Jeri Heidrick Retires after 53 Years at 'The News-Review'

After 53 years producing The News-Review, in Roseburg, Ore., Jeri Heidrick retired June 8, three days short of his 74th birthday.

"I just kept learning something new every day," Heidrick told News-Review Features Editor Craig Reed. "I took it in stride, whatever the change, whether different keyboards, different machinery, different people."

Family-owned Swift Communications honored Heidrick for 50 years of service to the newspaper at a 2007 awards dinner, where a slide show revisited his decades on the job.

"He enjoyed his job, he enjoyed his work, he enjoyed the people he worked with," said his sister Debbie Heidrick.

Calling it "extraordinary" for a business today to have an employee for more than 50 years, Reed quotes Publisher Mark Raymond saying of Heidrick, "The guy is more than a survivor, he has continued to push us for quality and deadlines. He's noisy and feisty, he has a wide range of interests, and we already miss his presence."

Having worked several jobs after graduating high school near Salem, Heidrick moved south to Roseburg in 1956, where he drove a log truck for about a year before joining the News-Review, where he started by setting hot metal type. Fifty-three years later, he sat at a computer on which he moved display ads onto completed news pages, then output negatives for the press crew.