The Tower

I went back to the Tribune Tower Sunday morning, for the first time since being axed.

I had been invited to be a guest of Rick Kogan’s on his weekly WGN radio show, “Sunday Papers” and he asked me to come to the studio, which is inside the Tower.

My husband Rick came with me because it was Father’s Day and what man doesn’t want to wake up at 6 a.m. on the Sunday of Father’s Day and drive his wife downtown?

As we were walking in, I remarked how stupid it was that I hadn’t remembered to bring in my Tribune-issue laptop and cell phone, since they had to be returned. But Rick told me he had already returned them for me, several weeks before.

I had absolutely no idea, which may give you some indication of how tight a rein I keep on my very important to-do list and valuable equipment that doesn’t belong to me. My husband obviously knew I could not bear the thought of stepping foot in the place, so much so that he quietly just did it for me, meeting someone from the sports department in the lobby to hand over the stuff.

So kind a gesture was it, that if it had been Mother’s Day rather than Father’s Day, this would have sufficed as a present.

I have written about this lobby before. I had never been one to necessarily buy into the arrogant notion that everything attached to the great Tribune edifice was sacred and even if I did then, I think it’s pretty safe to say I don’t now.

But the building is well, I can’t help it, it’s just special. Even if I hadn’t worked there, I would have taken my children there to see the fragments stuck into the outside of the building from such historically significant places as the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall and Abraham Lincoln’s original tomb.

But inside is where I stood agape the first time I ventured in as a college student, saw the famous quotations describing the ideals of a free press etched into the walls, and grew dizzy as I spun around and around to read each one.

The Hall of Inscriptions, it’s called.  

I read them over and over. I might have even tried to memorize them. And I felt important, like I was a part of this scared trust, even as a kid just starting out.

Where there is a free press, the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.Lord Macaulay

Again and again as I walked through the lobby over the years, I would read that quote and the others. It’s hard not to as they loom over you. And like most sportswriters, I wasn’t in the building all that much over the years, which only heightened the experience when I walked through the front doors.

But strangely, I never became all that comfortable there, like it was my building, my place. I felt lucky that I got to work there, but also intimidated by the surroundings as if I was never dressed quite well enough or that one day someone might tap me on the shoulder and test me on the quotations. Like Col. McCormick himself was looking down and might swat me away at any given moment.

Newspapers are the sentinels of the liberties of our country.  Benjamin Rush

I still have my employee ID in my wallet, for some reason. I had it there Sunday, when I signed in as a visitor. I realized afterward that I never looked up while I was there, even while waiting for Rick Kogan’s producer to come out and bring us into the studio.

Maybe I didn’t want to get those familiar goose bumps. Maybe I didn’t want to know what it was like not to feel lucky I got to work there.

But here’s the funny part. I wasn’t intimidated. I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, had bad hair and I felt OK, familiar, kind of like this was my place. I know every inch of that lobby.  I know all the secret back ways up to the newsroom. How many times did I bring my kids up those elevators to the fourth floor, where Wendell buzzed them in and they knew where my mailbox was and where to go to visit Rose, our former sports department secretary, and to see Holly’s Pez dispenser collection?

I’m glad I went.

I’ll probably never go back.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. Flannery O’Connor/files/0/9/0/8/7/188681-178090/isaacson.mp3″>The Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan – 06/21/09