Happy Birthday Heart of my Heart

It's here. Jim's 82nd birthday. He is active, young at heart, and the heart of my heart. Two years ago when we celebrated his 80th birthday, a former employee of his at the Orlando Sentinel wrote Jim a lovely tribute. I'm printing it here for our family and friends who may not have seen it.
Picture, if you will late 1969, journalism and newsrooms of the day. Man has just landed on the moon and...

From Bill Dunn: July 8 2016

 80 years! Them’s a lot of years, Jim… Why, you’re older than chocolate chips! Older than Nylon and that mystery meat Spam! You’ve even been around longer than MGM’s Wizard of Oz...and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. 

But birthdays are nothing to be afraid of, pal -- it’s been scientifically proven that people who have the most birthdays live longer.

Officially an octogenarian, you’ve now outlived most of the wits and nit-wits who were our sidekicks back in the day… laboring as we did in smoke-filled newsrooms filled with gluepot fumes, serenaded by that bell-clanging symphony of wire service teletype machines, the clatter of typewriters and pneumatic tubes crashing into wooden boxes… I know, I know, it sounds more like a TV game show, but to think we labored in that cuckoo’s nest with the goal of getting our facts straight. What were we thinking?

You may be 80, Jim, one of the last men standing who remembers all that stuff, but to me you’ll always be that dashing young editor who moved about that maze of mayhem with all the cool efficiency of a honeybee drone on roller skates… Part boss, part buddy, there you were, always on the prowl for someone frazzled by headline or deadline... and asking, "How can I help?"

I’m especially grateful to you for going out of your way to help me “launch” my career when I arrived at the paper fresh out of J-school in the summer of ‘69… for not only adopting me but taking me home with you one memorable July night. On that occasion, as I recall, you taught me a thing or two about rapid-fire brainstorming … and also about professional dedication. Even with Faye and your precious newborn Tricia still down at the hospital, you babysat not-quite-two Dane with one hand and gave birth to the Apollo 11 moon landing keepsake edition with the other -- right there on your kitchen table! I’m not sure how impressed Faye was with your journalistic obstetrics, but as an aspiring newspaperman, I found it inspiring, for I knew that I had witnessed the true joys of labor and delivery.

Happy 80^th… Peace & all good things in the years ahead.

 -- Bill Dunn