The InstigatorThe People Who Shaped Me Writing Contest was a part of the 2023 Salem Reads: One Book, One Community program, which delved into the themes and messages of Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. The contest invited writers to submit essays, creative nonfiction and fictionalized stories that honored real people who had a profound impact on their lives.
3rd place
Bender by Joce Johnson
When I met him, he tipped his forehead just slightly in front of the rest of his body. His hands rested at his waist, which had been compromised by decades at the news desk and an editor’s diet of coffee, cigarettes, and whatever diner special was available between deadlines. He wore his glasses low on his nose so he could look at me, his subject, with an unobstructed view while I questioned everything I once considered fact: Was I really born in 19907 Did I actually vote for Obama? Did I even want this job? I thought so, but with Dan Bender holding that stance – somehow not just in front of me, but at me – I wasn’t sure of anything.
The moment I met him, college and the minuscule dramas that accompany the student government beat less than a year behind me, I wanted his approval.
Approval of what I wasn’t immediately certain. Perhaps my clean copy? Perhaps my poignant interview questions? Perhaps my ability to link global news events to local issues? Of course, as a cub reporter I had none of those things, but it wasn’t what he was after anyway. He was after the truth. His very posture demanded the truth.
So, I set out to find the truth on the early breaking news shift at the Salem Statesman journal. Between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, I was at the scene of every major accident, shooting, and natural disaster called over the police scanner. And Bender’s were the first eyes on my copy when I was done.
“What does that mean?” He asked while reading my story on a fatal car that had closed all east- and westbound lanes of Highway 22.
“What does what mean?” I asked, maybe a little defensively.
He read my copy aloud in monotone: The nature of the driver’s injuries was such that he did not require an ambulance or life flight to a hospital. Then looked up at me, his forehead tipped and his glasses at the end of his nose.
“If he died, then say that.”
Always demanding truth. And when he didn’t get it in its raw form – without fluffy pleasantries or superfluous explanations – it wasn’t uncommon for him to release a God damn it! and take a “Bender walk” around the city block.
The most memorable of those God damn its came on December 14, 2012. Wire reports trickled in slowly at first, but soon it was on every TV screen in the newsroom. An elementary school in Connecticut. A gunman. Children linking hands as their teachers led them to safety. Devastation. Shock. Broadcast news anchors unable to form words.
Bender seemed to know before anyone in our newsroom what this meant: life would be different now. There was American life before Sandy Hook, and there was American life after.
When the tears came to my eyes, they stayed all day. As we tried to process the news and worked to put out a paper the next day, I heard it:
“God damn it!”
Bender paced the newsroom, his forehead tipped and his face red with frustration as he read yet another wire report of the shooting.
“It’s ‘Newtown.’ With aw. Not ‘Newton,’ God damn it.”
Compared to what we were witnessing on CNN, I thought a missing “w” was the least of our problems.
But now, 10 years later, I know better. It wasn’t about the missing w for Bender. It was about the truth. We had to tell it. In its entirety. Without error.
This story is connected to Press Play Salem issue 16 (Spring/Summer 2023)
