August 2022

When I arrived at the Cassville Democrat and met Office Manager Darlene Wierman for the first time, I’m not sure either of us knew what to do with one another. Darlene was a living history of the Democrat, having worked at the paper since 1970, and I was still a greenhorn of a journalist, accepting the first editor job of my career.

When I walked into the Cassville Democrat office that October day in 1970 and was greeted by Kathryn Mitchell at the front desk, sitting there with her Bible in front of her, I thought this would probably a good place to work. Shortly after that, Bob and Sue Mitchell came in all excited about a new church building site where they had just been for a ribbon cutting for the First Christian Church. I told them my friend Mildred Hare over in the Standard Mutual Ins. office told me there might be an office position opening up because Johnnie Edie was leaving to have a baby. Although I had no knowledge of newspaper publishing, I did have a background in bookkeeping and what a busy office was like, which was my previous job in Colorado where I had been employed as the school district’s executive secretary and bookkeeper for several years.

Anything that has been in existence 151 years, gone through four generations of the Ray family as owners and is now under a third corporate hand is bound to have had the opportunity to have experienced a number of good employees. However, none can compare in longevity, consistency and reliability to those qualities demonstrated by Darlene Wierman.