When I lived in San Francisco, in 1976 – 77, I worked for a 3-times-a-week newspaper called the San Francisco Progress (known among staffers as the Regress) in the peninsula bureau. My primary assignment was to cover the City of San Bruno, where the airport is located. But I had the freedom to cover a lot of other things, too – including a Hell’s Angels graveside service and burial for one of their fallen at a cemetery in South San Francisco.

I had wrongly assumed that the Angels’ reputation was exaggerated and that they were probably just a harmless bunch of old guys who liked to ride motorcycles.

As I was walking through the crowd toward the gravesite, I saw one of the Angels stop a TV cameraman, grab his camera, open it, pull out the film, and throw it on the ground. So, not so harmless – scary, actually. I stopped momentarily, but then saw a guy who was a reporter for another paper – he had perfectly styled hair and wore his leather jacket slung casually over his shoulder and probably ironed his jeans. He was running toward the protection of a police car parked nearby. I determined I was not going to flee the scene in like manner. So I stuck around and got the story. And came away unharmed.

In Tallahassee, in a brief detour from journalism, I worked for the state of Florida as an information specialist and then managing editor of the Department of Commerce’s news bureau. To celebrate and publicize the 40^th anniversary of the Florida State Employment Service, we had a decorated sheet cake that I was entrusted with delivering to the state capitol, where Governor Reubin Askew was going to cut the cake and pose for a picture.

I entered the capitol building holding the cake and a butcher knife I had grabbed from my own kitchen (different times, for sure – no security guards challenged me). Turns out, there were several photos to be taken that day, so I sat for several minutes with my arms outstretched holding the cake aloft. It was heavy, and my arms started shaking. It caused a bit of a stir, and the governor looked up, then said to a nearby aide, “I’d really like to help the lady with the cake.” And so he did. We got the picture. I don’t recall what I did with the cake.

My first real newspaper job was in the late ‘60s as women’s editor of a weekly paper called The West Bank Guide in Gretna, La, a working-class community “over the river” from New Orleans proper. This was at the height of the war in Vietnam, and a lot of young men went straight from West Jefferson High School into the military. I wrote way too many obituaries for 19-year-old kids who were killed in the fighting. Their moms would come into the office with pictures and, sometimes, even letters their sons had written, which they wanted someone to read. After one such interview, a tearful mom left, then came back into the office and said, “Could you please say he was an altar boy at St. Joseph’s?”

I worked on the UGA student newspaper (now independent, but then under the auspices of the journalism school) for several quarters as a reporter and women’s editor, but only after a very inauspicious start.

My freshman roommate and I had decided we wanted to work on the paper, so we found our way to the Red & Black offices in the basement of the old C-J Building one evening. We walked into the busy newsroom, and when no one paid any attention to us, my roommate said, in a very loud voice, “Hi, we’re freshmen!” That brought a chorus of “No, really?” from the assembled student journalists. Nevertheless, put us to work. 

My first political interview came when I was on the staff of my high school newspaper, Golden Lines. My St. Pius X high school class went on a field trip to the Georgia State Capitol during the 1962 General Assembly session. I don’t recall how it came about, but I was ushered into the Senate chamber and introduced to Sen. Charlie Brown (for whom the Fulton County general aviation airport is named) so I could do an interview with him.. The senator was cordial and gracious and clearly sensed that I was nervous. I remember he said, “You probably want to ask me about how laws are passed,” and when I nodded, he proceeded to explain. I’ve always been grateful to him. 

I’ve been back to the Capitol a few times since then to interview governors (Sonny Perdue, Nathan Deal, and Brian Kemp) and other state officials; but I remember that first time as special.