No. 434: You Can't Demolish A Legacy

No. 434, Warren Western Reserve High School by Tom Wills, pencil, March 2019

I was a Raider at Western Reserve High School in Warren, Ohio, from 1975 to 1979. Then I was a Kent State Golden Flash, then a writer, parent, artist and grandparent. For me, a 40th-year high school reunion is a dicey proposition. Senior high school was a long time ago -- and if that was the highlight of your life, then you haven't had much of a life.

Black and gold.

I was going to sit this one out, although my classmate-wife Patty wanted to go and see how everyone's holding up. I can tell you:  We're 58-ish, graying and heavier. But hopefully now we're wiser and established -- my words for "settled."

So I was surprised when another grownup Raider, and my once-neighbor, proposed very early this year that I create a special piece of art for the event. Not gonna lie, he waved a few bucks at me and, well, out the window went my reunion resistance.

Imagination amok.

John said to let my imagination run and come up with whatever I wished. So I perused Raider yearbooks for ideas and settled upon the Indian head logo, the Raider mascot with spear, the musketeer that graced the auditorium, the band (the drummer is not me), cheerleader, majorette and -- of course -- the once-rival Reserve and Warren G. Harding Panther football players. I spaced these across the backdrop of our beautiful alma mater, which was demolished in 2010. Patty and I attended a final walk-through before the bulldozers brought their madness.

The art piece became a not-to-scale collage of varsity activities, played out on the school's front lawn. I sent John regular updates and he just said "do it."

Our reunion is Sept. 28 at DeLucia's banquet hall in my Warren hometown; my house is five minutes from the venue. Many living far away can't make it, including John, who funded most of the party but has sudden, critical business matters to settle elsewhere.

Many prints!

He and I made prints of the artwork for everyone who shows up to take home for free. And I'm taking the massive, framed piece to the reunion -- even though John won't be here to take it home.

But he'll be back for it, I know. It seems we mighty, mighty Raiders always come back -- eventually.

Artwork commissioned by the Rush Family Trust, 2019.

No. 451: Sunflowers

"Sunflowers" by Tom Wills, September 2019. Watercolor on ink and pencil.

It's a Farmall, friend of the fields and a fixture at county fairs.
The big red tractor, I'm sure, is older than the parents of Jack and Luke, the brothers visiting the sunflower maze at Von Bergen's Country Market in Hebron, Ill.

Restored, antique farmhouse frame.

Back here in Ohio, grandma asked me if I could do a painting from a picture she'd taken that golden day.
Turns out, I could.
Grandma already had a spot picked out over her fireplace.  All she needed was the picture.

Home.

I was in between jobs, both of the art kind and the making a living type, when I agreed to take on the project.  A sketch was worked up first, so that we could agree on the size and image. Many messages were exchanged over a few weeks.

Looking sketchy.

The sketch is the skeleton of the painting. Once the bones are in, then the colors can grow, from light to dark. I washed this sketch with yellow, green, blue, red and brown -- in that order. I tried a few white streaks to approximate high grass. The wash serves as the pillow upon which the final colors will rest.
  

It's a wash.

I purposely "built" the tractor and landscaping around the boys. It was a distant picture and I couldn't see their faces clearly, so I knew that detailing the two would take extra care. There were two sets of legs entwined on those tractor pedals, little arms and hands, rosy cheeks and some lime green sunglasses.

Building those boys.

I painted over all of the blacks and whites once the boys were pretty much finished. This made the tractor and landscaping "pop" from the watercolor paper. It also served to clean up some messy lines.
The sunflowers in the background are approximated in by design. Up close they appear as dots and splotches of yellow, orange, green, brown, white and black. But from a few feet away, they're easily seen as sunflowers. Golden magic!

Jack and Luke

Grandma and I talked about frames throughout the process.  What would work? Too light, too dark, too big, too modern -- what to do for a farm painting over a fireplace?
Luckily I have a friend who runs a local shop full of furniture and frames. In the midst of the painting I came across a big old frame tucked behind her counter. She didn't have a price for it, but I swore I'd be back when she did.

Here the unfinished frame is just placed over the painting, to see how it fits.

The frame is beautiful but needed a little touch up work, so I mixed up some gold, black and brown and brushed the mixture onto the rough spots -- using my right index finger and a paper towel to rub it in and make it match both in color and shine.  In many of my pieces where older frames are used, the frame itself becomes art.

The frame as art.

Grandma and I love the frame. It's now extra rigid, sealed and heavy.  It will last through Jack and Luke's children -- and grandchildren!

 

 

I don't imagine the boys cared much about all of this on that sunny Illinois day, as they imagined piloting the giant red Farmall across the field, kicking up dust and smoke and making big tractor noises.
But I hope they turned around and noticed the gold. The sunflowers are where the magic is.

