A product of the GI Bill

In defense of the new GI Bill, I offer myself as Exhibit A of what a good idea it is. And I offer my example, not because I was a direct recipient of past GI Bill benefits, but because of what it offered my GI Dad and how in the long run it contributed to a successful middle class lifestyle that gave him and my Mom opportunities that they in turn were able to offer their eight children.

I was struck by the indirect effect the GI Bill had on me and other Baby Boomers as I watched a recent segment of CBS News' "Sunday Morning" program that was devoted to expected passage of an updated GI Bill.

The original GI Bill, called the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, was, according to the "Sunday Morning" report, a rare instance of the president and Congress being proactive: Franklin Roosevelt, even before the end of World War II, anticipated and got Congress to agree that something had to be done to steer the country's war-driven economy away from the Depression that had occurred after World War I. The GI Bill of Rights promised every GI Joe -- my GI Dad among them -- and GI Jane low-interest loans to buy a house and a free education.

For my Dad, who served with the Army Air Corps, which included supply runs for Gen. George Patton's Army during the Battle of the Bulge, it meant a chance at a college education, which he took at the University of New Hampshire, graduating in 1948. He went on to Columbia for a Master's degree, married my Mom, took an officer's commission in the U.S. Air Force, got a PhD from Denver University and went on to teach at the U.S. Air Force Academy, all the while the two of them building the American dream of family and opportunity.

It begs the question: Would all that have happened without Dad's access to the benefits of the GI Bill?
And so it begs the question now: Why aren't we doing the equivalent for the soldiers who return from the fight today? Granted, it is a different war, this ill-defined War on Terror that is playing out in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the consequences of war -- however it is currently defined -- remain the same. Men and women volunteer to fight our fight, and the country, as it did after World War II, needs to step up and help their transition once they get home.

And while we're all very cost-sensitive these days, the $4 billion a year cost of the new GI Bill should not deter us from its support. As the "Sunday Morning" report pointed out: That $4 billion is the equivalent to funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for a single week.
In 1999, now retired NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw published "The Greatest Generation" as a tribute to the men and women of World War II who went on to build modern America.

If the pass-along benefit from the Greatest Generation worked so well for their Baby Boomer children, it seems fair to give today's GI Joes and Janes -- those GI Dads and Moms -- the same chance to create opportunity for their own children, the next generation.

No ties that bind

I didn't get a necktie for Father's Day, the traditional necktie-giving faux holiday. I did get one as a gift last Christmas, however, a nice one that my son picked up in Milan, Italy. He had been studying in London during the fall semester and had made a weekend trip to Milan where he did some Christmas shopping for family.

The fact that I got a tie at all in 2008 should be of some consolation to the Men's Dress Furnishings Association, the trade group for necktie makers. But not enough of a concession, apparently, since the association is disbanding because the tie is loosening its knot on the American male. Necktie makers are going the way of newspapers -- there are devotees out there, but more and more people don't feel the compelling need for one anymore.

According to a Gallup poll, only 6 percent of men wear neckties to work each day, down from 10 percent in 2002. And I must say, for the last couple of years I've been part of that 94 percent that haven't been wearing a tie to work, this after almost 25 years of wearing a tie to work each day.

The ties that bind aren't what they used to be. I grew up in the Era of Ties. My Dad wore one as part of his Air Force uniform. Ward Cleaver wore one on every episode of "Leave It To Beaver." Heck, Ward continued to wear a necktie after work while home with wife June, son Wally and Jerry Mathers as the Beav. Ward would trade his suit coat for a cardigan sweater but the tie stayed on, notched firmly to the neck as he dealt calmly and rationally with whatever predicament the Beaver would find himself in that particular week.

A recent Associated Press story about the passing of neckties noted that our culture was once filled with the adornment: guys wore ties as they stood in soup and bread lines during the Depression; guys wore ties to baseball games; and guys wore ties absolutely, positively every day to the office. In New York City, that pantheon of ties on Wall Street, the tie symbolized status. The "power tie" was as important a credential as an MBA in climbing the corporate ladder.

Then the kids started taking over Wall Street and culture and business fashion. I don't mean that as a denigration, but the new kids on the block of business redefined the corporate culture with a casualness that reviled ties as constricting and old. The casual Friday attire of khakis, polo shirts or open collared shirts carried over to Monday through Thursday. The Dot-comers and Gen-Xers argued that the emphasis should be on the quality of the work, not the quality of the attire. There are still companies and managers who counter argue that attire affects work -- sloppy dress, sloppy work. But it's evident in the tie department that they are very much in the minority.

Which makes it more difficult for those of us from the necktie era to decide when is it appropriate to wear a tie or go without. It's interesting to watch the two presumed candidates for president: Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. They make appearances with ties; they make appearances without ties. There seems to be no rhyme or reason. At least with Hillary Clinton you knew you'd get a pantsuit each day.

I stopped wearing a tie when I started visiting the construction site each day during a building project I managed for Seacoast Media Group. It just didn't make sense to wear suits and ties to a job site that was alternately icy, snowy, muddy and dusty. Steel-toed boots and a hard hat just didn't seem to match up that well with my array of Cocktail Collection ties. I learned I didn't need the tie to effectively manage the process or the people. And that sentiment carried over to my post-project days in the office. Now that I'm a transitional phase of semi-retirement, it's a wonder I don't just wander around the house in my underwear all day, let alone wear a tie.

The ties don't make the man. But I do concede that it can certainly dress him up at times.

A new kind of checklist

I always have a checklist going in my head of things I need to do, people I need to contact, and places I need to go.

