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Every year, the Daily News-Record publishes it’s list of top stories, as well as lists of the most read and e-mailed stories from the Web site. My two favorite stories of the year both made the list.

In July, a farm accident killed four member of a local Mennonite family and a farm hand. Capturing a life in a “feature obit,” as we call it, is always difficult, but this was especially challenging. I hope the family would have been pleased with the stories I wrote about their lives and their funerals. It was of utmost importance to respect the privacy of this old order community, while still conveying the tragedy that had occurred. I did the best I knew by focusing the stories as the family had focused its life, on faith.

In September, I wrote about an indictment that alleges four men ran a cockfighting ring near here. The hard news coverage was followed by a lengthier, investigative feature on local cockfighters who spoke to me to defend their sport. Logistically speaking, this was the hardest story of my career. It’s no easy feat to orchestrate the sort of interviews and photos that made this story. I’m grateful, too, for a paper that was willing to take a risk on a rather unusual approach.

On to 2008 …

By the way, the Daily News-Record site has a new feature. When you click on a reporter’s byline, it links to a new page that has all my contact information and a list of all the stories that have made it to the web (which by the way, is probably only two-thirds or less of all the copy each reporter puts out. Only bigger stuff goes online.)

You’ll notice, too, that all the other reporters have their photo next to their name. Not me.

I was horrified last week when I searched the site and found a horrible mug of me taken three or four years ago. I looked like a fourteen-year-old with a bad, bad haircut, in the words of some very trustworthy co-workers who burst out laughing when the saw the shot (ahem … Heather, Jenny … thanks) So I pleaded that it be removed, thus the photo-less contact page.

Shallow?

Yep.

Oh, well.

No big, lovely stories to post today. I’ve been drowning in lots of shorter, breaking news lately. Comes with the holidays, I think (Fireplaces = fires. Snow= wrecks … I didn’t mean that to sound morbid though.)
Holiday-wise, it looks like I’ll spend this Christmas in Iowa. Yep, Iowa. Never been, should be interesting though. The family has relocated there for sometime (their 18th move in some 25 years?), so Holland is out this year.

(Hi Dutchie. I’m looking for an oliebollen recipe … Got one to share?)

By Kelly Jasper

ELKTON — Ronnie Miller had to ask.

“You’re not one of those animal rights folks, are you?”

Nope. Just a reporter.

“Good, ’cause you know, people are nervous,” he says late one night over the phone.

“They’re scared.”

A week later, he asks again, just to be sure. This time he’s leaning out the window of his old GM pickup, flicking cigarette ash to the gravel of a parking lot where he agreed to meet.

It’s a short drive to Miller’s home just north of Elkton’s town limits.

A few friends have gathered by his chicken coops. They’re grilling out tonight. A bonfire roars as the sun sets, and Miller and his friends sit under a carport that shades picnic tables and a refrigerator stocked with Pepsis.

About half are cockfighters. Or, at least half are willing to say so, and be identified in a newspaper story.

“There should be two, three hundred people lined up outside my door,” Miller says of the number of folks in the area that, he claims, fight chickens. But, he adds with a grin, “They’re not as game as their chicken.”

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What an interesting return to work …

I’ve kept busy with a series of stories on the illegal cockfighting ring in Page County, plus a follow up on the indictment that alleges a local official took a bribe to keep law enforcement out of it.

Read up on it here (”Four Face Cockfighting Charges,” Sept. 21), here (”Indictment: Bribe Shielded Cockfighting Ring,” Sept. 21) and here (”Page County Sheriff Defends Contribution,” Sept. 22).
More soon, I promise.

Stories like this are always a challenge, but this one was a pleasure to write. It’s always hard to capsulate a person or group in a few inches of copy.

On a side note, my byline will be MIA for a few weeks as I’ll be out of the newsroom recovering from surgery.

From Humble Location In Broadway, Freelandia Takes Bible Teaching Global

By Kelly Jasper

BROADWAY — Strictly speaking, Freelandia is a Bible college in Broadway.

It sits in a modest brick-and-white building at the end of a gravel driveway, just down the road from Broadway High School. There, a sign advertises Sunday services in the college’s basement. Delmar and Ellen Shoemaker live upstairs, on the second story that doubles as their home and office.

It’s a unique setup, even for a correspondence college. Most people have no idea what goes on here.

“People just see the brick-and-mortar building,” says Delmar, a 60-year-old West Virginia native, who is president of the school. “They don’t know the world is our campus.”

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It’s no secret I’m not an entertainment writer. My lack of pop culture knowledge has gotten me into a jam more than once and, most recently, at the Rockingham County Fair this week. I was asked to write up a short feature about the Dierks Bentley show (for those of you just as clueless, he’s apparently a major country star.)

So, Thursday night before the concert, Bentley is behind me signing autographs. He turns and bumps me as he leaves, so he very charmingly apologizes, saying something along the lines of “Oh, sorry, shouldn’t run over the fans.”

My reply?

“It’s okay, I’m not fan.”

Silence.

That is so so so not what I meant. I backtracked, mumbling something about I what I was trying to say is that I was working, you know, for the newspaper. He laughed at me, joked “well, make me look good,” then walked off.

I think he pitied me. I pitied me. Nonetheless, here’s the story from Friday’s Daily News-Record:

ROCKINGHAM COUNTY — More than one Dierks Bentley fan shared Molly Anderson’s flash of inspiration.

She slipped her hair into pigtails and pulled on a little white tank top before the county singer’s concert at the Rockingham County Fair Thursday night.

“You know, like the song,” says the 16-year-old from Harrisonburg.

Oh, yeah.

She and her friends launch into the chorus of Bentley’s first hit single, “What Was I Thinkin’”: “Cuz’ I was thinking ’bout a little white tank top sitting right there in the middle by me, I was thinking about a long kiss, Man, just gotta get goin’ where the night might lead.”

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By Kelly Jasper

HARRISONBURG — Under the dust mask, Dan Smucker frowned. “Not smooth enough,” Smucker said as he peeled the fabric from his mouth and flipped the off switch of his power sander.

He set the mask to rest atop his forehead and ran a palm over the walnut planks of wood.

“I’ve only got one chance to get this right,” he said. “You only die once.”

It may seem a little morbid at first. After all, there Smucker stood, hunched over two sawhorses, power tools in hand, building his own coffin.

He’s 89, almost 90, and says he’s bound to need a casket sometime soon. Why, the Harrisonburg man reasoned, couldn’t he make one himself?

Several days a week, Smucker comes to a small, tin-roofed hobby shop just south of the auto-body business, Dan’s Body Service, he opened nearly 50 years ago.

Smucker started the project just a few weeks ago and isn’t sure how long it’ll take to finish. He’s in no rush, though. Already, the casket — which he estimates will cost about $200 — measures more than 6 feet long and 18 inches deep.

It’s an odd sight, Smucker admits. He’s gotten mixed reactions from friends and family, but says he still isn’t sure what the big deal is.

“People buy life insurance. People buy plots,” he said. “One of the most important things about living is planning to die.”

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