I have no doubt your readers enjoyed the article "Associated Press Honors Seven Post-Journal Reporters." Quite an honor for the individuals as well as the paper.
I received an "exclusive" on the news when I got a call from one of the winners, and my good friend, Scott Kindberg. (Scott won first place for his article "Remembering Leonard's Act of Kindness")
The call went something like this:
Scott; "Hi Doug, what's up. Hey, I've got some news for you. Remember the article on "Dutch" Leonard? Well, it won first-prize from the NY State Press Association."
As I was preparing to congratulate Scott, it dawned on me that he had said "it" won instead of "I" won. This threw me for a moment. Before I could mutter some words of congratulations, Scott went on, "I just wanted to call and thank you for making the article possible. I really appreciate you telling me the story of you and Dutch."
Okay. Hold on a minute. I was a part of the story only because I had been introduced to someone as special as Dutch Leonard. In fact - as I was soon to discover - it was just a case of "Dutch being Dutch" (which is exactly 180 degrees from Manny being Manny). I had virtually nothing to do with the article.
Put it this way: If this were ever made into a movie, Dutch would be the star, Scott would be the writer/director/producer and my part would have read "uncredited."
While Dutch was indeed the heart of the story, Scott made it come to life with his love of sports, people and the city of Jamestown. In fact, I could name you at least 10 guys who could have written this article and Scott Kindberg would still be the only one with the first-place ribbon (one of 10 such awards he has won, I might add).
So, let me beat Scott to the punch for once and thank him for this article as well as the many other stories he has written with such love and professionalism. I know all of you who have come in contact with Scott feel the same way I do - we are lucky to have someone like him covering our community both on and off the ball field. (other than being a die-hard Yankee fan, you would be hard-pressed to find a flaw with this guy).
I consider myself fortunate to know him and even luckier to call him my friend. But of course, that is just Scott being Scott.
Doug Berlin lives in Jamestown.