morning’s paper about Judith Miller?”
“Yes,” he replied.
Here it comes, I thought. As you know, Jim was a very astute and up-front person. While not always quick to admit a weakness or mistake, he knew himself pretty well. I was certain I’d get that knowing smile, the tight squint of his eyes, and something like “I have no idea what he was talking about.”
“What’d you think?” I asked.
He responded with a lengthy discourse on the merits of Judith Miller protecting her source and the debate on the judge’s decision. The “piece of work” issue went right by him without a whiff of recognition. I did my best to not chuckle.
The point of that columnist’s message, one that I can only amplify here through personal experience, is this: Thank God for pieces of work. They make life interesting, exhilarating, sometimes exasperating, but oh, so memorable.
What would Bluffton be like today, where would so many of us be as individuals, without this piece of God’s work?
And now that Jim’s gone, I look around the office and I don’t see anyone who remotely fits the description ... that surely doesn’t mean what I think it means? Does it?
More Tributes will be published in Monday’s edition
by MARK MILLER
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