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In My View

Two amazing friends and American journalists

Published : Friday, 11 November, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 422
Syed Badiuzzaman
Some of the names and faces we come across in life never go away from our memory. As we look back at our past, those amazing people flash through our mind regardless of where we are. They were really our good friends. We spent happy time with them. Here are some unforgettable stories of two wonderful people and American journalists who quickly became our family friends.

They were copy editors Gail Besse and Bell Archer at the Patriot Ledger, the third largest newspaper in Boston area in the state of Massachusetts. I came in touch with them when I worked there as a visiting journalist from Bangladesh under an American journalism fellowship back in 1988. Our professional relationship that began in the newsroom rapidly developed into friendship up to the family level.

Daughter of a senior military officer of the U.S. Army and a Massachusetts native, Gail Besse was originally a high school English teacher. She went to Bridgewater State College and earned her bachelor's degree in English from the University of Massachusetts. She joined the Patriot Ledger newspaper as a copy editor in 1984. Before she came to the Ledger, she was the bureau chief of Middlesex News in Framingham.

Bell Archer, on the other hand, came to the profession of journalism from an absolutely different and almost an unthinkable background. Before he entered the newsroom of American media, Archer was in the battlefield fighting a war alongside U.S. soldiers on the Korean peninsula. A Canadian native, American journalist Bell Archer served in the US Army Medical Corps during the Korean War.

After I worked on a number of my professional assignments at the Patriot Ledger, one day the editor of the newspaper directly assigned me to write an article on the Muslim prayer. Bill Ketter, an accomplished American journalist who spent 26 years at the United Press International (UPI) before joining the Patriot Ledger as editor, told me: "Americans do not know much about the Muslim prayer. So, why don't you write a piece on it, Syed?"

Despite being a Muslim, I only knew about how to pray and how many times a day we were required to pray. I had no knowledge about the significance of the daily five times prayer nor did I know when it started. So, I went to Muhammad Yousuf Siddiq, a Bangladeshi who earned his PhD in Islamic Religion from King Abdul Aziz University of Saudi Arabia,for an understanding about the Muslim prayer. Siddiq occasionally used to conduct Friday congregational prayer at the New England Islamic Centre in Quincy, Massachusetts.

After I submitted my article on the daily Muslim prayer in the long queue of stories on the computer in the Patriot Ledger newsroom, it went to copy editor Gail Besse for editing. The paper had multiple print editions a day. The reporters used to submit their stories any time of the day and night from their home or office and the editors were available to edit their reports 24 hours a day. Copy editor Gail Besse's early morning shift used to start at 4 o'clock in the morning and finish at 12 noon.

Next day, as I went to the Patriot Ledger newsroom to do my usual job at 9 a.m., Gail Besse called me to come over to her desk and sit by her as she would now start editing my story on Muslim prayer. Whenever an editor of the Patriot Ledger used to edit my copy, they would call me and ask me to sit with them and watch their editing giving me an opportunity to learn from them. And Gail Besse was no exception. She too asked me to sit next to her and watch her editing.

The thing that impressed me most about the editing style of the Patriot Ledger editors was that they brought significant improvement in the story with minor changes keeping the original voice of the writers and reporters unaltered. For example, I began my story on Muslim prayer this way: "As a new day begins, a Muslim rises from bed, washes his face, hands and feet �" While editing this story, Gail Besse kept the whole intro or lead of my story intact but she started this way: "As darkness fades and a new day begins �" which was simply superb. Gail Besse and Bell Archer not only just taught me writing, editing and overall journalism at the Patriot Ledger newspaper in Quincy, Massachusetts; they also introduced me to the American history, culture, tradition, civilization, hospitality and the way of life. Actually, Gail Besse went further than that. She helped me take an important decision of my life correctly and start my new life in America for pursuing higher studies in journalism. That was a real turning point of my life that opened up an avenue for me to study journalism in the United States.

