Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Ann Landers

Today, I found out something I should have already known.

Ann Landers worked for the Chicago Tribune.

I should have known this because I work for Chicago Tribune's TribLocal, and, well, it seems to be common information.

But I read Ann Landers' columns when I was a little girl living in Lowell, Mich. in our metro newspaper, The Grand Rapids Press. I had no idea then where they originally came from, and only my dreams, not my reality, spanned much beyond the west side of the state. I remember wondering if she existed at all, or if she perhaps was the invention of a newspaper editor.

She had a way with words that I admired and aspired to. She had the answers to all the questions I never even knew to ask. She wrote intelligently and inspired me. One piece of prose she penned in her column I clipped in 1995, and it is preserved inside a frame that also holds my wedding photos. "Love is friendship that has caught fire..." it reads.

I wanted to be a writer and a newspaperwoman more than anything, and there she was, every day. Her career seemed a million miles away from my life.

And yet, here I am today, working for the same major media company as Ann Landers. I can't wait to tell my mom.

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Stories are my passion—and I am an advocate for the new, engaging ways to share and create those stories. I grew up in a small town in Michigan and now live and work in the Chicago area.