Published: January 19, 2008 03:45 am         

10 years on, it's still a special job

In many ways, even after five years I still feel like the new kid on the block. There is still so much to learn and still so many people to meet. But our readers and our community have been nothing but kind to my family and to me. We love it here and I hope ... to keep going until I'm at least 83.

It has been five years since that paragraph appeared in this column. But I've just whizzed right past my 10th anniversary here, and I still feel the same way.

Being an editor, which means I have little to do all day other than to sit around and clip grocery coupons, I found time to get out my nifty Daily Star calculator and do some figuring.

When you take into consideration all my columns and editorials over the past decade, I have inflicted well more than half a million words upon an unsuspecting readership.

I hasten to add that the great majority of those words were the same ones over and over. I've merely changed the order of them to fit whatever I've been trying to communicate.

I suspect those half-million-plus words have been far more pleasant for me to write than for you to read, but they do rather create a sort of bond between us.

We have been through a lot together, you and me. There have been floods, power failures, snowstorms and, of course, 9/11.

But what I cherish most are the personal stories I've been privileged to share.

It may have been the unfortunate but courageous young lady who misplaced a lot of money she couldn't afford to lose. Her story touched a reader or two who sent me money to give to her.

Or it could have been the enterprising college student who created a first-class forum based on a column I wrote decrying the phrase "That's so gay."

Or the smile on the face of a little girl named Lily who appeared in a Daily Star photo. She had a terrible form of cancer, and a bikers group was kind enough to sponsor a shopping spree for her.

I never met the little girl, but there was something about her optimistic smile in that photo that I couldn't resist writing about. When I attended her funeral, I didn't speak to anyone there. I just felt I had to pay my respects.

The last line of that column was: "I know I will remember that smile."

It turns out that I have.

By far the most comments I've received about any of my columns concerned those I've written about my own children.

It may have been one I did when my eldest daughter left home on a continent-long bus trip to her first semester at a college in California.

Or maybe the one after that same daughter spent five months and a week as a student in Israel. While she was there, she called me right after a suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem and killed 23 people.

"Daddy," she said matter-of-factly, "I could hear the explosion from my dorm room."

I still occasionally hear about those columns as well as the one I did when daughter No. 2 left for college.

On the subject of tearful departures, for some reason folks really empathized when I wrote about finally parting with my beloved '86 Chevy.

Of course, my columns aren't everybody's cup of Joe. I have received any number of letters and e-mails exhibiting remarkable creativity in informing me that I don't know my elbow from my nether regions.

I get a particular kick out of one conservative gentleman who delights in roasting my newspaper and me in frequent letters to the editor, yet he is consistently charming, friendly and even occasionally complimentary when we happen to see each other.

Is this a great job, or what?

By far the most painful thing I've ever written didn't have a byline. It was my father's obituary, which appeared along with others one day in June 2005.

My name only appeared once, as one of the survivors, but I received several thoughtful condolence cards from readers _ people I had never met _ who never knew my father.

I can't remember ever being so touched, so impressed by the kindness of people who would go to such trouble for someone they know only through their daily newspaper.

Yes, there is a bond between those who write and those who read, and I will never take it for granted.

This has easily been the best decade of my four-decade-plus newspaper career. Clearly, I love writing this column and being the editor of this newspaper.

But I have only just begun earning the privilege.

___

Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.