At The Breeze everyone keeps an empty copy paper box beneath their desk that we throw papers into that someone might find they need down the road. Naturally, on occasion, you need to dump the box. My standard procedure is to take a handful of the papers at the top (the most recent) and then just dump the rest.
The box beneath my desk was beyond full one Sunday morning when I came into the newsroom to do some work. Overflowing. Overwhelming. As I started to empty it, I decided on a whim to look specifically at the oldest piece of paper on the bottom.
A page proof from the Aug. 11, 2011, Breeze. The page where we started a collection of stories recalling and remembering my old Breeze boss Clyde Briggs, who had died a week earlier after an accident.
The idea was one of the graces that come amid grief. Former Breeze reporter Mike Wailes had called me in those shocked and shattered days following Clyde's death and suggested we gather some of the reporters who had worked for him, asking each to write a piece, which would be then run as one larger work entitled: “Working for Clyde.”
As I stared at the piece of paper I was staring back into the eyes of Clyde. For art for the story we had run a picture of him and two of his biker buddies sitting on the main street in Sturgis at the motorcycle rally holding up a copy of The Breeze. Throughout the years of owning the paper Lesli and I have asked people to take copies with them when they travel and send us a picture for a “Where Do You Read Your Breeze?” feature we do.
Clyde was also wearing a Johnstown Breeze long-sleeve t-shirt we had given him when we had a batch made several years before the picture was taken: exactly 11 years to the day before his death.
I stared at the piece of paper and thought of everything that has happened, chronicled in part by the pieces of paper in that box, since then. Clyde’s death shook me to my foundation and set me into an emotional tailspin that nearly cost me my marriage. It broke my heart, and since the day I threw that proof into the box, I have been trying to mend it and myself. In many ways I have become a lot like Clyde, for good, and for ill.
We are the sum and total of the moments of our life. The razor thin pieces of paper that, piled one atop the other, often fill us to overflowing and create a weight that sometimes we cannot even lift until we cull through them small handful by small handful, and throw out the ones we no longer need.
Working For Clyde
A god among men…
By Michael Wailes/For The Johnstown Breeze
When I actually take the time to count my blessings, I’m always full of an almost overwhelming gratitude for the people who I’ve had not only the honor and pleasure to know and be known by, but also those who have had such an influence on my life.
This past week, we have all been shocked with the tragic and sudden loss of Clyde Briggs, former publisher/owner of The Johnstown Breeze. I know that what I am about to write couldn’t possibly give proper, or even adequate, credit to a man who gave so much of himself to this community in the short time that he was here, but I want to at least share the impact Clyde had on my life.
My earliest memories of Clyde were that he was a strange man. Strange in the sense that he didn’t look a lot like the other guys I was accustomed to seeing around Johnstown. He had a long, shaggy, mop of dark hair, wore dark glasses and “funny” clothes. As a seven-year-old boy, I found him to be very intimidating. I had never actually met a real live “hippie” and I guess I thought Clyde probably was one. Mind you, I was just a kid from the country with a second-grade education.
Apart from his unusual appearance, the other thing that stands out in my memory of Clyde was that he was everywhere – there wasn’t anything that was going on in the school or in the town that Clyde wasn’t present for, taking pictures and writing down names. Looking back now, it seems almost supernatural that he was so omnipresent in the community, but back then, it was so common to see him around every corner that it would have seemed strange if he hadn’t been there. It was that “being there” that would come to have a large impact on my life.
A few months back, I was thumbing through a scrapbook that my mother had compiled of my life during my school years. Scattered liberally among my report cards, letters from girlfriends and pictures of the handsome young man that I was, were photos and press clippings from The Breeze; documentation of my various athletic, artistic, scholastic, criminal and recreational endeavors. And among just about every one was a simple story or photo credit attributed to a single person:
Clyde Briggs.
As I sit here today and consider those scraps of paper from a truly by-gone era, I am amazed and humbled by the effort that a single person put forth to make me, nobody of any spectacular significance, something of a local celebrity time and again, even if that status only lasted for a brief day or two. But even more so, to think that he thought those things that I did were interesting or important enough to be placed into a historical record of sorts – something for generations to look back upon and see that I was included. That I mattered. That I was something. That, “On such-and-such day in such-and-such year, Michael D. Wailes was a god among men!”
