Famous Lorainites
 Toni Morrison
 Adm. Ernest J. King Jr.
 Terry Anderson
  Me, sort of, and very briefly. 
Early in my sportswriting career; I was  barred from a press box for being female. It was a LONG time ago,  in Lorain.

Washington, D.C.
Where I was born, leading a couple of times to some humorous responses from job interviewers, who, seeing my name and place of birth, assumed that I was  black.  For the record, I'm  French-Canadian, English, German. I think. My family came from Laconia, N.H., and the Haverhill and Lowell, Mass., areas.

Anhui Province
Anna's home province. Many children are adopted from this region, west of Shanghai.   Back in 1996, we met scads of people from all over the country, Sweden, Italy and elsewhere, all adopting children, virtually  all girls. 

Places I've worked:
Lorain (Ohio) Journal
Danbury News-Times
Hartford Courant
National Council of Churches (refugee program)
New London (Conn.)  Day
Newsday
New York Times
CMP Media
Los Angeles Times
(based at Newsday)

Places Anna's Been:
Hefei, China
Guangzhou
Hong Kong
New York
Long Island
Lorain, Ohio
Norwalk, Conn.
(and, for ACES)
Seattle
Washington, D.C.*
Columbia, S.C.
Los Angeles
Chapel Hill, N.C.
Portland, Ore.
Dallas
Baltimore
Long Beach, Calif.

and, for vacation
Woodloch Pines, Pa.

*Anna had an amusing  Ben Bradlee experience at ASNE. He swooped in and, in very dramatic fashion, leaned over,  took her hand, kissed it and sauntered away.  When I explained to her that he was famous, sometimes on TV (a kid's reference point), she said, "Oh. Like Elmo?" She was 4;  I'm not sure about Ben.
 
 

  I keep busy with ACES, first with  duties as co-founder of ACES and its first president,  teaching Sunday school (stop laughing); doing Web pages for church, school and ACES,  fending off squirrel and bird attacks, and all things Anna. And, of course, with my day-night job with the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service. 

  Anna is occupied with school (she's starting a new one in the fall) with all the things that keep a young girl going. Shopping. Shopping. She would move into a mall if she could. She can't. 

   She also thinks she's going to get away with no Chinese cultural class next year. We didn't get signed up this past fall because of the crush of news from Sept.11-anthrax-plane crash-war.  May all the dead rest in peace. But we're getting back on track this coming year.

Sept.11 was the swearless-day--the only day I've ever seen when the usual swearing was replaced by "Oh, my God. Oh, my God" just like the rest of America. I hope never to see such a day again.

The most interesting job, outside regular news and with the most longterm impact, I've ever held was as director and instructor for the editing portion of  METPro, a minority training program established  by the Times Mirror newspapers. 

   The weirdest, well, there were two: working at CMP Media, for a publication called CRW, a niche weekly for people who sold computer equipment retail, and where the standard response to almost anything  was "Cool!", and the refugee program at the National Council of Churches, which grew out of some volunteer work with a Southeast Asian refugee family. 

   Neither job was bad; they were both very, very different from the newspaper track I've been on since I was 16.

   I'm very pleased to be included in a  book published recently by the Poynter Institute, called Leading by Example.  My good friends Maurreen Skowran and, especially, my hero, Mr. William G. Connolly, made me look a LOT better than I am.  But I won't ask for a retraction.

 More important, through the efforts of Maurreen and Bill,  copy editors--several of whom he cites in his  article-- are included in a book devoted mostly to the newspaper industry's top leaders. It is a first for us, I think.

 Through ACES, we've met many fabulous people, some characters, people who affected us at least a little and sometimes a lot. I can't name them all-- the List is waYtoo loNg, you kNow-- but a casual look around the site will tell you who they are.

  Everyone involved with ACES should be proud of their roles. While we had a huge amount of support from ASNE, we did this ourselves. We are continuing to grow, and continuing to increase our impact.
 

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