Monday through Friday, it's been a list of work-related tasks -- meetings to attend, reports to write, deadlines to meet. And during the weekend, it's been a list of home-related tasks -- food to buy, chores to do, find some place to eat out or listen to live music.

This past weekend, I was going through my mental home-related checklist, and on Sunday morning, as I looked at the day ahead I added a mental place holder to mow the lawn. If it doesn't get done on a Saturday during mowing season, the lawn has to get done on Sunday before I go back to work on Monday.

Then I paused ... wait, I don't have to mow the lawn on Sunday because I don't have a job to go to on Monday. I'm retired, so to speak. My Saturday and Sunday mentality can be extended to Monday, if I wish, or to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So I mowed the lawn on Monday.

I've never not had a job. As one of eight children growing up, we always had chores for which we received an allowance. Once I got to high school I had a job during the summers. And I had jobs through college, and was expected to get a job after graduating from college.

With just weeks to go before graduation, I received a letter from my father chastising me: "We're disappointed, your mother and I, that you haven't found a job yet." True, I hadn't been trying very hard, but after getting that letter I had my first newspaper job within four weeks of leaving school.

So this semi-retired life -- or whatever you want to call this transition -- will take some getting used to. I intend to do something in the way of a job, but it'll be something on my terms, something I have promised I would give myself time to think about.

In the meantime, I'm trying to re-gear my brain, re-orient my checklist, re-think the way I approach the day.

I'm very Type A, borderline obsessive-compulsive. I approached a day at work in a very orderly, very systemic way. The fact that in newspapers there are always deadlines to work toward required me over the years to think this way and approach certain tasks as Steps 1, 2 and 3 in order to achieve Goals A, B and C. In writing this column, for example, in order to meet deadline I had to have the germ of an idea by Sunday, be writing by Monday, and doing the final touches for a Tuesday morning newspaper deadline.

Since I'm not writing for a newspaper anymore and publishing to the internet, I don't have to follow those steps. Since I post this each Friday, I can give myself plenty of time for an idea to bubble, ferment and pop. Yet, here's how it went this week: Idea by Sunday, write on Monday, final draft on Tuesday. At this stage, I think, it feels like vacation, not yet like my re-defined life.

I will learn by experience that the work of semi-retirement isn't the work of going to an office each day to accomplish a set of tasks as dictated by a job description, action plans, and goals outlined in an annual evaluation. This is very much an open-ended proposition -- a vast open prairie to walk, not the defined paths of an office job.

I'm getting there. I waited until Monday to mow the lawn. Who knows -- next week I may wait until Tuesday.

A -30- on my newspaper career

I'm about to put a -30- on my career as a newspaper man.

The number 30, sandwiched between two dashes, indicates the end of a newspaper story. And my story in newspapers is coming to an end after 33 years, a couple of more if you count the time I spent working for the student newspaper at the University of New Hampshire in the early 1970s.

The -30- isn't around anymore. It's an old editing mark that told typesetters who set copy with lead type that the story was done. The -30- disappeared as lead type and typesetters disappeared, and as writing stories on manual typewriters with cheap copy paper was replaced by computers and blinking cursors.

I freely admit it: I'm a dinosaur, part of a profession that is desperately trying to evolve or face extinction.

For more than 30 years, that's who I've been -- a newspaper man. I was the guy at the newspaper who wrote the stories. Then I was the guy at the newspaper who assigned and edited the stories. Then I was the guy who was editor of the newspaper. Then I was the guy who was in charge of day-to-day newspaper operations. All I've ever been is a newspaper man.

I graduated in May 1975 from the University of New Hampshire and by June I was working for the York County Coast Star. I was hired as a summer fill-in at the weekly that circulated throughout southern Maine. I didn't leave until two falls, two winters, two springs and two summers later. Then it was on to the Peabody Times in Peabody, Mass., part of the Essex County Newspaper group. It was a big deal then to jump from being a weekly reporter to working on a daily newspaper.

I became the city editor in Peabody, then moved over to a sister paper in Beverly, Mass., where I became a metro editor and ultimately editor. I was new media director for the ECN group, before heading north to New Hampshire to help Seacoast Newspapers with the purchase and consolidation of the Portsmouth Herald about 10 years ago as director of operations. It’s where I've remained ... until today.

Today (Friday, June 6) is my last day as a newspaper man, and like newspapers themselves I'm faced with the challenge of re-inventing myself as someone else, using the core of what I know and my experience to morph into something different.

A lot has changed to those papers: Ironically, the Star became a part of Seacoast Newspapers in 2001. The Peabody Times and Beverly Times went away, merged into the Salem News. Essex County Newspapers disappeared as a group, merged into one sale then another. Seacoast Newspapers became Seacoast Media Group as we needed a name that was more reflective of a business that had expanded beyond newspapers to the internet.

My opportunity here could be called a retirement, but the word retire denotes the kind of behavior that I'm not ready or willing to accept, either financially or emotionally. For a long time, I've gotten up each morning to dress for a day at the paper, and all the excitement and decision making that it might bring.

It's a strange feeling to know that come Monday, I won't wake up to that. I can best describe as teetering between elation and terror. I've never not had a newspaper job, and that's the scary part. But I'm tremendously excited to have the time to figure out what's next.

I'm one of a growing legion of newspaper men and women who are getting out, either on our own accord or someone else's. Newspapers in the last couple of years have shed thousands of positions in a frantic effort to save money as the industry seeks to save money as it reinvents itself from a dominant media that relied on printing to a dominant media that relies on technology.

This is my last column for the newspaper but not online. I still have a lot to say. You haven't heard the last from me yet. We dinosaurs can still make a lot of noise.