Bruce Bishop

It's moving day.

2008-05-22T12:23:00.001-05:00

My little blog has been moved over to the main site at Chroniclet.com.

Please come over to take a look at what we are doing.

Behind the Lens

Assign a photographer

2008-04-11T13:12:00.002-05:00

Taking a look at our web traffic today, I started thinking about how many Chronicle readers are living all over the world. Last month, we had visitors to Chroniclet.com from 122 countries and territories -- how ya doing Wake Island!

I imagine you miss this area enough to keep in touch, and that sparked an idea.

If you could assign members of the Chronicle photo department, where would you send them for a photograph? Let me know what area you would like to see and we will do our best to get the shot. Have you wondered what the mall area looks like these days? Do you miss the playground where you used to play? Did you have a favorite place to go for ice cream when you were a kid?

I’ll pick some of the good suggestions and post shots online for you to see.

HDTV calibration..who knew

2008-04-10T13:15:00.002-05:00

So you just shelled out $3,500 for that new plasma TV only to get it home and find yourself under whelmed by the picture. Provided you aren’t already twitching from the discovery that the best cable to hook up that new TV with your cable box costs well over $100, you could call Best Buy and add another $300 for HDTV calibration.

It would be cool to have the Geek Squad van parked in the driveway for an hour or two but that sure is a lot of money. For the price of a Toy Story DVD or one of several hundred other THX certified DVDs, you can get the basic calibration tools free. (They even give you a super geeky pair of glasses that look like old school 3-D glasses to use while you calibrate.)

There probably is a difference between what you get from the Geek guys’ and the out-of-the-box freebie, but my bet is the average consumer you won’t see any real difference. From my experience, save the money on the calibration but let the pros handle the installation of your new television. I realized too late that the big holes I drilled into my fireplace were a little high. It took some prying and fairly brutal adjustments to get the TV hung on the wall. It hasn’t fallen off yet but the first few days I was a little stressed.

Mosquito ring tone

2008-03-25T13:22:00.001-05:00

I have written about the Cellware.com site in the past. It’s a company that offers free ring tones that you can download to your cellphone. I have received the occasional e-mail from them marketing other things they offer but they haven’t been pests and it sure beats giving up $2.99 a tone to Verizon.

The point of this post is to tell you about one of the tones we came across today. The Mosquito ring tone is an exceptionally high-pitched tone designed to be heard by young people.

According to a New York Times article about the ring tone, the super high pitch came to America from Britain, where shopkeepers would use a tone generator to annoy teens and keep them from loitering around outside their businesses. It wasn’t long after that when somebody flipped it around and made it into a ring tone only kids should be able to hear.

Never one to believe things at face value, I decided to put the ring tone to the test in the official Chronicle lab – the newsroom.

It went something like this:

I scanned the room for the most seasoned reporter (I wouldn’t say old, that might be a bit offensive) I could find, so I settled on Steve Fogarty. And guess what? He didn’t believe I was playing anything at all when I asked him to listen. He was wise not to trust me but, on this particular occasion, the pained faces of several younger co-workers backed me up.

While the test did prove that the ring tone is hard to hear by those in certain demographics, it was by no means 100 percent. I could hear it, and I’m 41. I guess the best advice would be to use this ring at your own risk. If you use it in school and your teacher happens to have good hearing, you could be in trouble.

Democrat Debate Tickets

2008-02-20T17:37:00.001-05:00

Obama, Hillary, Obama, Hillary…. Which way to go?

It might be easier to make your decision if you see the two candidates live and in person. And, as luck would have it, it turns out there is a way to do that, but it’s going to take a bit of luck.
Cleveland State University is offering a very limited number of tickets for the debate between the two Democrats that’ll take place Tuesday. The ticket lottery requires an online request. There are two options -- one for students of Cleveland State and another for the general public.
The drawing deadline is 3 p.m. Thursday. Those lucky enough to win a golden ticket will be notified by e-mail on Friday.

If you score a ticket, be sure to let us know. We would love to hear about your experience at the debate.

