John McCormick, former editorial page editor

When I was a little boy growing up in Manchester, Iowa, the Illinois Central delivered my grandfather Charlie's daily Chicago Tribune. Charlie was an FDR Democrat who weighed the editorial opinions of the conservative Tribune against the liberal stands of his other love, The Des Moines Register. On the floor of his Franklin Street living room, Tribune cartoons helped me learn to read, and Tribune stories transported me from a county seat town to the world.

By age 13, I was peddling the Tribune on Sundays at a local drugstore (the owner's droll payday motto: "Don't spend this all in one place — unless it's right here at Groves Pharmacy"). If we had an unsold Trib, though, Mr. Groves would let me take it home.

The Tribune was like any other member of our family, received sometimes with affection and sometimes with irritation. Tribune editorials might be praised or ridiculed, but rarely failed to spark arguments. Growing up with a fiercely Democratic father and a fiercely Republican mother — both of whom ran for seats in the Iowa Legislature — forced my sister and me to look at issues from both perspectives, lest one perspective assign chores accordingly.

Next: four years at Campion Jesuit High School, now a medium-security Wisconsin state prison, probably with rules more lenient than when the Jesuits reigned. They emphasized writing, and newspaper work was a recurrent theme in my family, so the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University seemed a natural.

When I was a student there, a Tribune editor interviewed but rejected me for a job as a night copyboy — a newsroom go-fer. That hurt. But the Chicago Daily News sensed my keen potential as a fetcher of cheeseburgers for columnist Mike Royko.

I next worked as a reporter and columnist for the Dubuque (Iowa) Telegraph Herald, then as correspondent and Midwest bureau chief for Newsweek magazine. And for 20 years starting in 2000, I was lucky enough to be among the editorial board members whose voices speak for the Tribune.

Each day I would walk to, and work at, the same wooden desk where that Tribune editor interviewed and rejected me. I like to think that, somewhere, the now-deceased editor is unhappy that I was in his realm. And I like to think that, somewhere else, the now-deceased Charlie is pleased.