The truth be known, my accomplishments were never that great. I was just an average kid in an average town, with slightly below-average grades. And that definition fit my friends as well; very few of us really shined at anything in particular. But on Thursday mornings, there was always a commotion as we would all gather around the school’s single copy of The Breeze to see our names and pictures in the black and white. It was on those Thursdays that Clyde transformed us from ordinary to extraordinary.
Shortly after I got started in the newspaper business, I knew that I wanted to run my own shop. I wanted to be the man “in charge,” the guy everyone knew and came to for the story. I wanted to be the big star. When I was handed the keys to the Berthoud Recorder and the Lyons Recorder (two publications that Clyde had owned as well briefly), I learned quickly that it wasn’t me who was going to be the star, but rather those in the communities that I was now in service of.
When my bosses would ridicule me for the stories I wrote, or the photos I took, or ask, “Who is ever going to care about that,” when I would feature the 3rd Grade Spelling Bee champion on the front page, I would always think of my younger days in Johnstown. Think about being that kid who spelled all the words right that day. How it would matter to him. His friends, his family, his grandma in West Virginia, and his uncle in the East Indies; they will care about it, that’s who.
At the time, I don’t believe I ever specifically credited Clyde for my attitude and approach to how I ran those papers, but there is no doubt that it was a direct result of the example that he had set in my own life.
My experience at the Recorder gave me a tremendous insight into the dedication and work ethic that Clyde had possessed, not to mention the sacrifices he surely must have made in his personal life to make sure that I was always photographed, or that my story was always told.
And while I will carry these memories, feelings, and gratitude with me for the rest of my life, it is awesome to know that I am just one of hundreds, if not thousands, whose lives were similarly impacted by the work that Clyde has done. My social media accounts are validation of that – I am absolutely amazed at the number of people who have shared identical memories and thankfulness for Clyde and the person he was in each of their lives. In fact I’m sure that anyone who is reading this now, who has lived in Johnstown anytime during the last 30 years, could easily replace any reference I’ve made of myself for themselves and it would still be relevant.
I originally wanted to close this by saying something to the effect of how I’ve lost a wonderful friend, but the truth is Johnstown has lost a wonderful friend. Clyde took a genuine interest in the goings on of our community; helping us to celebrate our wins with each other, and likewise helping us to overcome our losses.
Michael D. Wailes is a native Johnstownian. He is currently an Interactive Developer at Burns Marketing Communications in Johnstown.
Lessons from Clyde went way beyond journalism…
By Alan Gibson/For the Johnstown Breeze
It was a perfect match in the early 1980’s. I was a hometown boy and a CSU journalism student who loved sports and needed a job. He was the publisher of The Johnstown Breeze, and sports weren’t exactly his thing. So it began, my rewarding experience of three years working for – and with – Clyde Briggs.
My role was simple at first: go to games, talk to coaches and write the stories. Soon enough my duties expanded and I began to spend more time at the office around Clyde, Ardis and the kids. Yes, I became acquainted with photography, layout and design, advertising and subscriptions, but the Clyde Briggs that I knew displayed some admirable traits that I still remember over 30 years later.
First of all, it was never boring working for Clyde. He had a way of making everything … interesting … and fun, even if it was tedious or otherwise boring. I can’t remember him ever being in a foul mood, and I can’t remember Clyde ever getting into a shouting match with a customer who came into the office. Even if something didn’t go exactly the way it should, it was only a matter of time before he would unleash that unique, distinctive laugh to wipe the slate clean. As an employer, he made the office an adventure. If reality TV had existed back then, “The Breeze Office” would have surely been a hit, starring The Briggs Family, Paul and Joyce Williams and me. It made for a quite diverse cast.
We all knew Clyde for his passions and interests, and while I worked at The Breeze two of his passions were weightlifting and The Holy Bible. What a great combination Clyde combined to make himself both physically and spiritually fit. Of course, there was the photography passion that he intertwined with the bodybuilding, and I remember seeing those pictures of Clyde looking chiseled!
I also remember making trips to Clyde’s parents’ home in Denver, where Clyde would take on a rebuilding, moving or remodeling project. He showed sacrifice and commitment to his parents and their well-being. He took care of them because they took care of him. Clyde’s heart was big. He rarely hesitated to help those in need and often went out of his way, despite being inconvenienced. He showed this concern for everyone, whether they were family, friends, acquaintances or strangers.