Presto, E-mail without a computer

2008-02-15T16:11:00.005-05:00

Dear Grandma,

I’m sending you an e-mail that you will never be able to read. Sure I bought you that $600 computer and even showed you how simple it is to turn on and and log into Outlook. Well it didn’t work out so well. You kept calling the computer “that thing” and after three years you still haven’t been able to turn it on. Not that I blame you, a lot of people who remember World War II have the same problem.

What are we going to do? I really want to send you pictures of the kids, and I want to just drop you a quick note while I’m out of town. I guess I could call, but we both know that I’m kind of irresponsible about making those calls, it’s not that I don’t love you, because you know that I do. I guess I could actually mail you a letter. But again, we both know that the odds of me putting a stamp on an envelope is about as good as you logging onto iTunes and syncing an iPod full of the best of Benny Goodman. You would love an iPod by the way; they really are great.

So here we are at his communication impasse. I wish there was some way to send you e-mail without using a computer … Well it turns out there is a way to do just that.

Best Buy, Amazon, Wal Mart.com and several other online vendors are selling a device called Presto that works alongside the HP Mailing Service.

Basically you have an HP printer that prints out e-mail without needing to log onto a computer, or even have a computer in the house. You can schedule download times, up to five times a day and the machine receives from computers and even cell phone messages.

The basic package $149.95 includes a free ink cartridge and there is a monthly fee for the service. So grandma, keep an eye on the printer and I’ll be in touch.

There’s only one problem. You can’t write me back. So, after the thrill of reading my messages is gone maybe we can talk about that computer again.

Love, Your grandson.

Finger Painting

2008-02-13T16:33:00.005-05:00

Like everybody I get a lot of forwards sent to me. Today I got one that was just too cool to delete.
The artist behind these odd temporary works of art is Guido Daniele. The artist based out of Milan, Italy, started doing the body painting in 1990. Daniele paints models bodies for use in commercials, and fashion events. For more examples of his amazing work check out his Web site, When you go to the site, make sure you click on the translate button on the right part of the opening page, or be prepared to test your Italian reading skills.

Facial recognition

2007-12-28T12:43:00.000-05:00

Our reporter Steve Szucs and his recognition program results

What a job. Everyday I go to work with the likes of Harrison Ford, Val Kilmer, and Bette Midler. Kind of.

On myheritage.com, you can scan in your face or the face of your friends – or co-workers – and its facial recognition program will tell you which stars you resemble.

It’s pretty cool but I have to differ with a few of the outcomes.

Our managing editor, Patti Ewald, has always looked a bit like Candice Bergen during her Murphy Brown era. But Candice didn’t show up as even one of her dozen or so matches. According to myheritage.com, her facial features have more in common with Mandy Moore. I think the problem is the software doesn’t know that Patti IS Murphy Brown -- and she also just happens to look like Candice Bergen.

Yep, I’m dating myself in a huge way … I know that. I promise I won’t go into the sociological significance of Alf and how the sitcom relates to the post-modern societal norm. I have no idea what the last part means but it sounds like a great title for a doctoral thesis.

So for all of you that know who don’t know Murphy Brown. I ran a facial recognition for our court reporter Brad Dicken. We always saw a faint, a very faint resemblance to Harrison Ford. Did the program? Nope, it saw him more as a Robert Patrick. He is the guy who played the liquid metal terminator character in Terminator 2.

Saving the best for last, our newsroom buddy and all-around good guy Steve Szucs has a cherubic mug that always kind of reminded us of Opie from the Andy Griffith Show. Well, the site seems to think he looks like some guy named Christiano Renaldo. His number three match was Bette Midler. I’m not sure where that comes from but hey, it’s a great chance to rib him about his feminine qualities.

Wondering who you look like? Try it out. It’s really simple and really fast. I ran photos of several co-workers in less than 30 minutes.

Free Ringtones

2007-12-12T12:20:00.000-05:00

Ringtones are fun; ringtones are cool; ringtones are expensive.

Well, two out of three are true. Ringtones have traditionally been a pain to obtain, they are expensive and there are a ton of sites that rope you in with promises of free tones and you end up on something harder to get out of than a book-of-the-month club.