Candidly speaking, I was influenced to go for the graduate program in journalism in America by my predecessor, a Chinese female journalist who was the 1987 fellow under the same Alfred Friendly Press Foundation fellowship and sent to the same Patriot Ledger newspaper to work like me as a visiting journalist the year before. At the end of her fellowship, she too enrolled at the Journalism School of Northeastern University in Boston for a master's degree. Likewise, I did the same thing and we both were admitted into the program.

But before I enrolled at Northeastern for the graduate program in journalism, I sat down with Gail Besse who already became a friend and sought her advice. Her suggestion was pretty clear and convincing: "Syed, this is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If you now go back to Bangladesh, you will continue to work there as a journalist but you will never have a master's degree in journalism from an American university. On the contrary, if you stay back in Boston, you can have your MA in journalism and also stay in the profession wherever you want to."

So, I decided to continue to stay in America. As my plan to study journalism in the U.S. went ahead, journalist Gail Besse helped us with almost everything from renting a two-bedroom nice apartment for us in the North Quincy neighborhood. When we returned from New York City after attending our final meeting of the fellowship, we were surprised to see our new home. Gail Besse brought some furniture from somewhere and decorated our apartment beautifully. She bought all essential groceries for us and put them nicely in the refrigerator. She also put inside a bottle of champagne and left a note for us on the center table in the living room stating that she would visit us at the weekend.

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving Day in America in 1988 at the residence of Gail Besse's mother. As per a previously set plan, she picked us up from the Brookside House in Quincy where we were staying during that time in the morning and drove us to her mother's house in the countryside of Massachusetts. There we spent all day that day and came to know about the detailed background of Gail Besse -- her father and his military career, her mother and her charming personality -- as well as her good upbringing. We also learned about the significance of Thanksgiving holiday in America.  

Another day, Gail Besse invited us to lunch at her residence in the town of Hull on the southern edge of Boston Harbor. That was the Halloween Day in America. During that time I had no knowledge about Halloween. As we were all sitting together and having a chat at Gail Besse's beautiful house, suddenly a woman wearing a scary costume of a witch came from outside and grabbed her husband from behind making us all laugh. She was their friend and next-door neighbor. On Halloween Day, the kids wear different types of costume and collect candy from their neighbors. Some adults too have fun on this day just as this woman.

Journalist Bell Archer was a relatively quiet person and extremely polite. Even though he was a Korean War veteran, no one could guess that he was ever in the U.S. military. Within a few weeks of my visit to the Patriot Ledger, Bell Archer became quite friendly to me and took us to some amazing places of historical interest in Massachusetts. One day, he drove me and my family to the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This is the replica of a 17thcentury English Village. Visitors go there to see meticulously recreated settlement sites that tell the stories of first English settlers in America commonly known as Pilgrims.

Even after I left Patriot Ledger, our friendship with both Gail Besse and Bell Archer continued. One day in 1989, Archer called me and invited us to dinner at a restaurant. We tried to avoid it because we already had a plan to eat outside that evening and celebrate our son's birthday. He became 4-year-oldthat day. But Archer said he already made a reservation for our dinner and thus drove us to a fashionable harbor front restaurant in Scituate, Massachusetts. While we thought we were there just for the dinner, Bell Archer had a secret plan to celebrate our son's birthday there as well. So, at the end of our dinner, half a dozen beautiful waitresses suddenly emerged from the kitchen with a birthday cake, singing the "Happy Birthday to Sunny,"  "Happy Birthday to Sunny" for our son to his surprise. It also surprised my wife, me as well as other guests at the restaurant. Archer told us he already knew Sunny's date of birth.

Bell Archer took us to many other beautiful places of Massachusetts including Provincetown at the extreme tip of Cape Cod, which is the nearest point to the Atlantic Ocean. Only lucky few will come in contact with people like Gail Besse and Bell Archer. It has beena great honor and my pleasure to have this two great Americans and journalists as my friends. Wherever you two are, keep well. I wish you both the best of everything in life.
The writer is a Toronto-based
journalist who also writes for the Toronto Sun as a guest columnist








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