Roger Aylworth
I first called him “boss.” He first called me “trouble walking.” Later, he called me “sister.” I called him “brother.” We were not connected by shared bloodlines but by the passion in our hearts for a profession we both chose when we were in high school, decades before we ever met.
I was sitting at my desk barely visible behind my computer and the piles and piles of reporter’s notebooks stacked up around me when I saw this big man with a broad pleasant face and round, brown twinkling eyes walking toward me. I had no idea who he was and was slightly taken aback when he got to my desk and kneeled down next to my chair.
“Hi! I’m Roger, Roger Aylworth, your new editor,” he said extending a hand for a warm shake. “I want to know, what is the first thing you need from me?”
I was stunned. Never, ever had an editor asked me what I needed. They’d just told me what they needed.
“Well, my beat is youth and education — full page every Monday, no ads, plus news stories during the week. I also write Saturday features and for the past four months I’ve covered the business beat too. I’m exhausted. I need you to hire a business reporter like, yesterday.”
He smiled and his body gently shook with silent laughter, a trait of his, that silent chuckle, I grew fond of over the years, and said, “OK. I’ll do that.”
Two weeks later we had a new business reporter. And that‘s when I learned that Roger was a man of his word. Always.
We couldn’t have been more different. I was a die-hard liberal raised by a single mom in a split family of Lutherans and Jews. He was a conservative from a nuclear family and life-long Latter Day Saint. Left and right. Oil and water. Two peas that somehow ended up in the same pod called a newsroom.
That was February 1991 and over the next six years until he left the Mercury-Register and returned to the Enterprise-Record, he was my boss and my mentor but he became and remained so much more — my confidant, my friend, my savior, my brother.
It was Roger who told me I should write a weekly column and helped me launch “Off the Record.”
He gave me the best advice I’ve ever gotten from an editor. Struggling to write an emotionally difficult story, he told me to “cut a vein.” And, I knew immediately that meant “write from your heart, write like the ink is your blood.” I’ve written some damn good stories as result of that advice.
I have gazillions of Roger memories. I remember his layered ooey, gooey bars which could make anyone break their diet. I wish now I’d gotten the recipe. I remember he’d blush crimson, neck to forehead, at even the mildest off-color quip. And the delight he took in sharing his wife’s accomplishments and his children’s antics. I’d never met a man who loved his family as much as Roger loved his.
Once, before sending me out on an assignment when there was the distinct possibility I’d get arrested, Roger told me to hand over my wedding and engagement rings. “You don’t want to go to jail with these on,” he said tucking them in his pocket. “Oh and here’s the attorney’s business card for your one call.” In the moment it seemed like a fair trade.
Roger physically barred the newsroom door when I was racing out to cover an incident where multiple shots had been fired, stating very firmly that “a six-month pregnant woman makes a pretty big target. I’ve got this.” He took my notebook, headed out to cover the story himself leaving me and my very large belly safely behind.
Multiple times a day, it was Roger who held my hair back when I was hung over the toilet in the women’s room as a result of 24-hour-a-day “morning sickness.”
As the father of seven he told me, “For a guy, I know a lot about being pregnant. It’s going to be fine.”
And when it wasn’t fine, Roger lead-foot drove me to the hospital — three times — and stayed with me, holding my hand, wiping away my tears and praying, until my husband arrived.
After our daughter’s early birth, Roger was the first person outside of immediate family to arrive at the hospital. After performing a beautiful blessing over our tiny premie, he looked into my eyes and told me, “You’re going to be a good mom. You have what it takes and more.” The Saturday following her birth, Roger wrote this column for me. It’s the only time someone else has penned “Off the Record.”
Roger and I didn’t agree on many things – politics, a woman’s sovereign right over her own body, the war in the Middle East to name a few – but the only time we went toe-to-toe was when he instituted a pantyhose and dresses or skirts dress code for the female reporters. There was a small revolution, led by yours truly, when we all flat-out ignored the new rule. He roared. We stood our ground. Ultimately, he decided this was not the hill he was going to die on and we continued happily working in pants and no pantyhose.
He could be fierce with his staff but heaven help anyone from the outside who came after us. I was never afraid for my physical safety or of being sued when Roger was my editor. He always had my back, standing, an angry papa bear, in my defense whenever it was necessary.
When there was a kid with a gun in the classroom next to my daughter’s on the Las Plumas High School campus, it was Roger who, with the police scanner in one ear and his phone in the other, kept me informed about the situation in real time. If it hadn’t been for Roger my terror would have taken over and I would have stormed the school myself.
While the years passed and we no longer worked together our affection never diminished. I was always comforted knowing Roger was in the world just a phone call, email, text or 16 mile drive away. It just never occurred to me a day might come when Roger wouldn’t be around anymore.
That day, however, came Wednesday when my current editor called to tell me that Roger had passed away Tuesday morning and asked if I would be willing to write his tribute obituary. Through shock and tears, I said yes. Then I hung up the phone, cut a vein and got to work just as Roger would have wanted me to.
