Don Terbush

If you've spent years gnashing your teeth of things I've written that appeared in North Coast publications, blame Merriedawn Terbush.

For being one of the nicest girls/women I've ever known, and for having known her since we were in high school, I should know how to spell her first name. But, see, Don Terbush's daughter was "Merd" to her friends. So, I called her "Merd," too. She sort of outgrew "Merd" and I once gave great thought to calling her by her given name. (Boys were aware of being stuck in the dreaded "Friend Zone" in the 1970s, too, and I didn't want to be pigeon-holed as just her pal at one point. And...now I've spilled a deep secret...moving on...)

I should know her married name, too. But, I haven't seen her much over the years so...I probably shouldn't have brought up the whole "Friend Zone" thing and ... never mind.

Where was I?

Oh, my mother died when I was going to College of the Redwoods. I was 17 1/2 and working at Cutten Supermarket when Merd came by to tell me that her dad was going to be looking for a part-time sports writer. She said I should go talk to him. And, oh, did my mom love Merriedawn! She routinely, from the time she got to know her, would mention that I was a "jackass" for messing around with other girls and date with "Merd." I never argued the point, never disputed it. I just pointed out that there was the small problem of other boys, other girls and having to ask somebody I actually liked on a date ... out of the blue ... at which point my mom mumbled, "You are such a (*&^%^ jackass" and walked off.

Don hired me to take the part-time job Merriedawn mentioned and I began making his very, very comfortable professional life a pain. He didn't really want to mentor part-time guys. He was distant, as a man who'd been in the business for many, many years should be when dealing with a 17-year-old who wanted to be Woodward or Bernstein -- or both. I learned to write quickly by having Don tell me, "You have to stop writing now." I learned to write short stories on deadline, without leaving any facts out, by having Don just cut my stories wherever he needed to cut them to fill the hole on the page.

You'd be amazed at how quickly a young writer catches onto the idea that he shouldn't save key facts for way down a story once he picks up a newspaper to read his 15-inch story and sees that only 10 inches of it made it into the newspaper. And, to Don's credit, I completely got it. Write quickly and write to fit.

I used to fight, in a passive-aggressive way, the weekly feature story assignments Don and his full-time guy Mike Jessie came up with for me. It would begin a long fight against authority that, as the song says, authority always wins. I didn't get important enough feature assignments for Don to fight me about them, so if he wanted a story about two Hoopa High wrestlers and I did a McKinleyville boxer -- he would just grunt and remind me that he was still waiting for the wrestlers' story.

Mostly, I didnt talk to Don Terbush because he had what was my dream job. I know. Weird. My dream job, once I realized I wouldn't play center field for the San Francisco Giants, was to be sport editor of the Times-Standard. I grew up reading the T/S and Don's column, "Sideline Slants." People talk about how much local sports news they read in small papers today, but there was a time when our Eureka Midget League baseball game stories appeared in the next day's newspaper. The JV basketball box score ran right below the varsity box score and, honest, they didn't have a bigger staff back then. They just put a premium on reporting the news when it was fresh and honestly believed that "names made news" and, moreover, that names sold newspapers.

I remember hearing that Don passed up job opportunities in bigger towns, at better newspapers. I thought that was about the most ridiculous damned thing I'd ever heard. I was 13, 14 years old at the time. I vowed that I would try to become the sports editor of the Times-Standard first, but that I'd blow town and head for the biggest publication, in the biggest town, the minute I had the chance. I scoffed, as much as a teenager can scoff, at the idea that Don passed those jobs so he could raise his family in Eureka.

Of course, I didn't realize that newspaper guys live a nomadic life. They bounce around and they don't coach Little League or go to dance recitals. The sports editor of the small market paper has the time to live a normal life. The NFL beat writer becomes famous and makes big money, but he doesn't get to many of his kids' functions or spend much time with his family in the fall and winter -- or early spring.

Naturally, I didn't figure that out until I'd bounced around and landed in Eureka...at the Times-Standard...having shunned Southern California and that job market...and wound up as sports editor of the Times-Standard for a second time. I barely filled Don's shoes the first time on the job. I was young and impulsive and not organized. So, when I got a second chance to do my dream job, I was better ready.

This isn't the whole story. I'm going to write more because I haven't spoken to Don since I left Eureka in 2000. And, despite the rocky start, I've learned over time that he had much more of an impact on my life than he would have dreamed or I would've imagined. And, he's just a good guy who raised a good family and did good things in the community and I don't want him to be remembered as the guy who wrote the fishing column.

Don Terbush couldn't care less what people think of him. He's a confident man, cool actually. He was a great athlete in his youth in Southern California and Humboldt State.