Ellen Hiatt
Always a winner.
She was the one who DIDN’T shoot me in the head with a rubber band every five minutes.
Most days.
Ellen Hiatt was an oasis of elegance in the newsroom at the Whidbey News-Times in the early ’90s, a time when thousands (OK, millions) of rubber bands were sacrificed in the name of stress relief.
It was a different time, children.
There was no internet (or, at least what we think of today as the internet) and no one had a smart phone, so we found our amusement in other ways.
And, most days that amusement came in blasting rubber circles off of each others heads, especially when the victim was on deadline.
If you could make your target — a towering, grizzled, seen-it-all photographer — jump and scream like a little girl who just got a pony, so much the better.
Having attended not a single day of college or ever entered the hallowed halls of journalism school, I nabbed my Sport Editor position old school style, fast-talkin’ and one-finger-typin’ my way from the press room at 18 to the newsroom at age 21.
Maybe they thought the promotion would get me to shut up. They were wrong.
Ellen is one of the primary reasons I landed upstairs, though I’m sure there were days she probably thought twice about it.
There were times she rolled her eyes at me so hard she ended up looking up close and personal at her brain.
As Island Living Editor of the WNT, she gave me many of my early freelance stories, some of which I even followed her instructions on. Even when I zigged when I was supposed to have zagged, she was patient and nurturing.
After I landed in a desk next to hers, she, unlike one or two others, always acted as if I actually belonged in the newsroom.
Even when I bum-rushed the layout ladies downstairs with my sports stuff before she was finished with the layout on her section (I never missed a deadline in two years and was fanatical about it), Ellen put up with me without losing her smile.
She answered all my inane questions (questions they probably covered in the first year of journalism school), let me bounce off the walls while always being there to gently rein me in, and was always a bright, shining beacon of class, integrity and hard work.
Our paths parted — she went into politics and raised children, while I opted to marinate in video store life for many years while still chafing as many editors as humanly possible as an underpaid, overly-combative freelancer.
You can argue over whether I have lived up to my potential as a writer over the past 24 years (personally, I think the last two years, on this blog, stand as my best work), but the argument would never have even started if it wasn’t for Ellen’s influence and guidance in the early days.
She will always stand as one of my journalism idols, a wonderful woman of great style and distinction who was nice to me when she didn’t need to be, who gave me a chance to write and sorta, kinda kept me in line.
For a bit, at least.
As she celebrates her birthday today, I am a small piece of her legacy.
Might not be the biggest or brightest part of that legacy, but I will always be grateful for the chance to be even a small part.
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