Louisiana Voice

If we’re lucky, we get to encounter someone who leaves a lifelong impression on us and who challenges us to become person we aspire to be, both professionally and personally. Whether we care to admit it or not, we all need that special someone to help us navigate the treacherous roads we travel throughout our lives, to dare us, to goad us, to drive us. That person, if we are fortunate enough to live in his or her shadow, will continue to influence our decisions and actions long after we have parted ways.

Such a man was Troy Thomas Kelly, aka Tom Kelly, longtime publisher of the Ruston Daily Leader where I began my career in journalism 55 years ago with no small amount of trepidation and doubt.

It was 1966 and Southern Bell Telephone Co. was just as tired of me as I was of climbing telephone poles in the hot summers and cold winters of north Louisiana. I saw an ad in The Leader that said they were looking for an advertising salesman. I walked in off the street and applied for the position – and got it. The starting pay was $65 a week, a five-dollar-a-week cut from what I was making climbing telephone poles.

What a mistake. For Tom Kelly, it was a colossal case of poor judgment. It took him about a nano-second to realize I was not born to sell. The obvious solution was for him to either fire me or find something else around the office I could do – like cleaning toilets. I’d been writing a sports column as the only real contribution I ever made as an ad rep, so he figured “What the hell” and “promoted” me to sports editor.

To make a long, boring story a little shorter, I worked for Tom on four different occasions. Each time he asked me to return, it was at a little higher position until in 1976, he brought me back a last time – as managing editor.

Things would go sour with The Leader’s absentee ownership in Panama City, Florida, and first I left and then Tom. He eventually ended up back where he started his journalism odyssey: Winnfield, where he published the monthly Piney Woods Journal, a delightful publication geared toward the timber industry but with an eye and ear to Louisiana politics.

I was retired and writing this political blog, occasionally contributing stories for Tom’s publication until he sold the paper a few of years back to the Natchitoches Times and retired.

I sent him the following message upon learning of his retirement:

Tom, this truly saddens me on so many levels. Obviously, I share your sentiments about the death throes of news publications and I, too, place much of the blame on the Gannet and Facebook mentality. It’s an industry that I literally grew up in—as a man and as a journalist. But more than that, you and I have a connection that goes back more than 50 years and nothing can ever replace that. You took me under your wing and taught me about journalism. How you managed to have enough patience to do that I will never know, but know this: I will be forever grateful for that education and your tutorship and guidance. You are one of only a handful of people whom I admire and look up to and you will always be an inspiration and a source of encouragement to me. At the risk of sounding too maudlin, your announcement makes me feel as though I’ve lost something very personal—and I have.

Take care, my friend.

az

This was his response:

My greatest pride in the personal achievements in this profession that we follow are not in the words I write, but in the people I have been fortunate enough to bring in and help to grow as practitioners of our craft. Bill Davis. Eric Mahaffey. Nick Drewry. Jerry Pye. Derwood Brett. Buddy Davis. David Widener. David Specht. Several whose names have slipped my mind. And a brash, talented, industrious achiever of the writing arts named Tom Aswell. We called him Az. If I have left anything behind, it is in the talents of those who carry on even now. They all made me look better than I could have been alone.  Several of a new generation joined up as contributors for this latest enterprise, which has provided me a new level of satisfaction. 

Keep the faith. 

TK 

Two years ago, he was honored by the Louisiana Press Association for 50 years of service to the newspaper industry. I was fortunate enough to attend along with another former employee who was also nurtured and taught so much by Tom: Jerry Pye who started out at The Leader as a carrier and ended up as publisher of his own newspaper.

Tom was 88 when he received that honor from the LPA. He was 90 when he died last Saturday and a part of his protégées like Jerry Pye, Derwood Brett, David Widener, Eric Mahaffey and me died with him.

It’s getting more and more difficult to write these stories as more and more of the people I love and cherish pass on and leave me to contemplate life’s cruel twists and turns.