Now there is a new site that the New York Times Web site accurately calls the youtube of Web sites. Free tones, free wallpapers, free videos. The site encourages you to upload content that you create yourself. One feature that may prove to be a problem down the road is 20 second mp3 clips of copyrighted music. A quick search shows songs by Timbaland, the weird Numa-Numa song, Chamillionaire, even mother of the year Britney Spears.

Backed by John Ferber a multimillionaire who hit the jackpot when he sold advertising.com to Time Warner AOL for $72 million, this site stands a chance of being around for a while.

So if you aren’t ready to check it out yet here are a couple more features. Why download somebody else belting out the hits when you can do it yourself? You can create clips by calling in on your own phone and recording one. Another option allows you to use a text to speech editor. I have to admit the last one isn’t a big seller for me.

I signed up for the site and picked a song to download. They gave me the address to my download area and after a few minutes of clicking around I made it to the download area and downloaded the new ringtone. There are the usual warnings that you should check your plan and understand the standard text messaging and data rates apply. In this new world of powerful data driven cell phones you really want to have a plan that lets you use some data.

Elf yourself

2007-11-28T17:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was sent a link to elfyourself.com. The page is run by Office Max and I really have to give a tip of the hat to them. This may be one of the best holiday web applications I have ever seen. It’s a simple as uploading a few photos to the site and adjusting the picture to fit the precut face.

It’s really simple to put one of these things together and the step by step process guides you through the procedure. It only takes a few minutes and you are ready to wow the crowd.

Put the kids in, add some friends and check out the dancing style of the elves. Our crew from left to right is Managing Editor Patti Ewald, reporter Steve Szucs, me, and reporter Shawn Foucher. You can check out our dance moves to see if this is something you might want to try out.

$47.00 M&M's

2007-11-28T10:38:00.001-05:00

Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming…
I thought today would be a good time to unveil the first of my Christmas present ideas. For the person who has everything, including a raging sweet tooth M&M is selling customized candies. The sweet treat features up to two lines of text and a selection of colors for you to choose from. There is a limit of two lines so you can’t really wax poetic but with a little creativity you can put together a gr8 message. If it sounds good so far, be aware that there is a catch they aren’t cheap and they are sold in minimum quantities.

The entry point is $47.96. That price delivers four 7 ounce bags of personalized candy. For the kind of person that isn’t afraid to really blow some cash (Patti Ewald) you can get the crystal candy jar with four bags of personalized M&M’s for a mere $189.99.

We are always looking for great Christmas ideas so please feel free to share your perfect or impractical gift ideas.

Pick your candidate

2007-11-26T15:16:00.000-05:00

So the presidential election is heating up, and it’s reaching the point where you should start thinking about who you like. How do you do that with all the choices out there? Well, ABC News has a feature on its site that has you fill out a short questionnaire and it gives you the top three choices that most closely match your answers.

The Match-O-Matic takes you through questions on Iraq, immigration, health care and a few others about current events. Some of the answers are a bit limited, which left me scratching my head.

But it was still cool, and, much to my surprise, it looks like the Match-O-Matic says my top three candidates, in order, are Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo and John McCain. And here I was, running around thinking I’m a Democrat.

Red-faced, I have to admit Tom Tancredo is so far off my radar that I can’t ever recall even hearing his name. I had to Google him to find out if he was a Republican, Democrat, or gasp, a Libertarian.

Black Friday

2007-11-23T12:55:00.001-05:00

I survived another Black Friday. Reporter Lisa Roberson and I were up way before dawn this morning to get words and pictures from the front lines. I guess I have reached an age where the idea of sitting outside in the cold for 24 hours to be the first to get anything doesn’t appeal to me.

Unless they are giving away something that would fix my receding hairline or the expanding waistline, I’m not gonna wait in line to get it. That being said, if the opportunity to take advantage of a sale comes up, I’m willing to take a peek. That, my friends, is how I came away from Black Friday nearly $800 lighter in the wallet.

During the run up to the biggest shopping day of the year, I did look at the fliers. I saw the computers that were selling well below retail. I saw those cool photo frames that rotate your digital photos every few minutes, and yes, I saw the LCD flatscreen televisions marked way down. As it turns out, the television is the one that got me.

