A note of remembrance

By Kris O’Leary, publisher Bob Berglund passed away Saturday, Dec. 30, on his and his late wife Florence’s wedding anniversary.

I’m sure Florence was waiting with open arms to welcome him home.

I had known Bob and Florence since I was a child. Being a kid in a newspaper family, you got to know the other families in the neighboring newspapers. Back then, most local papers were family owned. Since each weekly paper covered their own community, newspaper families weren’t competitors but friends who shared a unique understanding of what it meant to be entrusted with continuing a community newspaper that oftentimes had been established in the late 1800s.

Newspapers have owners that change hands over the years, but the dedication to the readers and the newspaper industry to be good stewards gets handed down from one generation to the next. Bob was a good friend of my parents, and they worked together to support newspapers in Clark County and at the state and national level. I got to know Bob and his family at state and national newspaper conferences. As newspaper kids, we bonded a couple of times a year at the hotel pools and over miniature golf at the old Stevens Point Holiday Inn Holidome.

I remember Florence for her wry sense of humor and Bob as a distinguished board member in his Wisconsin Newspaper Association red sports jacket that he proudly wore to the state and national newspaper associations meetings.

I stepped back into the newspaper business in 1997 to help my mom keep our family’s newspapers running when my dad, J.A. O’Leary, died suddenly in 1997. At the time we had the Star News in Medford, The Tribune Phonograph in Abbotsford, and The Record Review. My husband had sold the farm by then and was running the newspaper printing press. In 2010 I contacted the TRG owner Dean Lesar, who had purchased the TRG from Bob and Florence, to see if he was interested in selling his newspaper. At that point Dean wasn’t enjoying being the owner of a weekly paper, but still had a passion for writing and photography and agreed to stay on as editor. Bob contacted me and asked if I would still want him to write his weekly column, “Over the Back Fence.” I assured him that I wanted him to write for as long as he was willing.

For 13 years, I have had the honor of having a Wisconsin Hall of Fame newspaperman writing his column for the TRG. Thank you, Bob, for all your wisdom and friendship over most of my lifetime. You will be missed, but I know you are in good company with my dad and Florence.