The Star-Gazette was the first newspaper of the now massive Gannett conglomerate. It was founded as the weekly Elmira Gazette in 1828 and became an evening daily in 1856. Frank Gannett bought a half-interest in the newspaper in 1906 to begin what would eventually be Gannett Co., Inc. The following year, he merged the Elmira Gazette with a competitor, the Evening Star, to form the Star-Gazette. In 1923, Gannett bought two other competitors in the city: the morning Daily Advertiser and the Sunday Telegram. The Star-Gazette and Advertiser combined as a single all-day newspaper in 1963. The Star-Gazette became a morning publication in 1982. The Telegramname plate was dropped from the Sunday edition in 1985.
Looking back, it was spring 1973, and I discovered that I'd never have a job that I enjoyed as much as the regional reporter for the Elmira Star-Gazette — and also my next two jobs that followed.
Denise wasn't crazy about it but said, "Okay, as long as you quit if your grades or interest in school falters even a little, I'll be watching you like a hawk."
I was off and running. I'd attend my classes during the day and work on digging out stories in between. There were specific events I had to cover for the newspaper: Borough council meetings, fires, fatal accidents, parades, and festivities such as the Wellsboro Laural Festival, the Coudersport Maple Syrup Festival, and, get this one, the Morris Rattlesnake Hunt. I wanted to cover high school sports, but my boss, Dick Wick, said no. "You work for the Gazette news bureau now, you gave up your sports job."
In the beginning, I was feeling my way along when I picked up on a possible story about an unidentified animal about 10 miles northwest of Mansfield. The animal was drawing small crowds from a lookout point where people gathered in the evening just before sundown. It had a huge rack, and the state game people ruled out deer, caribou, moose, and Elk.
I found out where the looking spot was located and went there. About 30 people, many with binoculars and spy glasses, had gathered, and all eyes were trained on a field located between two wood lots, maybe 500 yards from the looking spot.
I spotted a couple with a young boy on the hood of their Ford Bronco, and the three of them were staring out at the field. I approached and introduced myself. It was Terry and Jane Mudge, and the little boy was Bradley. Terry and Jane were both teachers, Terry a history teacher at Mansfield High School, and Jane at the Warren L. Miller Elementary School in Mansfield. Little did I know that in three years, Denise and I would become great friends with the Mudges. After asking them several questions, I asked little Bradley, about five, what he thought the animal was, and he responded, "It's a big thing."
When I returned home, I went straight to the typewriter and wrote the story. To get my stories to Emira, I had to drive about two miles on Route 6 east to the home of a man who headed up the area's circulation for the Gazette. Every morning, he left his house at 5 a.m. to drive to the Star Gazette in Elmira to pick up newspapers he brought back to the news outlets across three counties. The Gazette gave me several glass tubes where I'd put my stories and rolls of film and leave them in his mailbox for the next day's paper.
I began to learn that there were numerous places in the area where I could pick up story ideas, and Cleveland's Newsroom was one of them. The day after I sent the story to the Gazette, I went into Cleveland's Newsroom, and George was as excited as a bear at a bee honey hive. "Ron," he called out to me just as I entered his store, "did you see the Star Gazette today?" And he held up the paper.
There it was, the lead story on the front page of the Star-Gazette, "Youngster Identifies Unidentified Animal as the Big Thing." Byline and all.
I'll never forget how I felt when I saw that front page. But what happened next was even better. John and Effy Antonio ran the Twain Movie Theater on Main Street in Mansfield. John was the kind of man who knew everything about anything. He kept his thumb on the news of the area. They were the nicest people I have ever met. I could stop at their movie theater — they were always there drinking coffee whether or not a movie was showing — and get two or three-story ideas from John.
The Antonios liked me, which helped a great deal. "Listen," John said to me, whispering and carefully looking around as if he were about to tell me the secret of the Hindenburg explosion. I got a scoop for you. That animal, I know what it is."
John and Effy lived outside Lawrenceville, where the "big thing" was being spotted. A hunting resort and lodge sat about three miles north of the spotting area. People would pay money to stay there and hunt and kill rare animals. John pulled me closer. "It's a red deer that escaped from the hunting resort."
"Yeah," Effy added. "And they just slaugher poor, defenseless animals who can only run so far."
I had my first scoop and my second front-page story.
But this time, I wrote three sider stories on the hunting lodge — just like Garth Wade told me to do. You could hunt everything from boar to Elk and deer you couldn't find in the Pennsylvania woods. And just like Effy said, they were slaughtering defenseless animals.
And boy, did I hammer away at that. The people in the Mansfield area were hunters, no doubt about that. They closed the schools on the first day of deer season so kids could hunt. But it was against their nature to pen in animals that people from the city — who they called "flatlanders"— would pay money to shoot animals kept in a confined area. I continued to dig for stories about how the animals were "hunted."
Indeed, I was off and running, but there are many more stories and experiences I would have as the regional reporter.
Next: A tale of three State Troopers and a tragic loss of a good man.
Comments