by Karen Brune Mathis
Managing Editor
Times-Union reporter Jessie-Lynne Kerr was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer March 10, 2009. The almost 47-year Times-Union journalism veteran has been sharing her story with her readers, including her personal difficulties of a divorce, overcoming alcoholism and the suicide of her first-born son. Visit www.jacksonville.com to read her words.
Kerr, undoubtedly one of the most established and experienced working reporters in Jacksonville, talked about her life and career on Tuesday. This is a transcript of her story, edited for space.
How has the diagnosis affected you?
This started a whole new part of my life. Some people don’t know how they’re going to die. I know how I’m going to die, I just don’t know when, and of course we keep trying new tricks, and what not. I’ve had probably, over the two years, six different chemo drugs. I did have a lot of radiation to start with. And it was very aggressive. I got through that, had 15 low-dose radiations to the brain and, knock on wood, nothing’s come up in the head since then. In fact, my lungs are clear, and have been for quite some time. My problem now is the liver and the pancreas.
Unfortunately, I was due to have chemo last Friday, but my blood platelets were too low. They wouldn’t give it to me, and I’m not due to have it next week. It’ll be three weeks before I go back on the chemo, so we keep pushing and keep trying.
I have to tell you, the outpouring from readers and former colleagues has just been phenomenal. And to get that global award when I didn’t even know the organization existed, or they were reading me or anything, that was super. They flew down from Washington to give me that.
What award was that?
The Global Lung Cancer Coalition for the best blog. I didn’t even know what a blog was, but that’s me. I can change a typewriter ribbon, and I knew how to work a Teletype, so that was that. Something, though, that I initially started writing about was I’ve had one darn interesting life.
You have. How did you start your career?
When you go back to my high school, I went to the high school of the performing arts, the “Fame” school. That’s where I literally started in journalism, because we started the PAGO press, the Performing Arts General Organization press, and that would have been 1952 or so. I went to college, flunked out after one year.
This is in New York?
Yes, I went to Hunter College. It was free at the time. A friend of mine was killed in a horrible accident and I muffed a bunch of my finals. I could have gone and paid per credit at night, and gotten back in, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. That’s when I went to work as a hat model, and I had a lot of fun with that. We did Easter Sunday at the Waldorf for three years running, and I worked with Oleg Cassini. I dated his vice president. (I assisted) Joan Crawford, Lucille Ball and Ivy Baker Priest, who was treasurer of the United States. It was fun, and then I left him for a better job.
I went from selling hats at $75 each retail to selling handbags, plastic knockoffs, at $21.35 a dozen, $2.98 retail. They fired me after six months, and I really don’t know why. They gave me one buying office with 500 stores, and I tripled the shipments to those stores, but they fired me. I’d never been fired in my life.
I spent four weeks standing in line at the New York unemployment office, signing up for my weekly, probably $45, check.
And then there was an ad in the local paper, which was the Staten Island Advance, and it said, ‘WOMAN Interested in News Writing, College Background and Knowledge of Typing Necessary.’
Well, I had a year of college and I knew how to type, so I went down and got hired. I think I was making $45 a week.
It was on the women’s page. I could write engagements, weddings, you know, and not formulaic. Everything had to be a news story. I’ll never forget when another reporter wrote that a wedding was consummated on the high altar at St. So-and-So’s Catholic Church.
What did you do about that?
I changed it.
But you know, there were only four of us in the department, and we took turns. One day I’d do all the weddings and another week I’d put together the food section. That’s when I learned layout. I stayed with them for 3 1/2 years.
On December 16, in 1960, was the worst airplane crash in history. Two planes collided over Staten Island, filled with Christmas travelers, filled with Christmas presents. One of them went down in Brooklyn and killed some people on the ground. It threw a little 10-year-old boy into a snowbank, and for three days, he was the only survivor. Eventually he succumbed, too. His lungs were burned out. But everyone who came on the plane in Staten Island was killed.
