By David Heiller
A hero of mine retired last week.

I could see it coming over the past several months. She threatened it when she didnít have any news to write, when no one called her, when she couldnít muster the energy to get to the city council meetings.

I cajoled and encouraged her not to stop writing the Brownsville news, and that helped for a while. My pleadings were sincere, and she saw that.

But several trips to the hospital, and nagging pains that donít seem to be going away, took the air out of my arguments just like they took the air out of her reporting.

It was fun to follow her writing over the years and decades. At my former newspaper, The Askov American, she would send in pieces about growing up in North Dakota, or what it was like going through the war with young kids, with her husband overseas fighting.

They were stories that older readers could relate to, and stories that I yearned to read too. Almost always, readers would tell me how much they liked the columns. ìI can see where you got your talent,î they would inevitably say, and I would have to agree with a sincere reply that her talent exceeded mine. She had that knack of writing simply, not wasting words, yet conveying much meaning and information.

She didnít write those kinds of columns for The Argus. She thought she would be telling too much of herself to people she knew, maybe even putting on airs. I disagreed, but she dug in her heels, and she can be stubborn. Itís a trait that some of her kids have too.

But her columns in The Argus were well worth reading. In fact, itís what I liked most about the paper, especially when I was a reader and not a writer. I liked following the news, the old familiar names, Cordelia Whitesitt, Lorraine Voshart, Muriel Bissen, Carmel Jostad, Margaret Harer. All those great ladies, and all gone now, which didnít make her job any easier.

She wrote about community news too, something that separated her from many columnists. She went to city council meetings religiously, and she reported the news, although carefully. She didnít want to embarrass anybody, even if they deserved it.

Cub Scout banquets, new Eagle Scout members, Lion Club pancake breakfasts, VFW Ladies Auxiliary news, Memorial Day services, you name it, she managed to get the information in her column.

ìNeighborhood news correspondents,î as I always called them, are disappearing, just like our old ways of life are. People donít report on where they are going and what they have done anymore. Maybe thatís because we are so darned busy, it would be impossible to try to report it all. And who would have time to read it? Thatís why her column changed over the years, and focused more on city news. Now thatís gone too.

Weíll try to find a replacement. Everything changes. I wonít dwell on the past. But I will say that I will miss her columns more than I care to admit. They were a bit of stability in the sometimes chaotic pace of my life.

Thanks, Mom. You did a heck of a job.

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Caledonia Argus
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507/724-3475

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