Last weekend I attended my first-ever writers conference. Seeing well-known writers, and hearing several speak in various workshops I attended, I found that a handful of writers loved the sound of their own voice putting life to words written by themselves. It was their time to show off and my time to watch them. Despite vast vocabularies, humble is not a word some use lightly.
Yet the majority of successful writers were intent on passing on their advice, their experience and examples of situations when they had exceeded expectations. One speaker, Jacqui Banaszynski, who is now the associate managing editor for special projects at the Seattle Times, explained how as a young writer, she crafted a human interest story out of virtually nothing. Except her own bold nature.
While working as a reporter at a daily paper in Minnesota, Banaszynski received a medical report about a family that had crashed their truck Christmas morning 1989. The family’s small truck slid off an icy road and tumbled 50 feet. While this information may have been compiled into a small un-telling story, one line in the report intrigued her. There was a sentence about a child searching for help at the nearest farmhouse.
The father died in the crash and the mother was trapped in the car. That left the children, a boy and a girl, to find help. And although the boy, Danny, would have traditionaly been the one to summon assistance, being bolder and less afraid, he had a broken leg. The girl, Dawn, suffered a broken arm. She was much less aggressive and afraid of the dark, but had to find the courage within herself to do something uncomfortable. And quite possibly terrifying. She had to travel in the dark to the nearest farmhouse, a half-mile away. Alone.
But what left the room of journalists astonished was that this editor, Banaszynski, had somehow persuaded a nurse, over the telephone, to let her speak to the grandmother of these children. It was not the woman’s son who had died in the crash, which the reporter knew, and therefore she asked questions. A lot of questions, questions that grandmothers like answering. But she took this interview to a new level when she said, “can I speak to the mother?” and the grandmother consented.
I think everyone in the room that day gasped for breath when they heard this — a reporter had asked to speak to a woman whose husband had died merely hours earlier. Was this an invasion of privacy, or was this a job well done? Possibly both.
I had heard of reporters doing such things before, but had never met one in person. This woman was brave, bold and clearly not afraid to ask questions. A parallel can be drawn between the reporter and the young girl. The girl traveled through darkness and was brave. She knew what she needed to do, and despite discomfort, she did it. The reporter who wants a story worth telling must also travel through darkness at times in search of a source who may or may not be willing to speak.
And it is quite possible that the story Banaszynski wrote is treated like an excerpt of the Bible to that family. It is their story, a story about death and being brave. It is now on paper and will be remembered, just as their father will be remembered. It is likely the mother was grateful to the reporter who recorded the life of her husband and the boldness of her daughter.
Brooke Fisher is a reporter for The Enterprise Newspapers.
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