Column Writing
Mary C. Schulken / Greenville Daily Reflector

Mary C. Schulken's award-winning column about Hurricane Floyd's aftermath touched Daily Reflector readers in special ways.

"It hurts to see a landscape as familiar as your own palm turned into a disaster area," Schulken said. "It hurts to watch people you see at the store or church or work suffer, and not be able to do anything about it. That's what that column was about.

"Judging from the response, it sounded a deep and common chord at a fearful moment for the community. I had people come to my office to thank me, and cry. I had people send me money to give to victims.

Sept. 26, 1999

"Everywhere I looked, the column was thumbtacked to a door or wall or bulletin board. Six months later, I still get scribbled thank-you notes from people I've never seen."

Any journalist knows how working on a transcendent story will get under the skin and shape the way she or he thinks about the news. Was that the case with Schulken and the flooding story?

"Yes," Schulken said. "I now know the difference between hardship and suffering. Hardship comes and goes, but suffering stays with you the rest of your life.

"I learned a profound lesson as well about the power of a newspaper in a time of community crisis. When chaos rules, getting out accurate information becomes paramount.

"But there's more. When all resemblence of normal life has been swept away, it is infinitely comforting to hear the thud of a daily paper on your doorstop, and to have its voice articulate the fear and anger such times present, and alternately urge, comfort and look onward."