When I found 'shelter from the storm,' and a good catch-phrase.

The newsroom of The Sun Chronicle, which I lovingly called "the Blue Ribbon Daily."

I still read my former newspaper practically every day, even though I lost my job there in 2018 as part of a corporate downsizing following its sale to venture capitalists. It wasn't the fault of anyone that actually worked there ... and I was going to retire in just a few months following my layoff, anyway. The time had come.

There's no denying, however, that The Sun Chronicle played a major role in my life. Not only did I work there from Feb. 7, 1977, through Aug. 28, 2018 (with a two-year break in the middle), I also served as a part-time sports correspondent for both of its predecessor newspapers, the Attleboro Sun and the North Attleborough Chronicle, when I was in high school.

That's not easy to forget. I've made it impossible to do so, in fact, because an entire wall in the room in which visitors enter my house is dedicated to all the plaques from the many awards I won for my writing and editing skills over my many years there.

The Sun Chronicle did quite well in the awards department in those days. We had a strong staff of news reporters, sportswriters and editors, and we'd bring home a lot of hardware from the many banquets staged by the regional news organizations that doled out such awards every year.

The triumphant return of my newspaper's nickname.

In fact, one of the favorite terms I used in my sports columns to refer to the newspaper was "the Blue Ribbon Daily." That's not a reference to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, but instead, a reference to how prize-winning entries at state fairs and other such events were often issued medals hung from blue ribbons to indicate first-place honors.

I was reminded of this on Monday when I thumbed through the online print edition of the paper -- yes, I actually pay for it -- and found "Blue Ribbon Daily" in an opinion-page column written by former colleague Tom Reilly. I was overjoyed to see it; hey, it's not as if I held a copyright on it.

Truth is, I actually stole it from someone else -- and now, the story can be told.

Portrait of the author as a young man, circa 1975.

I finished my education at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in December 1975, but because I had to polish off a few course requirements in an extra semester or two, I missed my chance to graduate with the Class of 1975 and had to wait until the following June to participate in the Class of 1976 graduation ceremonies inside the school's basketball arena.

Before that, I started my first post-graduation job in the real world -- as "suburban editor" of the Westfield (Mass.) Evening News. We didn't have a very big staff at that tiny newspaper, so it took quite a bit of negotiating to get a long weekend off so I could head out to Chicago for my graduation. And I was getting paid only $110 a week to work in Westfield, so I had to travel on the cheap. I took off-peak-hours flights from Bradley Airport in Connecticut and back again, and in planning for the trip, I called former classmates that were still in the area, hoping I could crash at their apartment for the two nights I'd be in Evanston.

All seemed to be going well by the time I landed at O'Hare Airport on a late Friday afternoon and took the shuttle bus to the northern suburb where Northwestern is located. It dropped me off at the Orrington Hotel in Evanston, the only real non-fleabag hotel in town at the time, and well out of my price range. I disembarked from the bus, grabbed my huge garment bag (remember those?) and headed out on foot into the campus area to the address given to me by my former classmates.

I reached the house in about 20 minutes, rang the doorbell and waited to see the friendly faces of my old pals, eager to take a load off. The door opened, and instead, strangers greeted me.

Apparently, my friends absolutely forgot that I was coming out for graduation, and they had already terminated their lease and headed to their families' homes in the Chicago suburbs with the intention of returning to campus the next day for their graduate school ceremonies. The new occupants had no idea what was up, however, and they weren't bashful in telling me to go elsewhere. Maybe they thought I was a narc, or something ... I always did look pretty straight-laced, and even more so after I shed my longer locks to join the workforce a few months earlier.

So, back I went into the mean streets of Evanston. If you're from there, you'd understand how sarcastic a statement that is. Despite being only 14 miles north of the center of one of the largest cities in the country, Evanston was as prim, proper and tight-assed a community as you could find. Even in 1976, you could not purchase hard liquor in the city (and couldn't even buy beer except served with a dinner) because it was the headquarters of the national Women's Christian Temperance Union, and those sweet little old ladies wielded iron fists in denying the purchase of alcohol to a community that hosted a Big Ten university.

I wandered the town for hours, wearing a three-piece suit (don't ask why) and slinging the big garment bag over my shoulder. Occasionally I would stop at pay phones and try to call phone numbers of former classmates that might still be in town, but one call after another was either greeted with recorded disconnection messages or unfamiliar voices. So I kept walking, stopping once for a slice of pizza that practically broke my travel budget, and otherwise retreating to the student union or sitting on park benches along the lakefront just to rest. 