I had not only snow tires, but chains on my car. It was December 16 and it was snowing. They said, ‘Jessie-Lynne, go’ and I drove down there. This was way before cell phones. I had to stop at a grocery store after because I had the radio on, and I said, you know, it wasn’t a private plane, it was two airliners, filled with people. At that time, it was the worst commercial aviation disaster in history. When I got down there to the scene, the pilot that brought down the plane in Staten Island was purposely aiming against houses. He wanted to get away from houses, and there was an auxiliary Army airfield there, and that’s where he landed his plane so he didn’t take out anyone on the ground.
I went all the way up to the cockpit. It was my baptism of gore. You had burning flesh hanging from the trees, and pieces of Christmas paper. It was just very, very depressing, and I was all of about 21 years old. That was hard on me. I didn’t sleep for days.
I was very flattered when I saw, this past December, The New York Times spent five days recapping that.
I stayed (at the paper) writing weddings, engagements, flower shows, covering charity balls out the kazoo until Bruce and I had gotten married, and I got pregnant. We thought it would be cheaper to live down here.
Why Jacksonville?
He had friends he had met in Miami that lived in Neptune Beach. So Memorial Day weekend of 1963, we moved to Neptune Beach. I had no intention of working. I’d married Bruce, who was going to be a fabulous filmwriter and we’d soon be moving to Hollywood. Well, that all went out the window, and after we’d been here about six or eight months, his mother, who had been helping support us, said a job, or jobs, are in order.
Bruce had met Bob Feagin, who was the (Florida Publishing Co.) VP and got an appointment for me, and I went down to Pearl and Adams Street, 400 West Adams, and I was hired.
It was March 9 of 1964. I was the token female in the City Room and they didn’t know what I could do, so they had me do everything. We didn’t have a business page at the time, so I started out covering the Chamber of Commerce. That’s the place to find out the who’s who and the what’s what, and the movers and the shakers and the pushers and the shovers, that was it. I would have lunch at a different civic club or chamber committee every day of the week. You really got to know all the people in Jacksonville.
You covered historic events, too.
In 1964, we had the demonstrations in St. Augustine, and I got to cover Martin Luther King in federal court. I think I was the only reporter there, because they wouldn’t let cameras in. That was one of my more interesting encounters.
I was moved from working Monday to Friday to Tuesday through Saturday. As the mother of a 6-month-old, it was great because I was bound and determined that being a woman and a mother would not curtail what I did for the Times-Union. I could have all my doctors’ appointments on Mondays, the grocery stores weren’t as crowded, the beach was deserted. I worked six years Tuesday through Saturday.
It got me a lot of good assignments. The Martin Luther King hearing was on a Saturday.
The wonderful thing that I experienced was covering the molding of the consolidated government. The Local Government Study Commission had public hearings on every facet of the city and the county’s governments. It was the most marvelous living civics lesson because you saw what was, and then you literally saw them devising the new government.
I have to tell you something funny. On the last anniversary of the consolidated government, (Mayor) John Peyton had a luncheon at City Hall, and I was the only member of the press invited, and I wasn’t there to cover it. There were about 70 of us there, and the members who were in the legislative delegation at the time.
Hans Tanzler (the first mayor of the consolidated government in 1968) was there. Hans was sitting next to me. They passed the microphone around to the former mayors. Well, you all see that picture of him with the actress putting up the new city limits sign, and she’s sticking her boob in his ear, and he said, ‘well, now I have to wear a hearing aid.’ And then he said, ‘you all remember the picture of me water skiing in the St. Johns River to celebrate closing off all of the outfalls.’ He said, ‘Well, now I’ve had my leg amputated.’ He was so funny, just such good humor about it.
You were the common denominator in the legal field in Jacksonville when you covered the court beat.
That’s good to hear. Sometime before I go, I want Judge Moran to give me a tour of the new courthouse.
Because I don’t know how much longer ... it may be three or four months, I don’t know. It depends upon how this works out. But I’ve already stayed around longer than they thought I would.
Does that surprise anybody?
I think I’m not only the longest serving reporter, but (Times-Union General Manager) Bobby Martin tells me I’m the longest serving employee, period. On March the 9th, it will be 47 years.