To be sure, Tom and I had our disagreements. Anyone who works that closely together and who has ideas of their own will have differences. But there’s one thing Tom Kelly taught me about local journalism I will never forget. He drilled it into my head that there are three major events in a person’s life: when they are born, when they marry and when they die. Those are the stories you’d better not mess up.

He was demanding, a perfectionist, and he was driven. He could be hard to please but when I came across a really controversial story that involved money laundering, he backed me to the hilt even in the face of threatened lawsuits that in the end, never materialized.

One year he gave me the assignment of gathering graduation photos of seniors from high schools in Lincoln and Union parishes. I took them to my then-fiancée’s home to sort them out, placed them in a box and placed the box on the roof of my car as I told her goodnight. You know what happened next and when the photos were published, we had students from the dozen or so classes scattered randomly – and incorrectly – throughout all the schools. It was an awful mess and Tom should’ve fired me on the spot. But he didn’t; he just threw up his arms in pure disgust at my stupidity and stomped back to his office and slammed the door. I think I’d have felt better if he had fired me.

But he had a sense of humor, too. For New Year’s Day 1977, Tom Kelly sent out special invitations to the inaugural All-American Redneck Male Chauvinist Spittin’, Belchin’, and Cussin’ Society and Literary Club’s All-Day Poker Game and Dinner on the Grounds.

There were few rules but some of the most important ones:

• Lots of music by Willie, Waylon, and Hank Williams;
• No guns, knives, or other sharp objects allowed at the poker table;
• The only hand to beat a Royal Flush was a real good redneck bluff;
• Wimmenfolk was invited to do the cookin’ and bridge playin’, but they was forbidden to come into the poker room, sigh heavy, roll they eyes or say it was time to go.

As it turned out, the women and Dr. Rudolph Fieler, a retired Tech professor who was then writing editorials for The Leader that were filled with such prose that the average person never knew what the hell he was saying, played bridge while we menfolk were playing draw and stud poker (Texas Hold ‘em had not been popularized as yet). Doc Fieler, taking a break from his bridge game, stopped by our table and Tom offered him his seat at the table. Doc declined, saying he knew nothing about poker.

Seeing a sucker ripe for the taking, the rest of us eagerly volunteered to teach him as we played, assuring him that we’d tell him when he won. Of course, you know the story: Doc Fielder literally cleaned us out, walking away with our combined wealth of some $17.85.

My point is, you can’t buy those kinds of memories. Tom Kelly was more than a boss. He was an extension of my family, a father figure to me, a talentless kid who desperately needed a strong guiding hand as I embarked on what turned out to be my life’s work.

I’ve worked with some talented newspaper editors: Wiley Hilburn, Jimmy Hatten, Jim Hughes, and Tom Kelly. And while Tom Kelly and he were professional foes, John Hays has to be included in that group of outstanding editors, for he was a helluva investigative reporter in his own right.

And now they’re all gone and again, I feel I’ve lost something very personal – and I have. What you leave behind, Tom, is a legacy that no journalism class could ever hope to teach. You taught integrity, dedication, and a love for the written word to dozens of fortunate reporters, editors and interns who had the good fortune to walk through the door of the Ruston Daily Leader. I was one of those and I will be forever richer for the experience.

Below is a poem I wrote when Hilburn died in 2014. I believe it is just as relevant today as it was seven years ago:

THE COFFINS THAT PASS ME BY

As I pass from middle age to my golden years,

And contemplate how time can fly,

It’s not the setting sun that brings the tears,

But the coffins that pass me by.

Whether ’twas friend or foe matters not a flip,

For one and all, life’s wells run dry;

And it’s not that I fear making that trip,

It’s those coffins that pass me by.

Friends and loved ones will pay their respects

As they share stories and laugh and cry;

And each one standing there quietly reflects

On the coffins that pass us by.

Whether ’tis loved one or stranger who goes first,

Our own fate is to one day ride

On that dreaded journey we all have cursed

In that coffin that once passed us by.

Go in peace, my friend.