Dick Tarpley, R.I.P.

Dick Tarpley died on Monday, at age 92, and I have a few things to say about what he meant to me.

I am a professional writer, sitting at this computer this morning, for three reasons.

1. I was just out of the Army and needed a job.

2. I ran into Jon Standefer at the post office.

3. Standefer took me to talk to Dick Tarpley.

In less than an hour, on a hot July day in 1969, I moved from a) having no direction to b) having a map with an X marked on it. If I reversed the history that has brought me to this computer this morning in La Mesa, California, and traveled back through its days and weeks and years, I would run into that X at the other end, marking the spot where I stood in Dick Tarpley's office that day.

First, I had to run into Standefer. My wife and I were just out of the Army, passing through town to visit my family before continuing on to California, where she grew up and where we planned to live. I don't remember why I went to the post office, but it was the big, main Abilene, Texas, post office downtown, so it must have been more than just mailing a letter.

In the lobby, Standefer and I saw each other. We were high school classmates, he a grade ahead of me. He told me he was working as a reporter and editor at The Abilene Reporter-News. That was interesting, I said, because my intention was to go to San Diego, California, and, even though I had never set foot in a newsroom, get a job at the newspaper there. I was an English major, after all.

Standefer and I are lifelong friends – in fact our lives have eerie parallels – and one of the various things I admire about him is that he could size up a situation faster than anyone I ever knew. He said: "You need to walk over to the newspaper with me."

At the newspaper, he knocked on the door of an office. Dick Tarpley, a big man wearing glasses, looked up from his work. He was the newspaper's managing editor. "Got a minute?" Standefer said. Tarpley did, and Standefer explained my situation. I offered my only two qualifications: "I am a Stanford graduate, and I know I can write at least as well as anything I have ever read on the front page of a newspaper."

I was a good student in high school, and Tarpley remembered that; he was then, and continued to be, involved in many aspects of the community. He also trusted Standefer. He hired me, on a probationary basis, for $70 a week.

I worked at the Reporter-News for almost three years, then we moved to California where, with the experience Tarpley (thank you again, Jon) provided, I got a job at a newspaper there. This story has been mostly about me, but when you're looking at me, you're looking at Dick Tarpley.