Editor Loved Newsrooms, Words

Barbara Kerr Page’s decision to die on her own terms should have come as no surprise to anybody who knew her. She always left on her own terms, did everything on her own terms.

She was features editor when I joined the staff of The Albuquerque Tribune in 1987. She had already been city editor, had newspaper jobs in Las Cruces and Yakima, Wash., been an educator at New Mexico State University and a playwright.

The jolly woman whose hair color changed with her whim seemed destined to occupy one of the glass offices at the Tribune or perhaps some larger newspaper. Yet, when I arrived, she was excitedly preparing to walk away from the high trajectory of her journalism career to return to the copy desk and to the thing she loved most: copy.

Words.

It was no demotion for her. Truth be told, Barb’s influence at the Tribune became even more pervasive, integral, her wit and wisdom apparent in nearly every corner of the paper, from the Ann Landers column to the biggest news stories of the day.

Being edited by Barb could be unnerving, though, and legend has it that a number of interns ran screaming from the newsroom after she poked and prodded and riddled their copy with notes, questions and suggestions. A few veteran reporters — myself included — did as well.

“I’ve sometimes considered her my worst professional enemy,” former Tribune editor Phill Casaus once wrote in a tribute to Barb. “I used to call her, dismissively, the ‘managing editor emeritus,’ because she always had a better way to write a story — and was never afraid to clear her throat when the opportunity presented itself.”

But most of us understood. This was her passion, not ego. This was her way of making us think, of making our words better, making us better. And she did.

Barb wrote some of the most poetic, profound and ribald headlines any newspaper has had the good fortune to display. Two of my favorites: “De La Hoya Knocks Vargas On His Sass,” about the cheeky, KO’d boxer; and “Chopper woman: I did it for love,” about the daring high-flying prison escape plan carried out by an inmate’s gal pal.

Barb won every national and local journalism accolade a copy editor could ever hope to achieve. She won so many monthly headline-writing contests within the Scripps Howard chain of newspapers that it’s said the company created the Scripps Howard Hall of Fame just to put her in it and keep her from competing further.

Oh, but Barb was still a winner, her wisdom threaded in every major project the Tribune produced in the more than 20 years she worked on the copy desk. More than that, she was generous with her time and her knowledge with journalism students and writers across the country.

What Barb did she did for love. She loved words. She loved the Tribune. And I think she loved the crazy, dysfunctional, talented writers who wrote those words, many who have gone on with their careers across the country from the Washington Post to the Denver Post to the Albuquerque Journal to books, plays, academia.

Yet in early 2008 when the Tribune, an afternoon newspaper, was in its final throes, Barb decided not to go down with the ship but to leave months in advance. Many of us were surprised by her decision. Barb was a lifer, or so we thought. She was approaching 60. Her eyesight was fading. It seemed downright foolish for her to walk away from a few more months of medical insurance and income when no job prospects were on the horizon.

For Barb, though, it was time to go. On her terms.

Life after the Tribune was not easy for Barb. Her health continued to decline, as did her eyesight. But Barb was never one to complain, or to deal with those things she felt she could not control. Few of us knew how bad her health was until she broke her hip in a fall and was hospitalized for months, followed by months in rehabilitation facilities. We almost lost her a couple of times then.

Many of us had hoped that the fall would be a wake-up call for her, that those health matters she had always put aside would now be dealt with. She started kidney dialysis while she was in the hospital.

Four weeks ago, she chose to stop the dialysis. It was only prolonging the inevitable, she must have thought. More than that, her eyesight was all but gone. A world without words must have seemed unbearable to her. For Barb, it was time to go. On her terms.

“It’s supposed to be an easy death, like falling asleep,” she said in her last phone message to me. “But it won’t be a pretty death. I’ll be bloated with toxins. But, then again, I’ve always been bloated.”

She laughed.

Barb was at peace with her decision, excited about the next chapter, whatever that was. A true journalist, she embargoed her story, keeping her decision from everybody except her doctors, some family members and a few close friends until it was too late to try to change her mind, though some of us tried anyway.

Barb died April 27 in her own bed, dreaming of dancing. Like falling asleep, just as she said. She was 62.

She asked for no funeral services, no flowers. Plans are under way to create a journalism scholarship in her name. She is survived by her sister, Susan Hines, of Lynn Haven, Fla.; brother, Greg Page, and his daughters, Victoria and Elizabeth Page, all of New York City; and stepmother, Jean Page, of Orlando.

She is also survived by her words, by our words, made better because of her.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at jkrueger@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.

— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal

Photo Credit – mark holm/courtesy photo
Cutline – Former Albuquerque Tribune copy editor Barbara Page discusses caption writing at a weekend journalism seminar at the University of New Mexico in January. Page died April 27.