Coming Soon! The Writings of Don Tschirhart!

Hello,

I will soon be posting stories written by Don Tschirhart, my father. Most of the stories were originally published in the Lapeer Gazette [correction: Lapeer County Press][correction of the correction: “The County Press” in Lapeer County, Michigan]] (I think I got it right, this time) . . . ) The newspaper hired dad sometime after his retirement from The Detroit News to write a weekly column of ‘Human Interest’ stories. Some have never been published, maybe not even seen by anyone other than my father. I have his archived files. They’ll be posted in serial format, the way many books used to be published. Some magazines publish that way, still. I’ll try to post new stories once a week.

This ought to be fun! Dad had spent his whole life reporting for the Detroit News and finally was able to do the kind of writing he always wanted to do. The stories are often funny, sometimes sad or poignant, revealing the mind of a journalist who was set free from the constraints of accurately reporting just the dry facts for publishing in a news article. Often, you can feel the glee, and a sense of dad laughing and giggling at his journalistic freedom. He used to exclaim with incredulity, “They’re paying me to do this . . . ?!”

Dad had tried to get his stories published in book form before he passed away. Publishers are a pain in the butt and he was thinking about self-publishing. After his death, I contacted the publisher he was working with and several others. They all gave their condolences but all declined to publish the work of a deceased author because there won’t be any follow-up books.

I think, after reading the stories you will agree that the work deserves to be shared. Mom has gone to join dad so she won’t be needing any profits from sales, so let’s celebrate both of their lives by participating in Don Tschirhart’s legacy. You will see that Marge Tschirhart is an equal part of that legacy as you read the stories.