The writing life (5)

In my years as editor of the Monitor, I have been one step removed from one of the joys of community journalism: the trust people put in you to tell their stories. For a 24-hour stretch Thursday and Friday, in my new role as writer and reporter, I experienced that joy – and responsibility – firsthand.

The person who wanted to share her story was Erica Estep, a 17-year-old girl from Webster. Today is a big day for Erica. As I write this morning, she is preparing to graduate from Merrimack Valley High School.

It has been a difficult journey. In October 2004, an arsonist burned down the apartment building where Erica lived with her family. The fire killed Erica’s mother and father.

She wanted to tell her story because she had a message. The message was this: When bad things happen in life – no matter how bad – if you have the willpower, you can overcome them.

Erica’s story had been assigned to Monitor reporter Joelle Farrell on Thursday. But Farrell had also been trying to get an interview with Melanie Cooper, the Wyoming woman involved in a local murder years ago. The interview came through, and Hans Schulz, the city editor, suddenly needed someone to write about Erica Estep. He assigned it to me.

That night and Friday, I interviewed Erica, her grandparents and two assistant state attorneys general who worked on the arson case. Erica’s story was both tragic and uplifting. The uplift came from the strength she had gained through adversity. It also came from the generosity her grandparents had shown in taking in Erica and her younger sister, Emily, after their son and daughter-in-law were killed in the fire. The grandparents, Lynn and Sandy Estep, were retired empty-nesters living on Pillsbury Lake at the time. The arson made them parents again, with two teenagers in the house.

I’m not sure whether Lynn, Sandy or Erica Estep had ever before spoken at length with a journalist. But throughout the interviews and the other information-gathering I did, I was struck with both their candor and their concern that the Monitor tell their story right.

This bond is made every day between Monitor reporters and members of the public. I’m sure the subjects of our stories enter into it with varying degrees of wariness and even suspicion about reporters and their motives.

In some ways, the Estep story was an easy one. My job as the reporter and writer was to gather and digest the information, decide on a way to organize and tell the story, and then get out of the way. But as the writer, I also felt an obligation that I never experienced quite so directly as an editor. It was the basics of journalism, to check and double-check the details, but it was also to be true to the story as it was told to me while using my judgment to decide which details belonged in the story and which didn’t.

Without people like the Esteps taking the risk that we will get the story right, we couldn’t do our job. We couldn’t hold up a mirror to life in our community. I have always known this, but I see it more clearly from where I sit now.