Exceed Your Dreams

by Ned Burke

The other day I got to thinking how long it’s been since I didn’t have a publication of one kind or another to put to bed. It occurred to me that three decades have flown by since that time. And, what do I have to show for it? Not much, if you add up all the financial rewards. However, there have been many unexpected blessings.

Over the years, I’ve met many people, some from faraway lands. Through my first publication, I met a young, ambitious Prep student who later became a well-respected English professor and one of my best friends. It always amused me when this highly-educated friend asked for my humble advice on a piece of writing he was working on. After all, I was just a hack writer/editor and he was a college professor.

Then there was the gifted, young cartoonist whose work first appeared in my small weekly newspaper. He later went on to national prominence with a syndicated cartoon strip of his own.

As a small press editor/publisher, I had the opportunity to meet Erma Bombeck when she was just getting started. I wrote a profile piece on her and we started what turned out to be a decade-long correspondence. She once wisecracked that writing her column was easy: “I just open a vein and bleed three times a week.” We both enjoyed the newspaper business. She started out as a copy girl for the Dayton (OH) Journal Herald. In 1971, she and her family moved to Arizona and her career began to take off.

Later, I would kid her that she would not have become such a superstar if I hadn’t written that piece on her. Her death truly left an empty space in my heart.

Another syndicated columnist, Nancy Stahl, who wrote her “Jelly Side Down” column for a number of newspapers in the ‘70s, became a close friend and confidant. At the time, we were both going through our respective divorces and found warmth and solace in each others’ weekly correspondence. It was a catharsis for us. And, as often happens, when we grew stronger and our wounds healed, we went our separate ways. And, again, it was my chosen profession that offered me the opportunity to meet such a caring person.

Meeting famous people, such as romance writer Janet Daley who sat with me in her huge mobile home and told me about writing a different novel for each state she visited, was fun. However, I also enjoyed meeting plain folks, like the elderly German woman who graphically described to me her meeting with Adolph Hitler; the big band leader of yesterday who recalled hiring and firing a skinny “no-talent singer” by the name of Frank Sinatra; the retired military man who tearfully related the horror of landing on Normandy Beach; a father and his disabled son proudly showing me their three-room model train collection, and so many other interesting lives that have enriched my own.

As a publisher, I have also been blessed to include many of my subscribers as my personal friends. In fact, it was one perky subscriber I found so irresistible that I traveled 1200 miles to meet her in person. To this day, I consider discovering and marrying my Carrillee as the greatest blessing of all in my long, publishing career.

So, if you wish to follow in my footsteps and choose a career as a small press publisher, don’t be surprised if the rewards are not exactly what you had expected.