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PHALON's FILE - 10/01/2008
(by Joe Phalon - OpEd Columnist - October 02, 2008)
Remembering quiet but star reporter
No recounting of the history of the Suburban Trends would be complete without remembering Linda Baldwin. Linda died at age 33 from cancer in the summer of 1992. I wrote this column the day after her death:
I’m convinced Linda Baldwin really did know what happened to Elvis. She never said exactly where he was, but I think he may have been the person who fed her cats while she spent a long day at the office and a late council meeting.
I sometimes chided her about her responsibility to journalism if she, in fact, was keeping it a secret. As a reporter, she had a duty to expose the truth about The King. She said her home life was nobody’s business. (“So sue me. And Elvis.”)
Other than the whereabouts of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, however, there were very few things kept secret among those of us working at the Trends throughout the years. At the risk of using an overworked cliché, there was always a feeling of family in the newsroom. And Linda will be very much missed in the family.
I’ve been away from my full-time job at the Trends for almost four years. But I’ve continued to stay in touch and, to the extent possible, contribute to the paper. To me it’s still a family.
It’s been that way since I came to work there in 1984. Dot O’Connor, Debbie Walsh, Mike McGann, Linda and myself formed what we always felt was a nucleus, with Editor Howard Ball and Social Department mavens Grace Batelli and May Hopper alternating and parental figures (and intervening when necessary in sibling rivalries.) Many others came and went, but this group seems to have endured.
Linda arrived in 1987. Quiet, we barely knew she was there for the first few months. It was actually her first full-time job. After college, she devoted several years to taking care of her ailing grandmother while she worked from home, contributing articles to many publications. A change in the circumstances of her grandmother’s care allowed her to spread her wings, and she jumped into her work at the Trends.
Linda held very strong beliefs, yet never wore them on her sleeve. As an animal rights advocate, she would not eat meat. But rather than get on a pedestal about it, when offered a beef or chicken dish, she would just politely decline.
But there were a few things of which she was fiercely proud and about which she would take no prisoners. She was an ardent Giants fan, and throughout each autumn, she would recount on Mondays the abuse she suffered at the hands of her cousins, who were equally dedicated—if misguided—Dallas Cowboys fans.
And she was a fan of Barry Manilow to the core. By 1992, most people who in the ‘70s donned disguises to purchase Barry’s records grappled for excuses when those LPs were spotted in stacks of records. “Uh, they must be my brother’s.” Not Linda. She bought them, she played them, and she boasted about it. She knew how to stand up for her principles.
Perhaps most of all, it was her quiet dedication to her job and the people she encountered for which she should and will be remembered. Linda never made any claims to be a headline-grabbing, scandal-mongering reporter. That’s not to say she didn’t know a juicy story when she saw one, but that kind of journalism was better left to pushy, obnoxious reporters like me and McGann.
Linda was at her best when she wrote about the human condition – about the small person who has been overlooked or trampled on by The Powers That Be. Linda knew how to write the guaranteed tear-jerker. But she also knew how to find the little people who fell through the cracks, like the senior citizen who stopped getting her Social Security checks because of some bureaucratic snafu or the people struggling to keep an animal shelter open.
Friends and co-workers sometimes asked her if she ever wanted to move on from the Trends. She never really said, but I think to Linda, it would have been like moving away from her family. She was happy at the Trends, and she knew how important her work was to the many people she touched.
And while she knew she might never become financially rich, she was a person very wealthy in other ways. In Linda’s favorite movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Clarence the Guardian Angel said, “No one is poor who has friends.” By that scale, Linda was rich beyond measure. We’ll all miss you.
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