By Maureen Hart
I didn’t know if I was going to write this story or not. After all, our sports editor Steve Svetovich has a wonderful interview on page 4 with Guy Valvano, our old colleague from the Scrantonion-Tribune, regarding our recently deceased coworker Jack Seitzinger.
That ‘s good, I thought to myself. After all, although I joined the Tribune in 1972, I certainly did not work in the sports department, something that would have been unheard-of at that time. (To give you an idea, I have a doctor friend who recalls in that same year being told she would not be allowed to do the surgical rotation unless she signed a document pledging never to practice surgery. She was the only female in her class, there were no female professors, and she signed and proceeded to clean surgical instruments for her whole rotation. Young women today have no idea….)
Anyway I was interviewed for a position in what was quaintly called the Social Department as assistant to the formidable editor, Gene Brislin. Gene had been with the newspaper since the war years when, with a lot of the men away, she was able to write front page news stories, and was by all accounts, a phenomenal reporter.
But when the men came back from Europe and the Pacific, Gene was dumped back to write weddings and cover parties. She wasn’t happy about it, but she had no choice.
I, on the other hand, didn’t care where they put me. I had a job. On a newspaper! I would remain there until the Trib closed 18 years later.
I won’t say I wasn’t nervous, being one of only two women in the heavily smoke-filled newsroom, but I am here to swear that that rough and tumble group of newspaper reporters right out of “The Front Page” could not have been kinder to me. Even when I was nervous and asked a stupid questions such as “Does our stylebook capitalize the word Jello?” (I was retyping that week’s school. )
No ever told an off-color joke or used a dirty word around me, not in the newsroom or in the even rougher composing room. I am certain they were cussing their heads off when I wasn’t there, but they were respectful of both me and Gene, without either of us ever saying anything to them.
Anyway, I was hired in April and at the time I was living in a studio apartment in Wilkes-Barre. I planned to move to Scranton in June, to a second floor apartment on Clay Avenue. My stepfather planned to drive up from Mechanicsburg to move my stuff.
That is, until Tropical Storm Agnes hit Wilkes-Barre the day before my move. Nobody could get in or out of the city. I couldn’t even get out of my apartment until the National Guard came along a night or two later in motor boats. I found a ride to Scranton, by lying that I was covering this big story. (Well, actually, my editor did ask me to write what then the first first-person account of the disaster, and my landed on the front page. My first and only coup. But that was after I had already lied about my urgent assignment.
I slept on the floor of my unfurnished apartment that night. Then Gene and her husband insisted I come and stay at their home, where I bunked for three weeks.
Finally, there was information that people who lived in Wilkes-Barre would be allowed in to retrieve some things. I talked about it in the newsroom, unsure what to do because it was such a restricted, chaotic situation in Luzerne County.
But two of my coworkers told me they would move me. I told them I wanted to get everything –which wasn’t much since I was just out of college. They said that would be fine.
They did not realize I had box after box of books which were my most precious possessions. There was no elevator working, and I lived on the 11th floor of a 12-story high rise. But in the summer heat, Jack Seitzinger and Danny Orr, who barely knew me, stepped up and moved all those books to Scranton. They would tease me about for years. I’m sure they must of have wished they had gone golfing or fishing that day, but they never truly complained and said they were glad to help. They were just grateful that the 12 flights of stairs were going down, and that they only had to drag everything one flight up to my new apartment.
I was 22 years old, in a city where I did not know anyone but Gene and the guys in the newsroom, most of whom worked at night while I had a day shift.. Reading his obituary, I realized with a shock that 52 years ago, Jack Seitzinger would have been just 30 years old.
Another thing that took me by surprise in the obit was mention that Jack played minor league baseball with the Detroit Tigers, as well as semi-pro basketball. I figured everybody must have known that except for me.
But Guy Valvano, who worked side by side with Jack covering all the local sports, mentions in his interview that he never knew that either. It proves what a solid, down-to-earth guy, modest Jack was.
Valvano last saw him at church, and though I do not know precisely when, I am certain I had my last glimpse of Jack at the Green Ridge Little League field where he and his wife Geri consistently supported their children, and then their grandchildren. I assure you, so many of us are going miss seeing him there this year.