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Remembering the unsinkable Peggy B.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following column was written by former Daily Press staff writer Lori Rose, sister of Friday columnist Karen Wils, who is cooking or wrapping Christmas gifts).

ESCANABA — It was one of those late August days, humid and hazy and beachy-smelling.

I had just been hired for my first full-time writing job, and my boss was tugging me from room to room to introduce her new cub reporter.

She was so tall, so confident, so energetic. I was a wide-eyed kid who would be covering my first teacher strike in another 48 hours or so.

My boss was Peggy Bryson, a lady who had risen from Society Page Editor in the early 1960s to Daily Press Editor in Chief two decades later.

I was sorry to hear of her passing last week, thinking back on the camaraderie of the 1980s newsroom.

We were past typewriters and linotype machines then, but still had a “back shop” of workers to do page layouts destined for the presses at Powers. Digital pagination was still a ways off when I made my debut.

Peggy always impressed me by her nose for news, her great negotiating skills, and her flair for getting her staff to do a good job. You were lucky if you received an “Attaboy” or “Attagirl” comment from her. Making it to the AP or Michigan Press awards was pretty cool, too.

As newsroom leader, Peggy possessed a rare combination of strong work values, sense of humor and openness to new ideas. She would give reporters a chance to hone their skills and learn from mistakes.

Peggy’s opinion held a lot of weight in the community and she was a pioneer in previously all-male groups, including the Rotary and the Follo Forum.

She occasionally showed off an irreverent sense of humor, like the time she insisted on referring to a local government PR person as “Irene Husqvarna” instead of her real (complicatedly Finnish) name. This, of course, was after “Irene” dropped off one of her many news releases.

Peggy was not only a journalist but mother to four talented girls, including a set of twins. My sister Karen and I had the good fortune to attend several Bryson family weddings over the years.

It was fun to work with Peg on the Friday night shift (a small crew that came in to produce the Saturday morning paper). She could do a phone interview, down a mug of coffee and give directions to co-workers all at the same time.

The only thing you had to avoid was using Peggy’s phone. Because of her abiding love of cheese puffs, the headset was coated in a neon orange powdery oil.

Peggy showed great hospitality to her staff, inviting us to Christmas parties at her Lake Bluff home and pontoon boat adventures at her cottage. We even got a narrated tour of the Hamilton Lakes chain, courtesy of Peggy’s husband Dick.

I learned how to “butterfly” a cut of meat at Bryson’s and got a great antipasto recipe from Peggy. Speaking of food, I remember Peggy telling a wacky tale of ordering a pasta-making contraption from a mail order (the pre-Amazon days) company and getting a unit with directions only in Italian.

Peggy was ahead of her time in a lot of ways and seemed to me Delta County’s version of Murphy Brown. The power of the pen. The First Amendment. Speaking truth to power.

And yet, she was down-to-earth, as at home taking deer kill reports over the phone as interviewing prosecutors and governors.

In these days of attacks on the media, it’s good to remember a woman who stood up for the noble profession. A onetime Centennial Queen who came to rule wisely over her newsroom… with orange hands.

——

Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.

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