Father’s Day at the Office
A few days ago, a young woman and a young man, one a college senior, the other a college junior, walked through the doors of Yankee for their first day as summer interns. Over my many years here, I’ve worked with dozens of interns and have never failed to learn from them, perhaps more over […]
A few days ago, a young woman and a young man, one a college senior, the other a college junior, walked through the doors of Yankee for their first day as summer interns. Over my many years here, I’ve worked with dozens of interns and have never failed to learn from them, perhaps more over time than they learned from me. They bring youth, an eagerness to immerse themselves in whatever I ask them to do, a genuine glow of pride when they see their work translate to our pages. The working pulse of Yankee‘s daily life is new to them, and I get to see what goes on inside our Dublin offices with fresh eyes, almost as if I’ve come to a new town for a few days. The young woman’s name is Mirel, and she comes from my own alma mater, the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Within a few days she’s impressed everyone with her quiet focus as she’s tackled a major project for our winter issue. Readers will see her byline on this story in our January/February 2009 issue.
The young man’s name is Josh. He’s working with Yankee‘s Web team, the editors and designers who produce these pages, our online magazine. He’s 20 years old, and I’ve known him from the moment he was born. When he was a baby, I’d come into the office on a Sunday, turn on the copy machine, press his hand to the glass, and make a copy of his palm. Somewhere in my crowded office files, I have a whole set of palm prints from Josh and his brother.
When he was in fourth grade, I’d pick him up from school and he’d spend several hours doing his homework in a quiet corner of my office until we left for home, some 15 miles away. My life as writer and editor always intersected with his life, but always on the fringes of his own — the way it should be. But now, for the all-too-brief weeks of summer, our working hours link; we go to lunch together to the wonderful Dublin General Store, and we sit outside on the store’s porch and catch up with what he’s doing. Right now he’s working on putting new links into our foliage tours. The other day he worked on finding the best sand castle competitions. What he does in his hours here will reach so many of you who come to this site; I try to not let him know what a big deal this is for me.
My mentor at Yankee since I arrived in the fall of 1979 has been Judson Hale. Jud is now into his 70s, and when he comes to our senior management meetings he sees his nephew Jamie Trowbridge running the meeting as Yankee Publishing’s president, and he sees his son, JD Hale, sitting there as Yankee’s publisher. I don’t think I ever fully understood the pride he must feel until the day I saw Josh walk through Yankee‘s door the other day.
It was one of the best Father’s Days I’ve known.
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Yankee editor Mel Allen is the author of A Coach’s Letter to His Son.
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
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