I first met Gloria Lynn Gillenwater a little more than 44 years ago when we were both working at the Bristol Herald-Courier. Together we changed her last name to Trotter at the First Baptist Church in Bristol almost 41 years ago, probably because she thought it was easier to spell. I have never been prouder of her than I was last Friday.
Not when she had our only child … not when she buckled down and finally got her degree at the University of Memphis about a decade after she left school to follow me around the country … not even the courageous way in which she always handled the rough side of life when her father and mother died within a couple of years of each other, when her only brother passed away unexpectedly at age 52, when we both were turned down in a futile attempt to adopt a child in North Carolina.
There are a million points of pride in a good marriage but last Friday was simply the best. That was when the National Newspaper Association recognized the kind of job she does by awarding her the Emma C. McKinney Award, one of the two highest honors an organization largely composed of community journalists bestows on one of their own.
You need to understand the setting. We were at the Hyatt Regency in Milwaukee, site of the 2005 NNA national convention where the two top awards were to be presented at a luncheon on the final day. The first, named for Gen. James O. Amos, a noted Ohio newspaperman, recognizes a distinguished gentleman of letters. It went to Peter Wagner, publisher of the N'West Iowa Review in Sheldon, year-in and year-out one of America's really great weekly newspapers.
Mr. Wagner was introduced as a professional speaker. Seated uncomfortably to her left at the head table, I could feel Gloria begin to tense up. Her own speech, a revised version of the column she wrote for The Countywide News and The Shawnee Sun last week, was still a work in progress. She had been working on it in spare moments ever since the convention began. She was still trying to brush up the thing a few moments before the luncheon began. She even had to tell the NNA she would send them a copy by e-mail after she got home.
Peter Wagner was as good as expected. He accepted his award with grace and dignity. Now it was Gloria's turn.
She came to the podium with dignity but that was to be expected. She has always been dignified when she needs to be.
Then she started talking. She didn't tell the audience much about her background. She just told them about the past week … about covering Frontier Days in Tecumseh … about going to the Tasty Affair in Shawnee … about scurrying around to get to church … about covering the football game in Ada … about putting out the paper early so we both could get to the convention … about the things that community journalists have to do and love to do just to get this thing out every week.
She hit a home run. She connected. The audience spent a week with her in five minutes. Most people in the room had been through something like that to get to Milwaukee themselves. They laughed and commiserated and gave her a standing ovation. For one shining moment, she was the pro. Even Peter Wagner came up and told her something like that.
Some of the others there might have been surprised. Not me. I first met Gloria Lynn Gillenwater Trotter about 16,000 days ago. Maybe there have been a few bad days in there, but I don't remember those. I do recall about 15,990 or so really great days.
Gloria left the stage with the McKinley Award in hand. It's an engraved glass creation. It looks like a fancy ice bucket and probably could pass for one. She wanted to write a column about what she had to go through to get it home on the toy planes they fly these days but I told her I was writing the column this week. That tale - and it's a good one - will have to wait one more week.
By then, I will have known Gloria Trotter for about 16,007 exciting days. Surely there are a lot more in store.
Congratulations, honey. You're still the light of my life. You always have been and always will be.