For a while, blog posts are likely to focus on things associated with Karen’s recent stroke and continuing recovery. She’s making good progress, and has her first outpatient therapy this afternoon. We even made it out to a restaurant for dinner last night.

As this was written, she’d already crawled into bed, but we’re communicating between the bedroom and upstairs study via walkie-talkies loaned to us by a good friend, Pip’s Mom (aka Ann McClain). A future blog post will tell about her and other friends who’ve helped in a difficult time.

 But just now I feel like writing briefly about Bob and Esther Aikens Todd, who were my first newspaper employers and who endowed the Todd-Aikens Center in Johnson Memorial Hospital that took such good care of Karen.

 It would be easy for me to joke about Bob and Esther, and I intend to, a little. After all, they were the publishers of the Franklin Evening Star, where I was a cub reporter in the 1950s. Any reporter has an inalienable right to tell stories about the boss—it helps make up a little for low newspaper salaries.

 I can’t complain about the salary the Star paid me, though—I did it to myself. When Mr. Todd, after hemming and hawing for a while, asked how much I would expect to be paid, this exceedingly green 17-year-old exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Todd, I’ll work cheap!” He beamed and hired me on the spot.

 Mr. Todd was really a banker, not a newspaperman, but he married into the business. Esther Aikens was the daughter of W.W. Aikens, who had founded the paper in post-Civil War days.

 Esther didn’t appear often in the newsroom, but she did once, to castigate me for quoting a retiree from the Suckow Milling Co., who said he had been hired “by old Mr. Suckow.” Esther gave me to understand that I was never, ever to refer to a prominent citizen as “old” even in a quote and even if he had been dead for years.

 Esther may have been the most charming lady in the world, with a delicious sense of humor—but in fact I heard her say only one funny thing during my months on the Star. The moment came as she was inspecting submitted pictures for Johnson County Fair Queen, and came to one  in which the contestant had posed in a low-slung drape. “Hmmph,” hmmphed Esther. “Corn Queen indeed. Looks like she’s been shucked.”

 Bob and Esther have been gone many years, and I bear them no ill will—never did, in fact. After all, they launched me on a fascinating career in journalism that has lasted a lifetime. And I give them all the credit in the world for endowing the center that bears their names, and which provided both Karen and me with exceptionally competent and loving care in a tough time. Bob and Esther, I would happily work for you again—and not be overly particular about the pay either.

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