But, as they say, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. Now that I have that big new TV that just screams “Steal me!” sitting in the living room of my house, I have to buy better curtains. I also have to buy a stand for the TV, not just any stand mind you, it has to be “nice”. My idea of nice is a milk crate covered with a good towel. My wife has a much different idea. I don’t even want to know how much that is going to cost.

Every guy knows that “nice” isn’t cheap.

As a final note, this was yet another year that I didn’t see any of those much talked-about fights over the hot items. For those who ventured out before dawn, how did you do? Did you get a $400 laptop? Let me know.

Will you be my friend?

2007-11-14T17:41:00.000-05:00

I am a huge fan of Google and the many spinoff projects the search engine monster maintains. There has been a lot of talk about Google and its plans for social networking. The basic idea is that you sign up, create a page about yourself and connect with friends, family and like minded people.

While these sites have been around for a while, and millions of people are already participating in networking sites, I just haven’t done it. To tell the truth, I have always thought that I am just too old to be hanging out with 5 million teenagers on MySpace. But, as a techie kind of guy, I can’t just sit here and ignore this ever expanding part of the net.

I may not stick around, but I sure am going to take a look.

So I started with Facebook, one of the leaders in social networking. I logged on, and I set up my Facebook page and was surprised by to find so many people on the site that I knew. A couple of them were teeny-bopper neighbors, so I skipped past them and reached out to a few friends from work and my buddy that I helped pull into blogging.

If you are interested taking a look at some of the options out, there check out this great Wikipedia page that has a list of 110 social networking sites. The beauty of the Internet is the variations on a subject. You can get into a general social situation -- with no real direction -- like MySpace.com (it only has 300 million members already) or aim for one of the more focused groups, such as the photo sharing site Flickr. Check them out and I hope to see you online.

Crackberry

2007-11-01T14:27:00.000-05:00

My name is Bruce Bishop and I have an addiction. It’s not drugs, booze or anything else too exotic that I’m likely to admit in a public forum. But, I am addicted to, my Blackberry.

In fact devotees of this particular piece of heaven call their phones Crackberries.

That leads me to a very cool site I found while searching for the latest greatest phone around (the whispered-about Blackberry 9000 -- a Blackberry that has many of the cool functions found in the iPhone). It’s Crackberry.com This site has tons of forums dedicated to all things Blackberry -- loads of accessories and the solution for my biggest frustration, free, cool ring tones. Until now the best ring tone I had was the old- fashioned telephone ring and that’s nothing compared to what most people have.

Well that’s been fixed, Now my phone is just as cool sounding as my co-worker Shawn Foucher’s phone. He has this neat frog sound that croaks through the newsroom every time his phone rings.

So fellow Crackberry fiends, check in and let me know what programs you can’t do without, and if you have any info on the mythical Blackberry 9000, send it my way.

Halloween Fun & Games

2007-10-31T12:50:00.000-05:00

Alright, it’s Halloween and you're feeling the spirit of the holiday, but you're stuck in the office. No worries. Here is another time waster sure to get you in trouble with the boss, the IT Department, and the person in the cubicle next to you.

Ben and Jerry’s has a Halloween themed game area on its website that features a drumming skeleton, very cool. You can also carve your own virtual pumpkin, not as cool but hey, it’s free.

Saving the best for last, it’s the Undead Smackdown. Picture, Wack A Mole meets Night of the Living Dead. This game gives you a score, so feel free to stop back and tell us how you did.

It’s all very G-rated so enjoy and Happy Halloween.

Fun and Games

2007-10-15T12:29:00.000-05:00

In my capacity as a web guy, I spent many hours today “researching” time killers for people trapped in cubicles all day. There are two games that I wanted to pass on.

One called Smack the Penguin was sent to me by my pal Jim Onderko of North Ridgeville. Unbeknownst to his boss, Jim is an aficionado of various web time killers and some of the best forwarded e-mails ever.

His record for Smack the penguin was 328 feet. Have a go and let us know how you do.

The other game I wanted to show you is Office Hoops. This game is on the Turner Broadcasting website and it’s a lot harder than the game we play in our office. They have cross winds of varying speeds that add a wicked hook to your paper ball.

