Last time I ended us having the Eastside Herald closed by the Star. In the six weeks we had to transition clients to the Star (no one could afford their rates), our sales ladies Judy and Jeanie (who were sisters) met with Ethel and I to make our plans. They had already been let go, so they started looking for a place to rent and going to auctions to acquire desks, chairs etc.
The last day the Herald was open was Friday January 14, 2009. We hadn’t had to sign a non-compete and I don’t think they thought we were smart enough to start up on our own. As the day wound down, the management told us a half hour before we left, if there was anything we’d like, go ahead and take it (of course not the computers or furniture). I grabbed the old paper-cutter, staplers, scissors, clocks, big city map on the wall and anything else we could cram into my van out front. With tears in our eyes, we said goodbye and drove straight to our location about a mile away!
Jeanne and Judy had found us a quiet little office space at the end of a building that Lou Matthews of Family Insurance owned. He was our landlord and was very supportive of our efforts to start our own business. The office building has 4 units and is one story with parking right up to the door. It’s about 1,000 square ft. with 6 office spaces (we are still there). Jeanne wanted the big office in the back and I wanted one with a window up front and Ethel got the other office in front. Poor Judy got a tiny one in the back, but she was happy with it. Being up front meant Ethel and I dealt with the customers. The front door opened into our long hall with 3 offices on each side and a restroom at the end. One office space became our kitchen with frig and microwave. We needed a counter for our customers and so we bought a big counter desk at a sale and put rollers on it.
We took the following Monday off since it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Ethel and I went to a couple of the free admission museums open that day and the Zoo. On Tuesday we were officially in business. We didn’t have phones yet, but we did get insurance and each of us bought our own computers, knowing when we made some money, the company would pay us back. We had to come up with a name which is a daunting job. I made up a header with clouds because if we are paying for color, I’m using color. Actually the design came from an oil painting I did back in art school 40 years before. I had done a quick oil with left over paint on my palette at 3 a.m. in the morning (before finals due the next morning) and used my sweatshirt to smear the paint and then painted a brown line across the bottom third. It looked like a couple pigeons being electrocuted on a power line. My famous artist/professor Berskshire at Herron really liked it. Took me 20 minutes.
We had several ideas for a name — Weekly Hoosier, Indy Weekly, and on and on. Ethel came up with Voice and it worked. I started putting together the format and designing possible pages. The girls had me figure out how much we should charge to make it a go (I’m not a math wiz and we haven’t really raised our prices much since).
We were open three weeks, when we were robbed. The door was kicked in and all our computers stolen. Luckily, we had insurance and after talking to the police, turned in a claim. A week after we got all set up with our replacement computers, we got a call from a guy who said he bought a computer off a company message board and found my designs and mock up of the first issue which was dated in the future. I asked if I could bring a flash drive and copy what I had started. He agreed, so Jeanne and I drove to his house and I copied everything off my stolen computer. I called the police detective and told him the story and gave him names and numbers, but he didn’t seem to believe me. We had what we needed going forward, so I just hoped the guy who bought mine didn’t lose the computer and the money he paid for it.
My old friend CJ, who I had worked with at Ayres and had been my boss over 20 years before, had moved to St. Louis with May Company (who bought out Ayres). His second bride and younger children lived here in Indy and he visited often over the years. I let him know I was starting a newspaper and he reminded me that he wrote and could take photos. I had read CJ’s short stories before (they were very good) and years before he had gone back to college as an English major even though he is quite the artist. I told him send me a column and shortly after, when Facebook first started he posted a story entitled Fight Club (about how he tried to stay out of fights as a kid living in the projects in Pittsburgh). I thought the story was for my newspaper, so I divided it into thirds and wanted his column to be a long column down the side of the page. I found his pic on Facebook and tried to come up with a title and since he was such a wordsmith – I quickly decided on Words from Woods. After we had published Fight Club in 3 installments, I e-mailed him (he was on vacation in Florida) and told him I needed a new column and we had published Fight Club. He was in shock — “you published that?” I said “well we cleaned it up, but yes it was great!” From that moment on he became our “accidental columnist” sending us 600 words every week. He retired and lives in Irvington now, so can include his darling granddaughter in his writings.
My husband Steve became the sports writer, since he was an English major too and loved writing and of course a sports fan. He also was our food critic and wrote many Boomerang columns about pop culture and films. He had been a librarian and was a treasure trove of trivia.
Then of course my daughter (Journalism major at I.U.) had a column Bringing Up Baby X when our granddaughter was born that very year.
I of course am not an English major (art major – I do all the graphics), but Ethel lets me write, if she can edit it closely.
Luckily, we have had some pretty cool contributors over the years including ghost hunter/history storyteller/researcher Al Hunter, political columnist Brian Howey (friend of my daughter), Steve Barnett (historian), Linda Kennett (antique expert) and even Beth White (former City Clerk). The late, great Rose Mary Clarke was one of our columnists, and a big promoter of our paper.
Our Herald advertisers and our readers were thrilled we had not let the community newspaper end and have been loyal ever since.
When we first started delivering the newspaper, we needed outside boxes, so it was be more convenient for our readers to pick up copies. Luckily we were able to buy the Employment Guide’s lime green boxes when they went out of business for a fraction of their original cost. But we had to pick them up from all over the city, rent a storage unit, scrub the dirt and old signage off and apply our signage. It took weeks and it was during the hot summer in a storage unit (miserable). We had to find places to put them and figure out routes and find delivery people. We have had a lot of delivery people over the years. Aaron and Patty have been with us since the first day and have never missed a week. We presently have a team of David and Danny who deliver in a Tesla. David was the founder of The Trader that started here in Irvington, so he has a love of print. He and his son do a fantastic job in the quickest most efficient time of any delivery people we’ve ever had. Since the Pandemic (when we lost a couple drivers and stops) Ethel and I both have small routes to fill in the holes and we don’t mind — it’s great exercise. Over the years we’ve lost some boxes from businesses, who have pitched them in their dumpster. One was found floating down the canal in Broad Ripple. Another in Irvington Plaza was used by some homeless person as a toilet. Others filled with trash and garbage or used as lockers for the homeless. Unfortunately we’ve had some defaced with graffiti and someone started a fire in another.
We started with the 6 little rooms in our office, but not long after the space next to ours opened up, so we rented that space too. It had a kitchen with a tiny sink. We just had a door cut to connect and doubled our size with conference room, archival space and second restroom. Just this summer our landlord sold the building and the rent went up, so we downsized into our original 6 small spaces.
Next time: The East Side Voice becomes The Weekly View
