Move over Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones.
I know where old columnists go to die now.
If you've spent countless hours wondering what happened to all of the columnists retired by the Richmond Times-Dispatch over the past few years, the mystery has been solved.
Richmond's Boomer Life, the glossy magazine that fills the racks in the foyer of area grocery stores and the waiting rooms of area doctor's offices, has become the home of some of Richmond's senior writers. Senior in age and in years spent inking stories -- most particularly the Times-Dispatch.
Ray McAllister -- you remember him, the guy whose columns were either about his kids or Doug Wilder or nothing -- is now editor. And he's brought some of his old cronies with him.
... obviously I love the column format. Even when I pick up an out-of-town paper or magazine, I always go for the columns. Front page first, then the columns.
Five of us former Times-Dispatch columnists are in these pages, then, writing either columns or stories. We also have a new travel columnist — and Richmond’s best-known radio man writing a column, too.
But it's the columnists who get the cover treatment. There they are in all of their boomer glory -- McAllister, Randy Fitzgerald, Bill Millsaps, Betty Booker and Steve Clark. Apparently, Mark Holmberg got carded on his way to the meeting. Here's the line-up:
Randy Fitzgerald: Randy is an academician by trade but you wouldn’t know it from his down-home columns, often featuring his wife Barb, in the old Richmond News Leader and then The Times-Dispatch. He writes this issue about the very personal nature of the momentous year 1968.
Bill Millsaps: Bill was the paper’s executive editor but is better known for being sports editor before that – and winning Virginia’s sports writer of the year award as often as Tiger Woods wins the best golfer award. “Saps” – it’s OK to call him that – writes here about famed Virginia golfer Curtis Strange.
Betty Booker: Last year, Betty left behind her columns on all things Boomer- and senior-related and, of course, “Answer Granny.” She writes here about what early “retirement” has been like.
Ray McAllister: Ray left the paper in November to expand his book-writing career. With this issue, he also becomes editor of BOOMERlife – but don’t expect his to be a traditional editor’s column.
Steve Clark: Steve was among the best-known writers on both The News Leader and, later, The Times-Dispatch. Known for the “people” element of his columns, Steve talks here with the “UPS whiteboard guy.”
All of this seasoned firepower is aimed right at the heart of Richmond's largest consumer demographic. I wonder when all the former TD news writers are going to start their own weekly...