I had a fairly lousy 3 baskets on my first try. Hopefully, things will pickup as I spend the next few workdays perfecting the drift.

Check back in and brag about your scores, or pass on a few hot time killer games of your own.

Give the Tribe a little respect

2007-10-08T13:56:00.000-05:00

Chip Caray, Tony Gwynn and Bob Brenly -- the trio in the booth for TBS broadcasting the Tribe vs Yankees series -- just won’t give their bias a rest. It’s always about the Yankees ready to break through. How hard is it to just acknowledge that the Indians tied with Boston for the best record in baseball and give the team the respect they deserve?

I guess we just need to learn to live with it; some things, it seems, are never going to change.

After all these years I still can’t stand the sight of Cris Collinsworth as he did the same thing to the Browns when he was a broadcaster doing Browns games. The Browns could have scored 250 points and he would have felt the team lacked punch.

Heck, even ESPN – after the Tribe trounced the Yankees in the opening game – saw its announcers talking about how the Yankees pitcher couldn’t hit his spot. Not that the Indians came out ready and blasted the ball – it was all about the difficulties of the pitcher.

I’m not sure what will take to change things. The easy answer is championship teams, but I don’t think even that will do it.

The mistake on the lake, the burning river blah, blah, blah, you name it. People have mighty long memories when you aren’t from a major market team with deep pockets and massive advertising dollars.

Shame on you 19!

2007-10-04T11:32:00.000-05:00

You deal with a lot of stereotypes when you are a member of the press. One of the most particularly galling ones is that people assume you want to sensationalize a story.

The story about state Rep. Matt Barrett, D-Amherst, and the photo of a topless woman that popped up during a PowerPoint presentation at Norwalk High School is a great example of how a story can be skewered by those who want to do so.

Here, we ran the story on the front page. It wasn’t our lead story, and it didn’t have a giant “THE WORLD IS ENDING” headline. In our story – which we published courtesy of our friends at The Sandusky Register -- we detailed that Barrett got the portable hard drive from somebody else, and that he requested an investigation from the Ohio Highway Patrol.

It was pretty much textbook coverage -- tell the story in a fair, unbiased way. The fact that it was such an odd story, and one involving a representative from our coverage area, made it worth the front page.

However…..

If you were watching Channel 19 News on Wednesday night, I’d say you saw a perfect example of what NOT to do.

Now Channel 19 isn’t exactly known for unbiased coverage. Its reporters use loaded words -- adjectives that we are all taught in journalism school to stay away from – and if what they are saying isn’t opinion, (again, which we aren’t supposed to interject) then I don’t know what is.

But truly, the channel’s coverage of the Barrett story was shameful and embarrassing to our profession.

As a journalist, there is nothing more frightening than seeing a reporter take a story and fabricate by omission. Sure the facts they put out were true, but leaving out the rest of the story to create a false impression is just as bad as lying in my book.

So -- to use the immortal words of one of the channel’s own promotions -- Shame on you, 19 News.

Worldclock, who thought statistics were cool

2007-08-08T13:33:00.000-05:00

Every so often you come across something on the 'Net that makes you go 'hmm, that’s cool.'

Worldclock, a web page making the rounds via e-mail, is that something.

The site is a flash object that uses statistical information to show the changes in our world. Want to know how many bikes are produced in a day, watch the rate climb. Curious about the state of the tropical rainforest? Watch it decline.

The page also gives you options to watch the numbers in various ways, by far the coolest has to be the now button. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

iPhone sour grapes

2007-07-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

The iPhone hit the stores this week and the uber-hyped phone is getting some less than glowing reviews. So if you are a iPhone-less technophile like I am, here are some sour grapes to help you if you are having trouble handling the fact you don’t own one of these cool new toys.

Sour grape #1. PC Magazine ran a story about the iPhone in which it said that the iPod part of the phone is very cool. But, the actual phone sounds terrible. Why buy the phone if the audio is horrible?

Sour grape #2. The main concern I had about the phone was that big piece of glass that serves as the dial and the navigation controls. The faceplate gets pretty gross after it gets put to your face a few times. You can use a Bluetooth headset but you still get finger oils on it every time you use the thing. It ships with a cloth to clean it off … nuff said about that.

