I stood on the deck of my aunt’s house in Edmonds, Washington, last week while on vacation, overlooking Puget Sound. Whidbey Island could be seen off to the right through the haze of wildfire smoke on an otherwise uncharacteristically sunny day.
“My former boss lives on Whidbey,” I told my Aunt Marie. I explained to her how he used to split his time between his home on the island and one in Angels Camp, California. I said I should reach out to see how he was faring since I had heard he had been diagnosed with cancer.
Ralph Alldredge was a trial lawyer with a practice in San Francisco. He was avid about local journalism and became the owner and publisher of the Calaveras Enterprise unexpectedly in 1998 when the journalist he was backing to run the California paper died in an accident the day the purchase agreement was to be signed.
My first meeting with Ralph was via FaceTime when he interviewed me for the position of editor at the Enterprise in 2018. His clear, resounding voice was commanding and captured my attention. He thought before he spoke and then he spoke with assuredness.
Ralph and I didn’t always agree on the same approach to journalism or even how to run the paper, but I respected his point of view and experience, and he trusted me to run his beloved paper as he pulled back into semi-retirement. Eventually, he sold his house in Angels Camp and made Whidbey Island his full-time home.
If there was a concern or I didn’t know how to handle something, I’d reach out to Ralph and he’d offer direction, ultimately letting the decision fall to me. I knew that if I had an idea or if I wanted to change how we did things, I would have to bring all my supporting research and a good argument with me when I spoke to him.
Ralph loved a good argument and was more apt to consent if you backed it up with solid evidence.
More than that, he loved local journalism and advocated for it. He believed communities require a newspaper to tell their stories and to keep government and other organizations accountable. That kind of leadership helped me, in turn, lead our reporters to some first-rate journalism, garnering awards with the California Newspaper Publishers Association and, more importantly, leading to positive change in the community.
The mentorship and friendship I received from Ralph formed a great deal of my approach to community journalism. When I left the Enterprise to come to Wrangell last year, he told me I was welcome back anytime. I truly believed those words.
The day after I had been looking out toward Whidbey Island, I found out that Ralph Alldredge died on Oct. 4, my birthday. There is grief for me in his passing, but more gratitude than anything else.
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