Mike and Kirsten still went out to Gil and Carrie’s cottage in the summer once in a while. Carrie had yet to have grandkids of her own – all her kids were still in school, but Jennifer would start a string of graduations in 1980 – but the young Tiffany made an adequate practice grandchild, and they had a good time. In those years, the telephone company had yet to run a line out to the handful of summer cottages at West Turtle Lake – there just wasn’t any profit in it, so there were no phones at the cottage. One day, in August, 1979, Mike and Kirsten returned from a day with Gil and Carrie to find a note on the front door: Call me now – George.

The Spearfish Lake Record was founded in 1888 by Abraham Sanderson. It stayed pretty much a family business for over ninety years. Abraham’s son, Stanley, took over the paper in 1904 and soon bought out the Spearfish Lake Herald, combining the two. He managed the paper until 1929; after his death, his son, Homer, took it over. At one time, Homer had expected his son would follow him in the business, but Rodney Sanderson was killed when his jeep hit a land mine with “D” Battery in Italy in 1944. Homer had three daughters, none of them particularly interested in the business or in staying in Spearfish Lake, but he hung onto the ownership in hopes that someday a grandchild, or maybe even a great-grandchild, might find an interest in the newspaper business. He never really confronted the issue of what would happen to the paper upon his death. He and George Webb had talked about it once or twice, but had never firmed up anything, partly because George could see Homer was uncomfortable thinking about it.

But Webb had thought about the issue off and on for ten years, and about the time Mike came to work at the Record-Herald he approached Dean Hoffman, the printing plant manager, with his concerns. It turned out Dean had been thinking about it too, and although there wasn’t much they could do about it at the time, they did outline some plans.

Though Webb and Hoffman had prepared for Sanderson’s death as well as they could, they were limited in what they could do, and there were a couple very tough months around the Record-Herald. It took time to make the arrangements with Sanderson’s daughters to agree to carry on the business pending working out a sale agreement, but most of the staff members agreed they could carry on for a while. They didn’t even have the authority to spend any money at that point.

“It’s a risk,” Webb told the staffers the day before the funeral. “If we can somehow keep going for a month or two, we should be all right, but it’s going to be tough. I figure we’ve got two months that we can keep the printing and paper bills up in the air, and we can kite most of the rest off and sweet-talk people. I’ve talked to the major creditors, and they understand we’ve got this problem. But we’re going to have to ask all of you to work without paychecks for a while. If things work out, you should get your back pay. I know that’s going to be a hardship on some of us, hell, most of us, and I won’t hold it against you if you don’t want to go along with it and decide to leave. But, if you’ll stay with us, we’ve got a chance to make things work.”

Webb soon discovered none of Sanderson’s daughters had any more interest in the business than before, but each of them had the main goal of seeing that the other two didn’t get one cent more than their fair share, and less if possible. But, they all agreed keeping the paper going would mean more money for everyone, and allowed Webb to carry on in the interim.

Eventually, Webb and Hoffman were able to work out an employee buyout of the business from a trust in Homer’s estate, held by the three daughters. He and Hoffman wound up as senior partners in the arrangement, and most of the rest of the staff bought into the arrangement as junior partners, including Mike, Kirsten, and Carrie.

That took a while, and the interim was hard on Mike and Kirsten. They didn’t have a big savings account built up – they were running close to the wire, anyway – but they gritted their teeth and hung in there, spurred on by a promise from Kirsten’s parents of help if things became desperate.

But they stuck it out. It was six weeks before they got a paycheck again, and six months before Webb could make good his promise to make up the back pay, after the employee ownership deal had been completed. That actually wound up costing them even more, since the employees had to scratch up a down payment on the purchase, and Mike and Kirsten bought in only by refinancing their house.

But the gamble paid off for those who stayed the course, and Mike and Kirsten were among the bigger winners.

With Webb tied up in endless negotiations and lawyers and consultations and dealings with suppliers, Mike had no choice but to step into his job while trying to do his own as well. He’d always thought of Webb as being a bit lazy, but it proved he’d been doing a heck of a lot more than Mike had realized. For a few weeks, it had been as bad as it had been before Warner joined the staff, and Warner did more than his fair share, too. When the dust settled, though, Webb came out as the publisher and Mike became the editor permanently. As soon as they dared spend the money, Mike hired a new junior reporter, fresh out of J-school and hopelessly looking for a job for months: Andy Bairnsfether.

Andy took hold better than expected, and stayed less than a year at the Record-Herald, but it was the launch pad for the most stellar career of any of the long line of Record-Herald junior reporters, as Mike was ultimately reminded almost nightly twenty years later when he turned on CNN and saw Andy standing on camera in front of the White House.

Kirsten also got a promotion as a result of the shuffle following Sanderson’s death. Harry Bailey had been the ad manager for years, but Kirsten had been doing most of his work for him. Bailey was a cranky cuss, at best, and had loused up several accounts. When Webb made the announcement that there would be no paychecks for a while, Bailey was the first one out the door, and no one was particularly sorry to see him go.

Kirsten took over the job without comment, and had her hands full for a while, too, but once Webb gave her the go-ahead to hire someone, she went him one better and hired two part-timers, both local mothers who had kids in school. One stayed only a few months, but the other was Sally Szczerowski, who had a kid in kindergarten half days, and no particular qualifications for the job besides a high school GED – she’d dropped out of school when she got pregnant – and a pleasant and energetic personality. Once she learned her way around, she became fully as good at the job as Kirsten was, and together they built the advertising back up past where Bailey had started to ruin it, and well beyond. Between them, they were able to keep the cash flowing so well that the Record-Herald employees were able to complete the buyout three years faster than had been expected.

So, with one thing and another, what had been a personal tragedy for most of the staff turned into a blessing in disguise. Homer Sanderson, although a likeable old cuss, could be cranky at times and slow to do the things needing to be done. All of them missed his warm smile and the stories of the old days, but all agreed they liked the fresh air that blew through the building the day Webb ceremonially signed the incorporation papers in front of the gathered staff, then just as ceremonially took off his tie and threw it in the wastebasket, ending forever the days of Sanderson’s prohibition of open collars on the men and pants on the women.

When it was all said and done, in early 1982 Mike was able to look up from a mound of paper and tax forms on Gretchen Langenderfer’s old dining room table and announce that what with everything, including the first small Record-Herald dividend and the stipend he got for coaching volleyball for the school, they’d made almost exactly twice the money in 1981 that they’d made in 1978. The hard years were over.