Kudos to two Waterloo newspaper pals
Courier arts editor Melody Parker retires after 38 1/2 years; esteemed sportswriter Jim Sullivan remembered
“Rainy day people don’t hide love inside, they just pass it on.” — Gordon Lightfoot
WATERLOO — Rainy November days can make me a bit wistful and reflective.
This particular past weekend, I helped celebrate one Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier colleague’s retirement and remembered another with a smile.
Melody Parker, the Courier’s arts, entertainment and special sections editor and garden columnist, retired this past week after 38 1/2 years at the paper and prior experience in her native Texas.
Melody has been a stalwart in providing some of the kind of news a lot of people look for in a local newspaper — covering the fun, enlightening sorts of things people do to make a community someplace folks want to live. The spice of life.
A town has to be more than a place where people work, eat and sleep. And for nearly four decades, Melody’s has covered people’s efforts through literature, music, art and various forms of craft to express themselves and capture and uplift the human spirit locally and beyond.
That’s kind of the flavor that a good local paper adds to the also-vital meat and potatoes coverage of cops, courts and state and local government.
Melody’s covered the likes of Paul McCartney and Willie Nelson - and she knows Willie, a fellow Texan, very well from his multiple appearances at Waterloo’s National Cattle Congress fair. But she’s also devoted space to local arts organizations, crafters like the local spinners and weavers group and local community playhouse productions.
She’s also a master gardener and wrote her “Growing Things” column for many years.
A journalist of the highest personal integrity, Melody won the confidence of late “Bridges of Madison County” bestselling author Robert James Waller. A native of Rockford in Floyd County, Waller was a business professor at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls and a local musician before embarking on a literary career that shot him to national prominence. While Waller generally shunned personal interviews, Melody had complete access to him and even visited the reclusive author at his ranch in Texas.
Melody also had the trust of local civil rights leader Jimmie Porter, founder of Afro-American Broadcasting Inc. and radio station KBBG.
Melody oversaw the production of numerous Courier special sections and magazine publications such as Cedar Valley Home and Garden, the BTrue lifestyles magazine, wedding publications and Cedar Valley Business Monthly.
She took on more and more responsibility as the paper’s news staff became increasingly constricted as “legacy” publications like the Courier, following reader trends as seen by corporate owner Lee Enterprises, shifted more and more from print to online information platforms.
That included taking on two of the Courier’s now long-standing initiatives to recognize local emerging leaders and acknowledge the lifetime contributions of others. The Courier’s “20 Under 40” series annually recognizes 20 individuals under age 40 who are making a difference and taking leadership roles in the community. Similarly, the paper’s “Eight over 80” recognition acknowledges the lifetime contribution of eight individuals age 80 and over each year.
I can tell you that writing, editing and laying out an entire special section is not an easy task —- let alone handling multiple such sections at once and taking on, frequently, news coverage for the main newspaper when an artist such as a Robert James Waller makes national news.
Yet Melody has juggled all those responsibilities with grace and aplomb and done it for decades - without seeking one iota of recognition for herself.
In addition to that, she’s been a trusted colleague and a real friend to the journalists she’s worked with, besides the trust and appreciation she’s earned in the arts community, and the community at large.
She’s been there for colleagues in personally difficult times. If you had to fight your way out of a blind alley, you’d want someone like Melody Parker by your side.
As someone who worked alongside her for almost 34 years, I know.
When you spend most of your working life alongside someone like that, you’re grateful for them every day. You say thanks and show appreciation in a number of little ways you don’t even think about.
But let me say this straight up: Melody Parker is a living, breathing treasure.
Take a victory lap, friend;. You sure as hell earned it.
Remembering Sully
Another colleague of Melody’s and mine who was as dependable as tomorrow’s sunrise was Jim Sullivan, the Courier’s assistant sports editor. “Sully,” as we all called him, died of a heart attack at his desk in 2016 at age 61.
Those who worked with him think of him often. We appreciated his diligence and dedication to his craft, and his sardonic wit, expressed so often in his regular column, “The Sully Side of Sports.” Very often, it lifted the spirits of those who labored alongside him.
That came to mind again recently, as I watched the astounding fielding lapse of my and Melody’s favorite team, the New York Yankees, in their World Series loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
I thought to myself I had seen better fielding in company softball games, both at the Ames Tribune where I previously worked and at the Courier. And that’s saying something because I was playing. I’ve muffed fly balls, failed to cover first on a ground ball when pitching and many other miscues.
But my most embarrassing mistake came not in the field, but at the plate, and Sully helped soften the blow. I once tripped and fell flat on my face running to first trying to beat out a hard grounder.
I lay there flat on my stomach, mortified. as the throw was made to first for the third out of the inning. There was dead silence.
Then Sully broke through the pall with a gem.
“The East German judge gave you a 4, Pat,” he said of my flop.
It was funny as hell and boosted me back up — off the ground and in my heart.
That’s the kind of friend Sully was at work and in life. I noted almost all his journalism awards at the Courier were for team coverage he helped coordinate.
The University of Northern Iowa noted the same thing too when it inducted Sully into the UNI Athletics Hall of Fame shortly after his passing. And there’s a memorial photo of Sully in the press box at the UNI-Dome.
I have been very blessed in my profession and in life to know and work with folks like Melody Parker and Jim Sullivan — team players who left it all on the field.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed below. Clink on the links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription .
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Melody did a great job. She was always accommodating—patient, reasonably encouraging, and fair—to the wide range of people seeking coverage; conscientious to a fault; always finding a positive angle and expressing it deftly and creatively. I wish her the very best!