Here’s a USA Today feature about Jerry “Boo” Mitchell, who, like me, holds a journalism degree from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. I don’t really remember him, even though we’re the same age–or, rather, because we’re the same age, because my own peculiar schooling history (skipped first grade, summer birthday, Grade 12 credits from Saskatchewan transferring as first-year university credits to Harding) meant I graduated at the ripe old age of 20, and he would have been a couple of years behind me. We would have had the same professors, though, and I probably spoke to a class he was in shortly after I left Harding, because I went back a couple of times after starting work at the Weyburn Review and shared my experiences as a new weekly newspaper reporter with those who were still in school.
Obviously, he’s done more as a journalist than I ever did! (But then, I discovered I didn’t really like asking people questions they’d rather not answer, which is kind of a bad attitude for a journalist to have.)
