The Circle Closes
My dear friend Hunter Grant, the former publisher of the Brockville Recorder and Times, the paper that changed my life, decided to make his exit today. I owe Hunter and the Recorder and Times, everything. The paper hired a scared, unformed, rudderless sixteen-year-old to write for it, something I can’t imagine any other daily newspaper doing in any other place. The paper formed me, strengthened me, prepared me to go out into the world, saved me from myself.
Hunter was the paper’s young, newly appointed publisher back then. As the untried kid in the newsroom, I never knew him well until we reconnected in Florida. One day, so his story goes, he asked a friend of his what he was reading. A series of Sanibel Sunset Detective mystery novels, the friend replied. Written by a fellow named Ron Base. Hunter couldn’t believe it. Not the kid who once worked at his newspaper?
Nearly sixty years had gone by when I received an email from Hunter: Are you that Ron Base? I was. Hunter arranged a lunch. Kathy and I met with him and his delightful wife Betty. Time melted away. An enduring friendship full of laughter, love and memory was promptly born.
For years we met annually in Rockport near his home along the St. Lawrence River. When we got together, I always made sure to give him a hug. Moving towards the end, I embraced this warm, humorous, loving man, and I was at the beginning again. The circle of life, closing.
On New Year’s Day, I drove down to Brockville to say goodbye to Hunter. We sat and reminisced for a couple of hours remembering a newspaper time gone by. The second-floor newsroom with its big arched windows overlooking King Street was right out of The Front Page. The first time I walked in there, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. In a way, I had.
The characters in that newsroom were also out of The Front Page, at least in my mind: Tough-as-nails managing editor Sandy Runciman; gruff, rough heart-of gold, cigar-chomping city editor Harry Painting; sports reporter Don Swayne; and of course that legend of Brockville journalism, Betty McDowell. How could I ever forget on the prowl with Betty McDowell?
I embraced Hunter and I told him again how much his friendship meant to me, and how I don’t know what would have happened if the paper had not taken me in.
His newspaper had sent me away armed with something I had previously lacked: confidence. “I think we gave you something else,” he offered. “We gave you purpose.”
How right he was. The Recorder and Times provided my way of escape, a magic carpet ride to the sort of exciting life I could never otherwise have imagined. I left town knowing nothing about the future yet knowing exactly what I had to do. I never looked back through all those decades until I met Hunter. The past came rushing back during that final afternoon together. I held him, told him I loved him, and the circle closed for the last time…
Hundreds gathered Friday, Jan. 19, to hear daughter Meredith (far left) celebrate the life of Hunter Grant at Brockville’s Aquatarium.
