After an unknown and unknowable number of years during which Jean Deatrick was the heart, soul, hands, feet, body, eyes and ears of the Hill and Lake Press (probably since 2001), she is retiring. Two factors made her decision— software and hardware. The software is Quark, the standard layout software when she began twenty or so years ago, today obsolete. The new standard is InDesign, difficult for an old Quark hand to learn. Second, though still with trademark superabundant energy as a fit, sharp, lovely 82, Jean has experienced health problems over the last year that have become disruptive to her busy life. She consistently managed to get the paper out on monthly deadline but surprise visits to hospitals and doctors did not help. “I was always very healthy,” Jean says, “so it is disappointing.” She often worried about the paper’s future if she resigned. So today she is “delighted that Craig Wilson stepped up, someone I know who is committed and responsible.” It is time for the next chapter of the Hill and Lake Press in its 46th year of publication.
Jean began at the HLP more than twenty years ago like most volunteers, as an occasional contributor of articles, soon graduating to monthly pasteup sessions. Once a chaotic, madcap affair, those were necessary when layout was not on a computer screen but inside the screen door of a volunteer editor’s house or the Kenwood Rec center where a cast of haggling volunteers actually “laid out” and pasted articles onto boards.
As participation of early community news enthusiasts dwindled, one of the neighborhood editors finally announced at pasteup, we cannot continue, we must close the paper, let’s throw a big party and move on.
Jean wouldn’t hear of it. “I said I’d take it on,” said Jean in a recent interview. Editor Jane Johnson, soon to move back to her native England after thirty years in Lowry Hill, arranged for the paper to buy a laptop plus desktop publishing software, Quark. Joined by stalwarts Joyce Murphy as designer, Dorothy Childers as photographer and helpmate, and Jean’s husband John Gridley (since passed away) as business manager, plus the usual motley crew of ad hoc volunteer columnists and reporters, the HLP never missed an issue, never mind Jean was working full time at St. Mark’s Cathedral as Community Coordinator. “I was squeezing it in,” she admits now. Her devoted “squeezing” succeeded, aided by the consistent financial support of the boards of the four neighborhoods the paper serves, Cedar-Isles Dean, East Isles, Kenwood and Lowry Hill, plus a suite of loyal advertisers.
“Believe me, I knew nothing” about computerized layout, said Jean in an interview. Luckily the printers at Shakopee Publishing visited and sat on both sides of her and taught her how to use Quark. “I was slow and rusty to start. Now I’m getting slow and rusty again!” she quipped. When Shakopee Publishing moved to Wisconsin, that was another bit of good luck, said Jean, because the current printer, House of Print in Madelia, Minnesota, “has been wonderful. And I have never been to Madelia!” In the pre-computerized days, editors drove the layouts to Shakopee and would have had to Madelia.
Jean remains very active at St. Mark’s as a volunteer. And the first weekend this March, in spite of occasional health problems, she and husband Eldon Feist went dancing at the Medina Ballroom. “I danced for an hour!” Jean joyfully reported.
Jean has four children. Steve, 59, teaches sound engineering at Pasadena College, has a “wonderful” wife and one son, valedictorian of his class, now a student at UC-Santa Barbara, “we are proud of him.” Her older daughter Heidi lives in St. Louis Park, and once delivered the Hill and Lake Press to business sites. Daughter Heather, who lives in South Minneapolis, will continue as the HLP’s business manager (Thank you Heather!), while her son Earl Van Norman now delivers the papers to businesses, a family tradition! Jean’s youngest child, Katie, lives in England working in communications, where she recently contracted Covid while commuting, though vaccinated. “A mother always worries,” says Jean. At least, as of March 2022, Jean Deatrick no longer need worry about monthly deadlines and the survival and success of our neighborhoods’ voices, the Hill & Lake Press. A job well done.
THANK YOU JEAN DEATRICK!
“We appreciate all that you have done over the decades to support the Hill & Lake Press. Your leadership and dedication have strengthened our East Isles, Lowry Hill, Kenwood and Cedar-Isles-Dean community and neighborhoods.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We love you!”
The Hill & Lake Press
