I’ve fooled them again.
When I was probably 17 and working after school at The Roanoke Times, my coworker Stephen Foster suggested I ask the features editor if I could write a column about being in high school.
He said something like, “Nobody else here could do it. Nobody else is in high school.”
I thought the world of Steve. He was in his 20s, seemed like he had this whole journalism thing figured out and drove a pea-green Volkswagen bus. “This is a person to rely on,” thought my teenage Deadhead self.
I ended up getting to do it, and I loved it. The first time I went into the Roanoke newsroom, the only person I recognized was the local columnist Ed Shamy, so writing a column seemed special to me. At least one of my high school peers who didn’t even like me that much said she looked in the newspaper to see when I would write next.
My columns for the paper continued from college, and then I moved on to writing a column for my school paper.
Since then, I’ve written them off and on, everywhere I’ve worked — even once when I was a freelancer for The Washington Post. I’ve had columns on op-ed pages, features pages and the front page. I was the stay-at-home dad columnist for two different papers, and I’ve been the back page columnist for a magazine.
Why should you care about any of this? Because today, I start a weekly column for the Free Press. And the thing I keep thinking about is: I’ve fooled them again. How have I conned so many bosses into letting me do this so many times in my life?
That’s because this really isn’t a job, it’s an opportunity.
That might sound lofty, like it should be on one of those inspirational posters you can buy that have some landscape scene and a quote about determination. But I’m serious. It’s my honor to be able to do this. And I won’t soon forget that.
Now, what does this mean for you? I want to hear from you: all of your stories, good, bad, funny — especially funny; we can all always use a laugh — and whatnot. I’ll write some about myself, and probably some about my son, who’s in college. But it’s even more important for me to tell the tales of the greater Fredericksburg area, local people and local ideas.
I will still be a reporter, though, so you won’t read my opinions on issues that I cover, especially political ones. I love reading and discussing and learning about politics, but I’m not a partisan, unless you’re talking about something like music or sports.
In these, I’ve listened to the Grateful Dead since high school, and I’m pretty sure the Boston Celtics, Baltimore Orioles and Ravens, the Tribe of William & Mary, and the Cornell Big Red have never done wrong (I went to W&M, and my son goes to Cornell, which I tell everybody, just like Andy Bernard on “The Office”).
Recently, though, I’ve rooted like crazy for the University of Mary Washington men’s basketball team, as it’s made its way through the playoffs. It’s possible some of that story will be told in this space soon.
Until then, let me know what’s going on out there, jon.hunley@fredericksburgfreepress.com.
And thank you for reading.