I’m 72. If I make it till April 26, I’ll be 73, and I jokingly tell people I helped (Morris Communications Corp. Chair) Billy Morris satisfy diversity by employing the elderly.
I worked hard for that Social Security. I went to work when I was 18 years old.
Do you come in to work every day?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Even if I have chemo, I come in as soon as the chemo’s done.
Why?
It keeps me going, and I always have something to do. They put me back doing Call Box. Shoot, I did that in 1985. Then I have primary responsibility for the news obituaries. So twice a day I go down to where they come in from the funeral homes and see who’s gone and who can I contact to find out more about them.
A lot of families consider it an honor that you’ve written the obituary of their loved ones.
Charlie Towers keeps telling me, ‘Jessie-Lynne, you have to write my obituary before you die.’
You are a walking archive of facts. You have a strong memory. What do you do?
I get up and I read the paper at home from cover to cover. Even though it’s not my story, names stick with me. That’s my knowledge of Jacksonville, our newspaper. If I need to check something, I can always go to the archives. But that’s the secret. Read the paper every day and you will know the who’s who and the what’s what. You will know Jacksonville.
When a reporter goes to the archives, and finds a story that you wrote, there is absolutely no question that it is factual and accurate. Did you know that?
Wow. I try. I mean, accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.
What do you think about what’s happening with the media these days?
I’m so glad that I was part of it because it has changed so much. I mean, I don’t even attempt to keep up with all of the electronic stuff. I don’t have phones with doodads, and my son drives me nuts with his Twitter and his tweets, particularly when he’s driving. I just am so blessed that I was part of the profession during the years that mattered to me. It has changed so much now. One of these days I’m going to write a column correcting pronunciation by the TV journalists.
What are some of your favorites?
Caribbean. (Editor) John Walters, years ago, corrected me. My sister’s lived in St. Croix since 1965, and she once worked for a company that I was mispronouncing CaRIBbean Wholesale. And he said, ‘Jessie-Lynne, it’s CaribBEan, it’s named for the Carib Indians.’
The other thing that drives me nuts, you’ll have an anchor interviewing someone in the field, and the first word out of his mouth will be, ‘exactly.’ Is it really exactly the way you say it is?
And people who don’t know where places are, or don’t know how to pronounce it. One of these days, I’m going to write the column.
You have written about Jacksonville for decades, but you are a transplant. How did you fit in?
I came down here, you know, the wild-eyed Yankee girl. I never attempted to impose my values or my habits here.
Particularly coming from New York City to Jacksonville, then known as the Hartford of the South with all the insurance companies here. I was very cognizant that there were some different mores and things here that I had to be respectful of, and I always was. I think that was one thing that got me along with people. This is their town, this is their newspaper. You should be privileged to work for it. You don’t go around slinging your values.
It has really been a wonderful career that now is bringing me great joy, when I get responses from people who read my stories. I don’t know what’s so fantastic about them. I’m just writing how I feel, what it’s like to face this, how I’m getting through it, and just being very honest about it.
You present it very factually. Not maudlin. And you’re not preachy.
No, because that’s not going to get me anywhere. I am facing a terminal illness, and sometime the day will come when it’s over. But I’m going to attempt to keep a good sense of humor until that time comes. I mean, it’s my life, and I have a right to enjoy it to its fullest.
You’ve covered some of the worst crimes.
You know, a medical examiner once asked me, how can you sit here day after day and listen to all of man’s inhumanity to man? I said, ‘It’s a job.’ And I always tried to take into account how the family of the victim’s going to feel about reading this. I self-edited very heavily, because you’re dealing with their loved ones’ lives and their last breaths.
If someone can think up an evil, I’ve probably covered it, those 10 years down at the courthouse.
You had mentioned Charlie Towers and his request you write his obituary. Who is writing yours?
I don’t know. I’ve been thinking of sketching out some stuff.
You still are the voice of reason and a straight-shooter.
I don’t sugarcoat things. I try to be gentle, but I don’t sugar-coat them.
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