My 50 years as a journalist in California ends today. I leave with a smile | Opinion

My professional journalism career began when I freelanced Pop Warner football games for The Bakersfield Californian during my freshman year at Bakersfield College in 1974, getting a whopping 25 cents per column inch of copy. I would pocket $5 for a 20-inch story.

It took six more years for me to become a real journalist.

By late fall 1980, I was in charge of high school sports coverage for The Californian after graduating from Fresno State but felt a change was needed after high school wrestlers and their coach boycotted me over a perceived lack of coverage of their sport.

A week earlier, I had made a trip to The Modesto Bee and interviewed for openings as copy editor and reporter. The editor, Sanders LaMont, offered me the reporting job. I declined because it would mean I’d miss my colleagues and friends.

“You’re the one who applied here,” LaMont reminded me in a phone call. He gave me another week to reconsider.

The dustup with the wrestlers sealed it for me. I called and accepted. That was the WISEST decision I have ever made.

Since then, I have worked alongside some of the smartest, kindest people in the industry. I learned about the Associated Press Style book, which is a guide, a kind of Bible, providing rules to follow for punctuation, style, grammar and the usage of titles, among many other things. Over the years, I’ve mourned the loss of the Oxford comma and learned to adjust to changing technology designed to make our work easier.

I still remember traveling to Angels Fall to cover an appearance in the early 1980s by Maureen Reagan, the first child of President Ronald Reagan. After her speech, I scrambled to find a pay phone down the street, called The Modesto Bee newsroom and began dictating a story. In those days, there were no laptops, no fax machines and no cell phones. That meant I couldn’t snap a photo of Ms. Reagan as I have done many times with other newsmakers in recent years.

Five decades later, it is time to put away my work laptop and figure out what comes next. Full retirement? A move away from a region that has been home since 1969? Or continued pursuit of photography and writing? I’m going to give myself time to figure it out.

A parade filled with memories

I was not supposed to be a journalist. My mother had suggested I go into the priesthood shortly after I became an altar boy at age 11 in Fabens, Texas. We moved and that was the end of that topic.

Just before graduating from Fresno State in 1978, I jumped on my first airplane for a public relations job interview with an aluminum corporation in Oakland. A few weeks later, a letter arrived with the bad news that the company decided not to fill the position, “but you would have been hired” had the job been filled.

WISEST decision the company made.

I credit my high school newspaper advisor Gary Girard for encouraging me to become a journalist, getting me to trade my hen-pecking typing for a real typing class and inviting me to read high school sports results on a Saturday morning radio show he hosted.

My mother, Josephine Shockley, would drive me to the radio station and sit inside the car listening to my voice. She was the one who handed me a few coins to buy newspapers that I wanted to read.

My father, Juan Jiménez Esparza, bought me a Smith-Corona electric typewriter when he learned I wanted to become a journalist. At the time, I had not seen him in a decade following my parents’ divorce.

The taco beat

Latino journalists have long feared being put on the “taco beat,” which is not about finding the best tacos in town. It’s about being limited to coverage of the Mexican American community. No courts, no city hall, no business, no editor positions.

My experience in this company has been that I was never restricted. My bylines have run the gamut of stories about city hall, police, the courts, sports, politics, entertainment, business, pageants, body building, education, lowriders, immigration, elections, agriculture, weather and culture.

I’ve been blessed to interview Selena, Hillary Clinton, Oscar De La Hoya, Kamala Harris, Dolores Huerta, Guillermo Del Toro, Gloria Trevi, Antonio Villaraigosa, Ricky Martin, Alfonso Cuarón, Alex Padilla, Fabián Núñez, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shakira, the Gipsy Kings, Miss California 2015 Marina Inserra, Little Joe and countless other celebrities.

My favorite interviews have been with regular folks, many of them who look like me and speak with an accent like I do.

An example was the Oaxacan family in Madera facing a winter freeze that left them homeless and foodless, until volunteers (not public agencies) stepped up to help.

There was also the undocumented graduate from Fresno State who didn’t believe in herself, despite excellent, high grades, until she experienced the validation of being honored as the university’s top graduate. The migrant student who gave her parents a plaque for their support at a graduation ceremony. The Mexican restaurant owner who mentored cooks and dishwashers who went on to start their own eateries. A Miss California contestant who bought her gown at a thrift store and drove a stick shift a couple of hours to Fresno to compete. I also remember the grizzled Icelander who started a horse ride in 1978 from Madera to Cantúa Creek to bring attention to the plight of people living in trailers without water or electricity.

Many ordinary people did extraordinary things, as farmworker icon César E. Chávez would say. (His son, Paul, was a classmate in my sophomore journalism class at Delano High).

Time to say goodbye

My final week at a job that I love has been filled with remembrances of the people I’ve met, the photos I’ve taken and the stories I’ve written. Over the years, I’ve judged pageants and song contests. I’ve been grand marshal of a Mexican Independence Day Parade. I’ve been chastised by a police chief, pushed into a locker by a high school basketball coach and screamed at by a city manager.

I would never give any of that up.

Yet, I always think about my parents, now deceased, and how they showed me to question the actions of others, to remember that humor is medicine and to not judge people by how they look or how they speak. ¡Gracias papás!

I leave this parade with a smile and gratitude. Thank you for your support.

– 30 –

Juan Esparza Loera

Opinion Contributor,

The Fresno Bee

Juan Esparza Loera is a former journalist for the Fresno Bee