This is Doug Hunt, the most senior guy in the newsroom at the Crawfordsville (Ind.) Journal Review, back in January, 2004. He's interviewing Spc. Billie Grimes, who was on the cover of TIME magazine along with two other soldiers when TIME declared the U.S. military its Person of the Year for 2003. Grimes, who served in Iraq, was a graduate of Western Boone High School at Thorntown, Ind. and the whole town turned out on Jan. 6, 2004 when she came home for a visit.
The reason I'm writing this is because I learned today that Doug is in a hospital on life support and things look pretty bad.
Doug has been living with a transplanted cadaver kidney for several years, developed bleeding ulcers and anemia and has been in declining health since I first met him about six years ago.
Maria worried a lot about him when she was managing editor at the Journal Review and forcibly sent him to the hospital on two occasions. Both times, he was gravely ill, but wanted to keep working.
Doug is the quintessential small town newsie. He grew up in Montgomery County and the Crawfordsville area and knows damn near everybody. He has been the institutional memory of the JR for a long time.
We're all pulling for him to come through and beat the odds once more.
1 comment:
Poor Doug! :-(
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