To inquire about an original watercolor or pencil illustration, contact Tom Wills on facebook or at willstom01@gmail.com. Prices vary by project size and scope.

No. 446: The People's Paper

"Mom and Mark," by Tom Wills, pencil, commissioned by Mark Sweetwood, Vindicator managing editor, August 2019

I saw Betty Jagnow and Mark Brown in the newsroom nearly every day for much of my 34-year-plus career at The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio. Going one-on-one with your CEOs is unique in these troubled days of American newspapers. That is one benefit of an independent, family-owned venture. But there is also a toll.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wishes Mark and Betty the best and thanks them for a great newspaper.

Mark Brown, right, talks about our closing, warns people that  news should come from reputable sources.

When the bottom fell out here on June 28, 2019, we got the bad news in person from Mark, the general manager -- and publisher Betty’s only child. The paper had just turned 150 on the 25th and now would close Aug. 31 after four generations of proud family ownership.

That night, while helping Mark to assemble his letter to readers for the print edition, I asked just one question: “How’s your mom?”

Betty Jagnow became publisher after the death of her husband, William J. Brown. April 1 marked her 71st year of working here — April Fools' Day also was my 34-year benchmark — while Mark had 38 years.

They'll be out of work, too, among many of my colleagues.

Vindicator's old building, August 2019, commissioned by Kalea Hall.

In my view, neither the ownership nor the staff failed the community, and we tried for as long as possible to keep the beast alive. We tried all sorts of things to keep good people working  in downtown Youngstown.

Newspapers, including ours, employ some of the brightest people you’ll ever meet and yet we could not work up a winning formula to defeat the F word: FREE. It’s human nature to grab what we don’t need to pay for, and online news — from sources both legit and sketchy — trips over itself to be first at giving away print's lifeblood.

There is no buyer for this business and its debts.

Storm clouds brewing.

According to the Pew Research Center: “From 2008 to 2018, newsroom employment in the U.S. dropped by 25 percent. In 2008, about 114,000 newsroom employees – reporters, editors, photographers and videographers – worked in five industries that produce news: newspaper, radio, broadcast television, cable and “other information services” (the best match for digital-native news publishers). By 2018, that number had declined to about 86,000, a loss of about 28,000 jobs.

Bad news.

“The number of newsroom employees at U.S. newspapers declined by 47 percent between 2008 and 2018. This decline in overall newsroom employment has been driven primarily by one sector: newspapers. The number of newspaper newsroom employees dropped by 47 percent between 2008 and 2018, from about 71,000 workers to 38,000.”

Vindicator General Manager Mark Brown chose to personally edit and proof the final Page One story.

Initially I was going to write in this space about what we did, or didn't do, in the last 15 years to right the ship. But at this juncture no purpose would be served -- and I don't want to go out like that.
At The Vindicator, there was a valued sense of loyalty from the very top to bottom.  If you stuck by the company, it stuck by you for as long as it could -- until it couldn’t. We kept showing up and doing the work and were very good at it.  I never missed a paycheck.

Friday night, Aug. 30, 2019, about 9:45 p.m., hot off the press.

Fortunately, and unexpectedly, I was thrown a life raft and will stay in local journalism, and can continue with newsroom management from closer to home.

Mark Brown was a real gentleman about it and was relieved that someone swept me up, at my age.  I am grateful too.
On our final day the newsroom presented the drawing to him, signed by all of us. I told everyone we can leave with our heads held high.

They saw it through to the very end, despite the heartbreak.

That night, before the press run, I hugged his mother -- so formidable in her earlier years --  and kissed her cheek, and I told her, "thank you." 
… And I didn't shed a single tear until I typed that sentence.

Vindicator alumni who didn't stick around for these worst of times are planning a reunion for the Sunday after our closing.

Come back to Youngstown and have your dinner, and look back on the better days. Venerate our name or poke a stick in us, however you feel.

I have no interest in further revisiting the life and death of this place. Many of us who stuck it out are too wrung out to party.

I'm taking with me a wealth of knowledge shared by people such as Paul Jagnow, Tony Paglia, Emily Webster Love, Bill Hawkins Jr., Carl Basic, Ernie Brown Jr.,  Robert Yosay, Matt Arnold, Robert McFerren, Bill Lewis, Cindi Rickard, Bertram de Souza, Todd Franko and Mark Sweetwood — again, among the brightest people you’ll ever meet.  

Unleashing the power, one last time.

For those subscribers who stuck with us to the end, you have all of our gratitude.

Your local successors in Warren, and I, will work hard to honor The Vindicator's good name.

To the people who believe out-of-town money and short-term experiments in community coverage will change the face of Mahoning Valley news: I hear it hurts when the lab monkeys get their eyes poked.

For those pointers and clickers with short attention spans who get their “facts” from Facebook, Twitter and all sorts of free sites: You are killing the legitimate messengers.

Cheap rhymes with sheep, you know.