Over the last 30 years, I’ve met plenty of characters in newsrooms, but by far my favorite was a reporter by the name of Joel Kirkpatrick.
He was a larger than life fellow, with a big booming voice and a barrel chest always clad in Mexican Guayabera shirts. And he wore hearing aids the size of bricks behind his ears.
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Over the last 30 years, I’ve met plenty of characters in newsrooms, but by far my favorite was a reporter by the name of Joel Kirkpatrick.
He was a larger than life fellow, with a big booming voice and a barrel chest always clad in Mexican Guayabera shirts. And he wore hearing aids the size of bricks behind his ears.
A hole was drilled in the floor of his van under the driver’s seat. A hose with a funnel was inserted in the hollow, which enabled him to urinate as he drove on long road trips or just around town.
I first met Joel on my first day as a professional reporter at the Galveston Daily News back in 1988. I was all of 23. And I thought he was ancient. He must have been something like 55.
Joel, a competitive shotgun shooter, lost his hearing one blast at a time in an era when hearing protection on ranges was not as common as today.
He was a kind-hearted soul who operated his own outreach to the hard-of-hearing in Galveston, Texas. He would give a needy person a hearing aid and twenty bucks to get it fitted at a local hospital.
Whenever I would ask Joel how on earth he could afford to give away hearing aids, he would just smile and shake his head. It would remain a mystery until my final week at that paper.
Joel played up being a Texas good ‘ol boy. (He once weathered a hurricane sitting in a closet reloading shotgun shells with a kerosene lamp burning.) But the Joel I knew also would read Plato in his evenings at home.
He is the sort of fellow worthy of emulation. But my wife won’t let me drill a hole in the floor of my truck or load shotgun shells by kerosene light.