These are the memories of Clyde that will remain with me. Most have nothing to do with the newspaper business but with people business. When it came time to interact with the young, old, or in-between, Clyde was a master at sensing what they needed. He was a man counted on to deliver the town’s news, but the way he delivered advice, assistance, humor, seriousness, love and compassion is the best news of all.
Alan Gibson teaches journalism at Roosevelt High School.
There is an empathy that must be learned…
By Bill McCarthy/For The Johnstown Breeze
Words always seem inadequate when you need them the most.
I’ll never find the appropriate words to express my gratitude to Clyde Briggs and his family. When I met Clyde and Ardis Briggs, they were the new owners of the Johnstown Breeze. In 1980, I was finally finishing college and looking for an internship where I could learn something about the real world of newspapering.
This was the era of Watergate. Everybody coming out of journalism school wanted to be an investigative reporter. But there are a lot of fundamentals to learn. And most journalists start at a small community weekly or daily newspaper.
Some of us love small-town life. Few take the leap of faith in a community’s future prosperity, however, and bet everything on building a newspaper in a small town.
Clyde and Ardis were such people, and they loved the Johnstown and Milliken community.
The tradition of a mom-and-pop owned and operated weekly newspaper is unfortunately unappreciated. The owners invest their life savings and life’s work into documenting the joys and sorrows of a local community they love. They try to keep local government honest and help the community thrive.
The community newspaper still provides that unifying forum, but people are less connected by their geography. Perhaps it is a symptom of the same affliction that prevents us from knowing our neighbors. That’s not an affliction that infected Clyde Briggs, though.
Clyde wanted to know everybody. He would help anybody at any time. I could not afford a wedding photographer; so he used his exceptional photo skills to take photos. I needed a babysitter I could trust; he volunteered his children.
Professionally, Clyde helped me see the importance of being involved in the community you work in and really thinking through the ramifications of anything that the newspaper reported. After all, you are bound to see the folks you write about in a small town.
But there is more to it than that, there is an empathy that must be learned. Along with a penchant for accuracy, Clyde had a fundamental sense of fairness based on understanding the community. William Allen White, the famous small-town editor from Emporia, Kan., once wrote, “If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own … how much kinder, how much gentler he would be.”
As much as he tried to fight it sometimes, Clyde had that gentler side, and it was very much a part of the Breeze. I am going to miss my old friend and mentor. But I will always carry with me the friendship, the memories and the lessons learned.
Bill McCarthy is the editor of The Cowboy State Free Press, a Wyoming nonprofit news service that brings a full and clear view of state government, elections, taxes and spending to citizens in a way that is understandable and accessible. To check it out, go to: www.cowboystatefreepress.org.
Hell’s Angels and Newsmen…
By Paul Shockley/For The Johnstown Breeze
If (Hell’s Angel) Sonny Barger and (Washington Post Executive Editor) Ben Bradlee could conceive, you had Clyde Briggs.
That’s the man who changed the course of my life. I can’t remember what I expected that morning in 1996 when I first walked inside that creaky, oddly appointed office on Parish Avenue to meet the man under whose leadership I would learn. It was an internship. Walking through the front door and hearing a bell chiming above, there was a wild dark-haired man in sunglasses, booming in laughter and chatting on the phone with someone. I can’t remember what they were talking about because my eyes were fixed on the man’s chaps. Chaps. Newsroom chaps. You know, because every good newsroom has chaps, sawed-off shotguns surely strapped to the underside of desks, Lord knows what else in the darkroom. I knew I was in the right place but I wasn’t sure if I had the right guy.
“Hi, I’m the boss,” were roughly the words Clyde greeted me with. Such was my introduction to a world of deadlines, X-Acto knives, light boards and work in the darkroom (which in my time involved nothing felonious or seedy). I remember seeing how much the paper meant to Clyde and Ardis, and later, Matt and Lesli, and how it was at the same time a pleasure, ass-pain and responsibility to the community and others.
That impressed me.
While I didn’t understand Clyde on certain things, I valued what he had to say on just about anything.
And while I wish he wasn’t the person he was in certain ways, I’m better for having known that person. Someone you don’t forget. Hell Angels and newsmen leave their mark.
Paul Shockley is the crime and courts reporter for The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colo.
