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Rick Brown: My friend Randy Peterson says he’s retiring, but I’m skeptical

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7 months ago

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Rick Brown: My friend Randy Peterson says he’s retiring, but I’m skeptical

Rick Brown
 |  Special to the Register

Randy Peterson has decided to retire. Call me skeptical.

I say that because no one has enjoyed chasing the written word more than my friend for the last five decades. He is, as the Des Moines Register’s legendary columnist Maury White would have called him, an ink-stained ragamuffin. That’s a compliment, by the way. And Randy loved his job as much as anyone I’ve ever known.

I spent the summer of 1975 as a sports intern at the Register. I’d get to the office about the time Randy, who was on the staff of the Des Moines Tribune at the time, was leaving. He already had first-name status by then. Mention the word Pete to any prep coach in Greater Des Moines, and they knew who you were talking about. Over the years, his stories filled countless scrapbooks.

Pete and I covered a lot of sporting events together over the years, from the football playoffs to the state softball tournament; state basketball tournaments to the Drake Relays; college football and basketball games; golf tournaments and who knows what else.

While on the road, we solved life’s problems at places like the Panther Lounge in Cedar Falls, and Van’s Chat & Chew Cafe in Atlantic.

When you traveled with Randy, it was a guarantee you’d be the first one to arrive and the last one to leave. In between, he covered a lot of ground, talking to anyone he came across looking for a newsy nugget he could use in his story.

And he loved every minute of it. Because Randy never lived in an 8 to 5 world. He never kept track of his 40-hour week on a timecard. Because there was no time for that.

You worked until the job was done. The newspaper business was never a way to get rich in life, but it was a way to enrich your life. Randy was, and will always be, a journalistic lifer. His career represents a wealth beyond dollars and cents.

Turn the clock back to October of 2015. Randy and I had been offered a buyout by Gannett, the parent company of the Des Moines Register.

“You’re not really considering this, are you?” he said to me one day, tossing the information packet on his desk.

That’s why I’m skeptical that this guy is turning in his press pass, though he admitted in a conversation we had several months ago that the travel wasn’t as much fun as it used to be.

From the day he stood up in my wedding in 1982 to the time I said goodbye to the newspaper life in 2015, Pete never changed. Often with a Diet Coke in one hand and a notebook or his tape recorder in the other, he was always in search of the next story.

Back in the day, he used to cover baseball’s spring training for the Register. He’d come back bronzed from the Arizona sun. I wondered if he got that tan at the ballpark or by the pool, but I never asked. He loved covering Triple-A baseball at Principal Park (we old-timers still call it Sec Taylor Stadium). I swear he spent more time at the ballpark than some of the players. Iowa Cubs management, namely Michael Gartner and Sam Bernabe, gave Pete his own suite in the press box to cover the game when he spent his summers on the baseball beat. That perk has long since gone the way of flannel uniforms.

And now, Pete is joining those flannel uniforms by turning the page on his newspaper career. It’s a new life that doesn’t include, as Bob Seger sang in “Against the Wind,” deadlines and commitments, what to leave in, what to leave out.

Pete will miss those deadlines for a while. He’ll miss the games, the postgame interviews and the positive spin. He’ll miss the relationships with coaches and athletes. And he’ll miss the chase. But he’ll always have his five-plus decades of memories to remember as he looks out at West Lake Okoboji and reflects on a career well done.

Rick Brown, a 10-time Iowa Sportswriter of the Year, was a member of the Des Moines Register sports department from 1978 to 2015.

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