ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 2, 1996 TAG: 9602020012
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-14 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: RAY COX
Dan Callahan grew up around War, W.Va., a nuisance to the local librarian.
``She'd want to run me out of there because all I wanted to do was check out all the books of sports fiction they had,'' he said. ``You know those kinds of books, last-second shots and all that. I loved it. From the time I was 15 years old, all I ever wanted to be was a newspaperman.''
In time, he was.
He was 21 years old and courting the lovely and eligible Brenda Akers of Montgomery County and Radford College and one day was early for a date. Having time to kill, he picked up a copy of the Radford News-Journal and noticed a want ad for an advertising sales representative. He called and, after an interview, was offered a job by the publisher, then Bob Robaugh.
First day at his new post was May 10, 1967. The salary was $90 per week, no commission.
``I was very happy to have it,'' Callahan said.
Soon enough, he married Brenda and covered sports on the side for the Radford paper, mostly working the old Dublin High beat: football, basketball, and baseball for $10 per game, expenses included.
When ownership of the Radford paper and its sisters, Pulaski's Southwest Times and the now-defunct Blacksburg Sun, changed from the Worrells of Bristol to the Rookers of Pulaski, Callahan was appointed sports editor of all three papers.
``That was back in the days of the old New River District - Dublin, Pulaski, Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Radford, Galax, Giles, Narrows, Floyd County. We'd have a high school game of the week, and we'd be going to five high school football games every Friday,'' Callahan said. ``That was an excellent sports page we were putting out.''
When the papers were sold back to the Worrells, Callahan was asked which paper he wanted to work for. Without hesitation, he chose the Southwest Times.
``Pulaski County was where we wanted to be,'' he said.
There they stayed: Brenda working for the phone company and Dan covering games and writing features and columns.
``I loved it,'' he said. ``I loved getting up in the morning and going to work.''
Through 27 years, he stayed with it, recording the consolidation of the high schools; enduring the bitter-cold day the Cougars beat Robinson en route to the state football championship; surviving the smoke from Allen Wiley's cigars and Pat Burns' pipes (not to mention his own cigarettes); and surviving three ownership changes at the paper.
He didn't survive the fourth.
Last Friday, said Callahan, he was called before the new publisher, a Louisianian named Syd Kibodeaux, commended for his 27 years of service both as a reporter and as a sales rep, then informed that those services would no longer be required.
Kibodeaux confirmed this week there were a few layoffs at his paper, but he would not say how many. He said federal law prohibited him from naming the employees who lost their jobs. He would not confirm that Callahan was among them.Callahan recalled a remark Kibodeaux made that ``it was just a job.'' ``Just a job?'' Callahan said. ``I'm 48 years old and this is all I've done my entire adult Iife. It's my identity. It's who I am. It is how I represent myself in the community I live in.''
Performance was not an issue, Callahan said he was told. It was business.
``Very overstaffed,'' Kibodeaux said this week of the paper. ``Have been for years.''
Times are tough all over in the newspaper business these days. The cost of the paper they're printed on is up; the cost of the advertising space they sell is down. Competitors are behind every tree. People don't read as much as they used to.
Take your pick.
The industry is notoriously cyclical. Maybe it will come back this time. Maybe not.
Newspapers can be sentimental. Let the 25th anniversary of anything come around and the ink flows at flood tide. Have a supermarket or industrial park opening and some editorial pages all but weep with joy. Sometimes it looks like newspapers can be sentimental with anything or anybody but its own employees.
Red Smith once wrote about his brother Art, who was fired from the old Chicago Times for getting married. Art fell in love with and subsequently wed the Times food writer. The editor, a man by the name of Louis Ruppel, gave Art the boot, explaining, ``He took my food editor. I'll fix it so they got nothing to cook.''
Nothing personal. Just business.
For Callahan, who is 48, the job was "all I've done my entire adult Iife. It's my identity. It's who I am. It is how I represent myself in the community I live in.''
At the Southwest Times, Callahan said, there were 11 people who had worked at the paper for 15 years or longer. ``It was family and now the family is breaking up. That's kind of sad.
``There were a lot of people I've met and worked with over the years who have helped get me to where I am. I would have liked to have written a column to kind of say goodbye, to thank people for what they've done for me. I was not allowed to do that.''
Callahan's friends and associates are flabbergasted. He is, after all, one of the most experienced reporters of high school sports in the state. He was from an old school of sportswriting, not to every taste and now all but closed, in which the writer left little doubt that he shared the joy of the home team in victory and its grief in defeat.
It sold in Pulaski County. Aside from Pulaski County football coach Joel Hicks, no man alive is more responsible for the mystique, tradition, and mythology of Cougar football than Callahan.
``I don't get it,'' Hicks said. ``They say they want to cover local news then they fire their most experienced newsman. That makes no sense. I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel.''
Callahan doesn't understand it either. He's still getting up at 6:30 a.m. but now he has no ads to sell, no interviews to conduct. That embarrasses him.
``Why should he be embarrassed?'' asked Pulaski automobile dealer Bob Hudson, one of the biggest of Callahan's former accounts. ``The newspaper ought to be embarrassed.''
Brenda has a good job. They still have health insurance. They have each other. Sons Shane, 17 and a junior at Pulaski County High, and 15-year-old Jason have bright prospects.
On the other hand, a $40,000 renovation of the family home has yet to be paid for, college looms for Shane in two years and Jason in four, the supposed golden years of retirement are just around the corner, and the future is uncertain. Callahan is knocking on a lot of doors right now.
``I'm not ashamed to say I'm scared,'' he said.
Be assured that many are scared these days all over this industry.
It wasn't always that way.
``You know, the day before I heard Dan had been let go, he was in my office showing me some plans for a tabloid he was working on and some things he was going to do with our advertising,'' Hudson said. ``And he was telling me how optimistic he was about the future now that these new people had taken over at the paper.''
Ray Cox is a Roanoke Times sportswriter
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