By around 8 p.m., it was dark and I was getting desperate. I stepped into the lobby of a dormitory on the north end of campus thinking that my only option would be to overspend on a room at the Orrington, if one was available, and maybe beg my parents to wire me some emergency cash to pay for it.

As I was dialing, I heard a familiar voice from behind.

"Mark? Is that you? What are you doing here?"

My friend Marilyn Adams in 1977.

I turned and saw a very familiar face. It was a young woman named Marilyn Adams, a fellow Medill student, who had taken the Introduction to Photography class for which I served as a teaching assistant. Marilyn was 6-foot-2, very attractive and absolutely brilliant, and we struck up a friendship during her time in the class -- but as it is with so many people at that stage of one's life, I assumed I'd never see her again once the semester ended.

After the initial hugs and greetings were shared, Marilyn and I found chairs in the dorm lobby and I told her my sad story about being cast into the wilderness by my absent friends. Without hesitation, she said, "I can help!"

Marilyn had become a resident assistant in that dormitory, and she had to remain on station there until all of its residents had departed. This was likely to be her last night in the dorm, but her room was absolutely palatial compared to the student rooms -- two full-size beds, lots of closet space, a kitchenette and a private bathroom -- and she immediately extended the invitation to stay there for as long as I needed.

I was absolutely floored by her generosity. I mean, we hardly knew each other, but it was nice to know that she sufficiently enjoyed chatting with me during her time in the class to offer me sanctuary before I was about to become one of the best-dressed vagrants in Evanston's history.

We went to her room and talked about all sorts of things for at least three hours before it was time to retire. And all the while, I equated my experience to a song by Bob Dylan that had been released the year before -- "Shelter from the Storm."

The next day, refreshed and relaxed, I called my folks and begged them for some money to avoid sleeping on a park bench after graduation. Sadly, Marilyn had to finish moving out of her room that day, otherwise she would have been more than willing to share her room with me for another night. We exchanged addresses and promised to correspond before parting company.

My folks were very generous, wiring me enough cash at the State National Bank for me to afford a rental car and a room at a Holiday Inn in the nearby suburb of Schaumberg for the second night. With all that accomplished, I headed to what was then known as McGaw Hall (now the Welsh-Ryan Arena), donned my cap and gown and finally became a proud graduate of Northwestern University.

Indeed, Marilyn and I did correspond quite a bit over the year that followed. She stayed at Northwestern for another year and we met up for a second time that following June when I went to Chicago to attend the wedding of former classmates. After her graduation, she started working at a small newspaper in Indiana and I moved on to The Sun Chronicle, and we continued to share our experiences in long, thoughtful letters.

In one of those letters, Marilyn explained her joys and frustrations at working out in the sticks in America's heartland. But she was always optimistic about her future, and she ended one her missives with a fateful phrase.

"Life goes on at the Blue Ribbon Daily!" she wrote.

Hmmmmmm, I thought. I like that.

And thus, I appropriated her intellectual property, turning it into my go-to catch phrase to describe my place of employment over the next 40 years of column writing.

As time passed, I lost touch with Marilyn. She didn't stay long at that small newspaper; the Gannett Co., then a far more reputable publishing company than it is today, snapped her up to join the staff at USA Today. She moved to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and became USA Today's top aviation writer, covering all facets of the industry and airline safety for most of her career there. Not long ago, through the magic of Google, I found a video clip of her being interviewed on C-SPAN about some ongoing issue in aviation sometime in the mid-1980s.

I probably should have tried to give her a call on one of my Patriots' road trips to Baltimore or Washington, but I didn't have an address or a number and didn't want to be an intrusive pest. She was busy covering the real world while I was enjoying playtime in the sandbox of journalism. She might not have even remembered me. Life moves on, you know.

But I always wish I had thanked her more -- not only for rescuing me from Evanston's mean streets on the eve of my graduation, but also for that four-word catch phrase that would become my in-print term of endearment for the newspaper that gave me a pretty good career for the majority of my adult life.

And after seeing it in print again on Monday, I'm glad it hasn't been forgotten.

MARK FARINELLA wrote for The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Mass., for 42 years. He has yet to come up with a good explanation for his other, less-affectionate nickname for the newspaper, i.e., "The Dinky Daily."