I was accustomed to being flown to a location for an interview but this was not being offered. I’d have to make a decision on a whim or on faith. I’d never been out of the country except to cross the border into Toronto when my youngest sister was shooting a movie. That was similar to America and it was an internationally mixed metropolis. What I found in Nevis I’d not been prepared for. Demographics aside, the job came with low pay compared to what my earning capacity had grown to in the newspaper industry, and no benefits. I was promised a comparable home and vehicle, however I was not thinking ahead about the longevity and stability of those “promises.” My eyes were set on the adventure. Had I gone mad?
After some weeks of considering what to do, I was offered a plane ticket, a 50% allowance towards moving my belongings, a place to live and my own Pajero. The woman on the phone spoke to me also about “volunteer status.” Volunteer status? I didn’t understand that, but it I held the thought in the back of my mind… But was there an angel jumping up and down in the corner waving a red flag ~ who I refused to see?
A call to the United States Embassy in Barbados was in order, and so was delving into websites and articles about the little island in the Caribbean where a newspaper was looking for an art director to put a magazine together for the 25th anniversary of their annual festival called “Culturama.”
I decided to go for it. It would be my son’s and my “big adventure.”
A little background
From 1985 to 1993 I was the illustrator and art director (and Macintosh Systems Operator by default) at The Winchester Star, in Winchester, Va. This is the general area where we settled after finishing college in Washington, D. C., and where I birthed both of my sons. But in 1993, I thought my life was over. My marriage was in tatters and that was the life I’d identified with right out of school so I’d known nothing else. What I clung to was that I’d been working and learning my craft as an illustrator for about 8 years, and I had two adorable sons I had to be there for. This was the foundation on which I began to take baby steps forward. And they were painful baby steps, I might add. I interviewed for three papers, Jacksonville, Montgomery and Des Moines. I was leaning towards the east coast but the offer from Des Moines was good and that is where I went with one son.
I was now a single mom raising my younger son miles from anyone we knew in Des Moines, Iowa. New job, new geography, and we were both shattered from post divorce blues. My older son chose to stay with his father and I had no energy or wherewithal to stay on and convince him to join us. In his young mind he felt someone had to stay with dad. All I could do was to put my faith in God at that point and trust. But we got through all that pain and sorrow somehow. We attended some therapy groups, we cried, and later we encountered some behavioral challenges we needed help with. Somehow we came out on the other end, stronger, wiser and more understanding.
I continued to build a nice little career at The Des Moines Register from 1993 to 1999. By then I had increased my salary over 20% while most women after divorce experienced a severe decline in their standard of living. We moved from a two-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom home with a big yard, a loaded Saturn with leather seats, and I threw parties every six months or so. Despite the belt-tightening that took hold on the paper by Gannett around 1995-1996, I was still able to maintain a pretty comfortable life.
By 1997 I had grown disillusioned with corporate climate chilling the very bones of the nation’s last statewide “newspaper.” Reporters were seasoned and esteemed. But I suppose in Gannett’s eyes, we were a product that needed to be “optmized” for the market. I can still remember the publisher of the paper coming to my desk in 1998 in the art department to inquire why I had not consented to have the cost of the newspaper taken out of my salary. Everyone in the newsroom it seemed, had consented but me. I just told her that I want to buy my paper when I want my paper. Thank you for the offer, but no thank you. It had come down to mild coercion and I just felt that this is America and I have the right to choose whether or not I want the cost of the paper taken out of my salary or not. They were already cutting my percentage raise. I had the right to keep what I was earning and I wanted to stand up on a soapbox in the newsroom and scream it! Many of the esteemed reporters were coerced to early retirement between 1995 and 1998, and there would continue to be downsizing. My whole art department went from 12 to 4. My computer felt like an appendage.
I’m still in awe, though. Even with my dis-illusionments: the paper chopping is core out, the quadruple taxing in Des Moines – city, county, state, federal….the horrific elevation in crime and drug trafficking, the processes of government reducing you to a statistic. I was no longer enamored with America or my corporate-mongered newspaper. I could not have been the only one to see the paper’s head hanging in shame. The last straw was when the publisher wanted to team wed advertising campaigns with editorial. Oh. There I go. Is there anyone out there who believes in journalistic integrity any more?
I decided after months of deliberation to sell my home, my car and most of my belongings to take a job with a three year “contract” (with no real guarantee) for practically no money, with people I’d never met, in a place I’d never seen on a map. I did it all within a one-month time frame. I had placed my trust in my fellow man.