How do you repay someone you owe your life…
By Matt Lubich/The Johnstown Breeze
In the new-life spring of 1991, I came to Johnstown with the stank of death hanging over me. My aunt had been murdered in Virginia three months earlier. Two months after that, my dad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
Coming to Johnstown was a coming back of sorts. My wife Lesli and I met at UNC. We had moved to New Mexico, when Lesli was offered a job at the Weld County Health Department in Greeley. I interviewed with the Longmont Times-Call, and had a drift that I may at least have a chance for it (I didn’t). We were looking for something in the middle. Something commutable for both of us.
“I knew this girl who said she lived in this little farm town outside of Greeley called Johnstown,” I said.
So I did what I hate now. I called the local paper and asked if there were any rentals. Not offering to buy a paper. Just simply, “can you read me the classifieds?”
Luckily, I got Ardis on the phone and she looked at the several that were there and made suggestions.
I tell them to go buy an f-ing paper. I learned that from Clyde Briggs.
I learned a lot from Clyde. One, that I absolutely stink at anything mechanical. I remember once expressing wistfulness to buy some old classic ride, maybe a Mustang or Camaro, and he said someone like me, who couldn’t fix a car, shouldn’t have something like that because it would always need work.
I remember feeling physically hurt by the comment. But that was Clyde. He would mock me because I was too much of a pussy to light my furnace in the winter, but then he’d get up from his desk at the Breeze and go over to my house and do it.
I had to sit my two daughters down when they were young and explain that he so mercilessly teased them when they came into the office because it was his way of showing affection. And, well, it was fun.
That was Clyde. Flawed no doubt, but sometimes, oh so fun.
I own this paper today with my wife, and raise my children with it, and have the life I have, because of Ardis and Clyde. And since Voltaire said, “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth,” I will say this now in ink slathered on a dead tree for everyone to read:
As we prepared to make the deal to buy the Breeze, Clyde panicked, which rhymes with manic, and if you honestly knew him, you know that rhymes with Clyde.
For his reasons, he was re-thinking the sale. Ardis firmly said they had made the deal and they were going through with it.
What a pure force that woman’s kindness and quiet strength and faith and Clyde’s rowdy boy enthusiasm and humor made together. It was beautiful when it worked, which was why it was so painful when it didn’t.
I’ve been trying to think if Clyde was more of an older brother to me, or a father figure. I think somewhere in the middle of both. Which figures, nobody or nothing was like Clyde, except Clyde.
What I owe Clyde is the basic, primal love of this business that he filled the air of this newsroom, and me, with. The roller coaster, crass, and down-right-creepy world of watching and talking to people and telling their stories for a living. In your citizen world it’s called stalking. We call it journalism.
Reporters want to feel safe at their newspaper. They want to feel like they can try new things, push things, create a little mischief by banging on a keyboard, make things a little better by asking a question. Clyde gave me that environment as a reporter, and as an editor and owner I try to give it to the people who work for me.
And no one who lived through that dark spring of 1994 can live through this past week without flashbacks to Clyde and Ardis’ son, Luke, being killed at 16 in a car accident in New Mexico.
Coming out of the Briggs home last Thursday night, after Clyde had died, I wrote in my notebook: “So sad, to be so sad, again in that house.”
It feels odd to be back in this place of grief … talking to the same teens you tried to comfort about Luke, who are now grown men, some of whom have gone to war and who have children. This past week the grief of 17 years ago has filtered and mingled with the pain of today, like incense floating up into the newsroom ceiling as I sit and type this.
And it was troubling me. What was the message? Do bad things just keep happening sometimes for no good reason? And if so, why to this good and kind family?
Then I got my answer. Who knows, maybe it was just Clyde and Luke showing off. Look at what we can do now…
Walking to the office Saturday night, brooding on all this, I heard the sound of skateboard wheels grinding along Charlotte in the darkness. Just like nearly two decades ago when Luke and his gang would roll down the same hill. In a moment, two teen-age boys glided slowly out of the shadows, muttering their plans low enough that the old guy walking couldn’t hear them, then turning left onto the diagonal behind the old town hall, and down toward the new sign welcoming people to the community that soon will have floodlights illuminating it.
Life goes on. That was the message. It went on after my aunt, it went on after my dad, after Luke, and now after Clyde, and someday, after me.
We fill the hole with memories, and we go on … gliding into the darkness toward the light.
Matt Lubich is the executive editor and co-owner, with his wife Lesli Bangert, of The Johnstown Breeze. He has worked at the paper since 1991.