Sour grape #3. Since the face is flat glass forget about accurate typing for emails and text messaging. Users are complaining that the phone is difficult to use for typing.

Sour grape #4. Batteries don’t last forever and replacing the battery in the iPhone is no easier than it is in the iPod. At a rated 300-400 charges per battery, you can expect a bill for about $85 to replace it.

Sour grape #5. If you are a corporate user, there are a ton of sites on the Web talking about the iPhone issues with synchronizing with corporate e-mail servers. That would explain the nice increase in RIM (the people who make Blackberry phones) stock just before and after the iPhone came out.

Well there are five good reasons to feel good about the iPhone only being released to Cingular customers.
This takes the edge off but man … I still really want one of those phones. Who cares if it works? It looks really really cool.

Here we go again

2007-06-13T12:50:00.000-05:00

Last night, the Cavaliers went down in flames for the third time. The end draws near and I find myself in a spot. Thursday night will be my last chance to sign up for a credential to cover the game and I can’t get myself to do it. I’m a photojournalist but I am also a fan. I was there for the drive; I was there for the Tribe’s great run in the ’90s. In fact, I still remember driving home from an ALCS win drenched in champagne from the lockerroom celebration. I don’t want to see another dejected crowd of fans and indifferent multi-millionaires.

The Indians will continue to do the same thing. Winning season or not, what’s the point? They will lose because that’s what always happens. Maybe not in the first rounds of the playoffs, but trust me when I say they will lose.

In a great twist of Cleveland-based irony, the only champion teams are in sports that nobody really cares about. We had a great soccer team that played in a nearly empty building. I would be willing to wage money that if we had water polo teams, the best in the world would be from here.

So after giving up on two sports in less than a week, I went off to cover the Browns mini camp this morning. Because, no matter what, if you are from this part of Ohio, you have to cling to something and that always seems to be “our” Browns.

I’m not sure how they really look -- as a casual sports fan, I think they look pretty good so far. It’s early in the year. We haven’t had the freak injury, the wear and tear of practices or the motorcycle accident yet. You have to feel good about Brady Quinn, a player described as “freaky smart”.

So I’ll cling to the Browns for now. After al, we have a couple of months until pre-season starts and the Cavaliers become the life preserver for fans adrift in a sea of losing teams.

Cut to black--So long Tony Soprano

2007-06-11T15:07:00.001-05:00

There are a few absolutes in life.
The Super Bowl doesn’t end in a tie, what goes up must come down and to lose weight you need to expend more calories than you consume.
On the other hand, most things in life are a lot more uncertain, and a lot less tidy.
In this particular instance, I’m talking about the finale of The Sopranos.

How could a show that has shown so much creativity end in such a shamelessly uninspired way? They teased multiple possibilities throughout the entire episode; why not give the fans a sense of closure?

Ah, could it be we are all missing the point?

Maybe what we saw was the right way to wrap it up after all. If you think about it, in the final minutes of the episode we had a chance to view life not through the eyes of Tony Soprano but from that place in his mind that harbors his inner demons. In his world, there is no closure, you don’t get things tied up in a neat little bow.

Take Tony’s friend, Paulie, for example. He looked like he was up to something – like he could he be ready to roll over and give testimony about the family or worse.

In the final scene at the restaurant, we have Tony eating dinner with his family. How many parts of that scene showed the threats to his wife and children? The thing is that they didn’t materialize and that makes us, the viewers, angry because we want to see the resolution.

In Tony’s world, it’s just one long line of persons who might be gunning down the people you love, one more threat to the power that is held onto by using fear and intimidation.

In the end, the final episode faded to black. What a fitting conclusion because in the end, all the drama that is Tony Soprano’s life – that life we devoured for the years it filled our TV screen – eventually will end, fading to black, too.

1,000,000 Views and counting

2007-06-06T13:49:00.000-05:00

Our first full year posting videos on the Chronicle web site has come and gone and we just passed one million video views.

