September 11, 2004 |
| As The WIRE Enters Its 25th Year, Past Editors Remember... |
| by Jack Resnick I can’t believe that this issue of The Main Street WIRE  marks the beginning of its 25th volume. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that a group of us were having dinner and bemoaning the absence of the Tram? It was February of 1981. The annual two-week shutdown of the Tram for “routine maintenance” had become a fourmonth ordeal of hour-long bus commutes into Manhattan. (The Roosevelt Island subway service was not to begin until 1989.) The cable from which the cars are suspended was being replaced. Somehow, it had dropped onto First Avenue. News was hard to come by. When would our link to Manhattan be restored? Nobody was talking. The New York press didn’t give the story much coverage. A bunch of us were having a long weekend dinner at our apartment. The rumors flew around the table. They got more intricate and paranoid as more wine was consumed. Wouldn’t it be great, someone asked, if there were a local newspaper on Roosevelt Island that could ferret out the information? It must have been the wine talking, but I heard myself say that I had had newspaper experience in high school and college. I knew how to put out a paper. Let’s do it, I said. Glasses were raised, toasts were made and so The Main Street WIRE was born. Luckily, a lot of the people around the table that night were professional writers. Amazingly, when we posted flyers asking for volunteers. even more people showed up. During its first few years The WIRE was blessed with a dozen or so volunteers who divided up the work. Our first news editor, Clare Walker, had been a London newspaper editor before coming to the Island. Her professionalism set the standard for years to come. A few years later, Clare was succeeded in the role of News Editor by Mark Perkiss. Mark was a young 20-something just out of college, looking for a career. He volunteered for The WIRE and took to journalism like the proverbial duck to water. We lost Mark after a few years. He moved off Roosevelt Island to become a reporter for a Trenton newspaper, this time with an actual salary. Mark’s evolution is one of my fondest WIRE memories. I served as The WIRE’s editor and publisher for its first dozen years. When I could no longer afford the time, fate smiled on us and a real newsman showed up. Jim Bowser, who had been a professional journalist and novelist, offered to take over the editorship and kept the paper going. He had already served the Island in many other posts – president of the Rivercross and Community Library boards, chair of the Youth Center board, and vice-president of the Residents Association. When you need a job done well, find someone who is already overloaded. By 1996, Jim’s health forced him to scale back and, God bless him, Dick Lutz appeared on the scene. With Dick’s arrival, my continuing role as publisher also came to an end. (That meant my evenings of laying out The WIRE with my desktop publishing software and my monthly attempts to pay its bills finally ended.) I turned The WIRE completely over to Dick – although he’s been nice enough to list me on the masthead as founding publisher and run the advertisement for my medical practice. Roosevelt Island is fortunate to have Dick. The energy and personal resources he spends on providing this community with a newspaper are more than you could possibly imagine. Here’s something I know for certain – he could use some help. If you’ve the time and inclination, give him a call: 212-826-9055. |