Not quite a native Ripley Countian - she attended only her last year of high school in Doniphan though she taught in the R-1 system for 32 years - Teresa (Pearson) Lee delights in surprising readers and herself with anecdotal observations of life in general. Maybe you can blame her St.Louis roots for a quirky humor and some slightly-askewed opinions, but never doubt she writes from the heart.

Thank You to The Prospect-News

Posted Tuesday, April 16, 2024, at 8:12 PM

Tomorrow is OUR day! Look around this Correspondence page of The Prospect-News to understand. April 18 is National Columnists Day. Readers of this weekly publication can count on regular submissions from these same individuals in every issue.

Some readers thumb through the paper and skip over it. Others don’t realize the PN has such a page. A few turn to it first to satisfy their curiosity about topics particular contributors choose to discuss. Then others wait until they have time to devour all six columns.

All kinds of readers make the world go round and pay the bills. The Prospect-News might attribute its long-standing presence to understanding the need to appeal to as many of them as they can while providing consistent, dependable news coverage of the important happenings in Doniphan and surrounding Ripley County.

It takes all kinds of writers, too, as regular readers of this page know. Maggie Adair, Thelma Aldrich, Sharon Hastings, Becky Hill, Norma Horrocks and I, along with the former regulars, all have different styles. Through involvement with Current River Writers, I can testify that the six of us here probably differ vastly in our approaches to writing tasks. Heck, I personally differ vastly from week to week. If it seems I snatch a topic out of thin air sometimes, that’s a correct assumption. This is fun for me; I’m not convinced I’m a ‘real’ writer.

An actual National Society of Newspaper Columnists established this recognition day in conjunction with Ernie Pyle Remembrance Day. Pyle grew up an Indiana farm boy who yearned for life beyond a farm. He earned national renown with his story-telling style and gained international acclaim as a war correspondent. He died by enemy fire on April 18, 1945 in the Battle of Okinawa.

My mind aligns him with Norman Rockwell - one painted with words, the other with brushes.

Thank you to The Prospect-News for allowing the columnists featured on the Correspondence page to paint images of life in our part of the Ozark Foothills.

"It takes an awful lot of time to not write a book." (Douglas Adams)

#ColumnistsMatter #ErniePyleDy

(This appears in the April 17, 2024 issue of The Prospect-News.)