We have been posting on youtube.com since the inception of the project and it has the advantage of speedy loading but the video quality is lacking. We are looking at other options that will provide better quality and fast downloads.

I have included a list of the top ten videos that can be viewed at our youtube site http://www.youtube.com/my_videos

While the top ten videos are mostly the tragic side of life we have had huge hits on everything from the Playstation 3 craze, the baby giraffe and equally cute baby koala born at the Cleveland Zoo, the snowy home opener for the Indians, and our sneak peek of the new Maverick roller coaster at Cedar Point.

Speaking of sneak peeks, I’ll let you in on a another one, this fall look for much more coverage of our local football teams. Let us know what you want to see and we’ll do our best to bring it to you.

Rank
Chroniclet.com YouTube Video Name
Views

1
Fatal truck/car accident on I-90
311,698

2
Sheffield Village Police Taser incident
135,427

3
Scene of a fatal car accident on Quarry Road
70,986

4
Farm tractor fatal accident
41,941

5
I-90 truck accident in Elyria
21,165

6
Amherst Police Dashboard Camera Footage 1
17,837

7
DeWine visits Lorain County
14,439

8
Man falls off cliff near Cascade Park
12,244

9
Amherst Police Dashboard Camera Footage 2
8,670

10
Brunswick man is in critical condition
6,826

Covering the loss of a soldier

2007-05-07T16:03:00.000-05:00

Not long after Sgt. Lane Tollett was killed in Iraq a call came into the newsroom from his family and we began the weeklong process of covering his return and internment.
Photographer Chuck Humel was sent to the family home.Here are his thoughts on the part of our job that every photographer, in fact everybody in the newsroom, dreads.

When you get a call or a reporter bursts into the photography department seeking a photographer to go to the family of a fallen soldier, there is a sense of dread. A soldier from close to home has been killed, and you're about to intrude upon a family who has just entered the grieving process. . .
The mechanics of going to a family's home must be negotiated. I hadn’t even gotten to the street yet – this one, Loyola Drive – and scores of homes displayed American flags and yellow ribbons in front of them.
I felt the pleasant warmth of the community that this soldier had come from. A couple of tears welled up in my lower eyelids, but there could be none of that.
Bette Pearce, the Chronicle reporter, and I walked to the front door, the door that Dave Tollett, father of the fallen 82nd Airborne Sgt. Norman Lane Tollett, later informed us that, "like a script, like you've seen in the movies," two Army representatives walked up to to inform him of the death of his eldest son. (It wasn't lost on me that I'm part of that script, too.) If you've ever had a sudden death in your family, and have to re-live it as you tell every set of relatives who come into town, this is it. But you're the “relative,” you're the representative of the bigger community, the community from outside the neighborhood, prying in.
But, that's OK. For in many ways, Sgt. Norman Lane Tollett was us, was the U.S. He joined the service, paralleling Pat Tillman, doing something about the rage we felt after 9/11 "to play for a bigger team," his mom relayed to Bette and me, hiding behind the camera between them.
Maybe you were in the stands watching #22 play, a co-captain for the Elyria Catholic Panthers, put into the action by his coach, ending his football career in 1993 with EC (as a 1994 grad). "Perhaps I was on the sidelines then, covering one of those games for the Chronicle," I wondered to myself, as Dave Tollett and Lane's mom, Marti Miller Sparks, recalled the sports activities of their son.
You're trying not to be obtrusive, searching for an angle, closing drapes that are letting blinding, backlighting sun in, waiting for a moment that “illustrates'” the loss.
A call comes to the dad, it's an Army representative telling him that Lane has arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Click/flash. Being in the home, I looked around, wondering who is that in the family history, on a shelf in the background? It’s Lane's grandfather, Marti's father, in his Air Force uniform. That would bring some history into the photograph. It turned out that Lane wore his grandfather's wings on parachute jumps. Click/flash. Too many click/flashes came before that, but this one says it all. A glare of light on the installment plan. There's a few more pictures, of course. I do what I do to show respect for Sgt. Norman Lane Tollett, to his memory, for the community's memory and to his family for letting me in, a traveling salesman, of sorts, one who's selling this story to you, but only so you can show the respect he deserves.