For What It's Worth
I’ve been confronted by a singular word over the last several weeks: retirement. Not my retirement, I don’t plan to play that card anytime soon. However, three well-deserving people I know recently entered that season of their lives.
For instance, my wife Jean Friday celebrated her departure from being a teacher’s assistant for a first-grade classroom at an Olive Branch elementary school.
She’s been at the school since we came to Mississippi in 2008. My career here has seen me go in different media directions, but as I tell people, “she’s been the only one able to hold down a job since we moved here.”
Jean helped start a special needs preschool at the elementary school in 2008 and stayed in that classroom until about four years ago when they moved her into a first-grade class. She was perfect for the special needs room because she had spent about 10 years prior to that working with autistic preschoolers in an Iowa public school system prior to us coming to the Magnolia State. Jean was basically hired without so much as a face-to-face interview due to her experience.
We have a thing between the two of us where we expectantly count down to specific dates, a vacation, or in this case, retirement. “It’s 10 days until retirement,” “This is my last school field day,” and “This is my last Wednesday of class ever,” have been greeting me in the living room each morning over the last few weeks.
Jean is definitely excited about her entrance into the next phase, or chapter some say, of her life, and she should be. She has poured so much into the lives of her students and it’s gratifying when she is recognized on the street by students and former students who greet her or give her a hug.
As much as my wife has poured herself into education in the last nearly three decades, we at the South Reporter are saying goodbye and happy retirement to two people who poured so much into this publication and the community over the years.
Production manager Barbara Taylor and writer Sue Watson both completed their tenure here in the past couple of weeks. These women didn’t just chronicle the history of Marshall County--they were the gravity that held this paper together. To understand what their departure means, you have to talk to the people who leaned on them to survive.
“Barbara was there when I arrived in 2001,” recalls Barry Burleson, the former long-time publisher of the South Reporter. “I inherited her, and thank goodness I did. She was the key to the whole operation.”
Barbara’s tenure at the paper didn’t just span years; it spanned a lifetime. She walked through the front doors of the newspaper office in 1979, the exact same year she graduated from Holly Springs High School. For 47 years, her entire working career was poured into the ink and pages of the South Reporter.
In the corporate world, employee turnover is measured in months. In community journalism, a 47-year tenure is nearly unheard of.
“It’s hard to replace someone who’s been at a business for five years,” Burleson pointed out to me during a recent visit about his former employees. “Forty-seven years? It’s unreal. It’s unheard of. The owners got a steal with both of them, but they particularly got a steal with Barbara.”
For years, Barbara was the unseen architect of the newspaper’s layout, painstakingly building the inside pages week after week. But her actual job description was far broader: she was the steady hand, the person who knew the advertisers, the community, and the operation from front to back. When the phone rang at the office, a vast majority of the callers weren’t asking for the publisher or the editor. They were asking for Barbara.
If Barbara was the anchor inside the office, Sue Watson was the face of the paper on the streets.
Sue’s arrival at the South Reporter is a testament to the old-school, relationship-driven world of community news. Burleson had been ready to hire the daughter of Brooks Taylor, the then-publisher of the Tunica Times. But Brooks called him with a proposition: Sue was commuting every single day from Marshall County to Tunica to work as a staff writer. Brooks suggested a swap--let her daughter work closer to her in Tunica, and let Sue work closer to home in Holly Springs.
It was a trade that paid dividends for Marshall County for more than two decades.
Sue quickly developed a reputation as a relentless, meticulous journalist. Armed with her own unique form of shorthand, she became a permanent fixture at Board of Aldermen and Board of Supervisor meetings.
“She generated so much copy,” Burleson said, recalling their friendly editorial battles. “We used to laugh because she was always worried she wouldn’t have enough stories for the next week. I’d tell her, ‘Sue, trust me, we aren’t going to run out of copy.’ And as soon as she’d worry, some major incident or crime would happen.”
What truly separated Sue from the standard beat reporter was trust. Public officials, from local mayors to the county sheriff, didn’t just tolerate her--they trusted her implicitly. They knew that if Sue had a question about a fact, she would follow up ruthlessly to get it right before it ever hit the printing press.
The true measure of Barbara and Sue’s capability came during a challenging stretch when the newspaper operated without an editor. For nearly two years, the duo simply stepped up and ran the entire newspaper themselves.
The division of labor blurred out of necessity. Barbara took on the front-page design and assumed editorial duties she had never previously handled, while Sue worked the streets to feed the machine with news. Together, they meticulously planned every issue, deciding what went on the front page and how the community’s stories would be told. They didn’t complain; they just got the paper out.
But their bond wasn’t merely professional. Over decades of shared deadlines, late nights, and community crises, the staff of the South Reporter became a tightly knit family. Through it all, Barbara, Sue, and Barbara’s husband, Bobby, formed a mutual support system that extended far beyond the office walls, helping each other with household crises and watching their children grow up together.
There is something inherently bittersweet about a retirement like this. On one hand, it is a welldeserved graduation. Barbara has grandchildren to spoil; Sue has earned the right to put down her notepad. On the other hand, it leaves a crater in the local landscape.
The newspaper business has changed radically since Barbara started in 1979—transitioning from an era of hot type, manual layout, and grueling all-night production cycles to the digital age. These two women survived the evolution because their commitment wasn’t tied to the medium; it was tied to the people of Marshall County.
“It’s a changing of the guard, and it’s sad,” Burleson says. “But I’m happy for them. You could not ask for anybody better. It goes a lot deeper than newspaper skills and talent. They are both just tremendous individuals.”
As the South Reporter moves forward into its next chapter, it will do so without its backbone and its public face. Replacing them isn’t a matter of hiring new writers or page designers. You don’t just replace 70 combined years of institutional knowledge, community trust, and radical dedication. You just hope to honor the standard they set.
That’s what I have for now... for what it’s worth.