Coupeville Sports

The ever-radiant Jennifer Saxman and her adorable daughter.

It’s Jennifer Saxman’s fault.

23 years of an on-again-off-again journalism career started because a young woman who I really didn’t know all that well went out of her way to be nice to me.

A long list of editors I have chafed over the years will surely be happy to finally have a name to hang their pain on.

But I’m serious. Without Ms. Saxman, who celebrates her birthday today, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now, uncovering the hidden stories of Coupeville sports and flipping the bird to the robber barons up in Moosejaw who now own all the local newspapers.

When my dad decided to suddenly move us from Tumwater to Whidbey Island in the middle of 12th grade, thus opening up the rare chance to serve out an extra semester of high school against my will, I was ticked off.

When I signed up for the six classes I would have to endure as a fifth-year senior, with my graduation now bumped to January of 1990 instead of June of ’89, I ended up with a motley mix that included two teachers that no rational student wanted (I later learned), a class on how to start a small business (that I skipped on a regular basis) and, despite the protests of a counselor, journalism.

Using the three published stories I had from my time at THS (a graphic story on child sexual abuse, an editorial calling for Ted Bundy to be fried and a third piece lost to the mists of time), I fast-talked my way past the journalism teacher (current News-Times Sports Editor Jim Waller), and then ran into Saxman.

A radiant, confident young woman with a mane of curls, Jennifer was one of those rare examples of a person who you know is going places even at a young age. While the rest of us flopped around, she moved with a genuine grace.

As the Sports Editor of the Oak Harbor High School newspaper, The Breeze, she didn’t have to let me have a single story.

She didn’t know me, I had no actual sports clips and when everyone else volunteered to write one story, I rashly insisted I could write the whole sports section and maybe she should let me write a column while we were at it.

And to my great surprise, she let me. And she didn’t take the column away even when I started getting angry “fan letters” the very next week.

For whatever reason, the brilliant young woman who would go on to be a successful psychologist and mom to a really cute little girl, let me babble away.

Thousands of stories, hundreds of “fan letters” and a lot of burnt bridges later, I’m still at it. The venue changes, but the writing has never stopped.

But it likely would never have started without Jennifer Saxman.

So today, on her birthday, I offer a public thank you to a woman who, with one gesture, gave me a new direction in life.