Contact me via email: [email protected]
Hi! I'm Don. I'm uncomfortable with the title "Founder," but I suppose that's what I am for The West Brazos Herald (in society's view, anyway).
God is the Herald's real Founder of course. I'm just the guy to whom God gave the Vision for this Holy Venture, and I'm the guy doing a lot of the initial grunt work in setting this thing up.
When I originally set up this site, back in early 2019, the idea that eventually became The West Brazos Herald was much different. For starters, the paper was going to be called the Sweeny Herald, and the plan was to circulate it almost exclusively in churches. We were going to be much more humble and smaller than we have ended up becoming.
Things changed when the County News, which was a free distribution paper covering the entire West Brazos area (Sweeny, West Columbia, Brazoria and more), surprised a lot of folks by printing its "Final Issue" on Sept. 19.
Moments after I read editor Anthony Maenza's touching final words in that paper, I started getting emails, phone calls and texts from folks I'd told about my plans for the Sweeny Herald.
"It's time, Don," several friends said.
So, I made a few changes to the business plan, and The West Brazos Herald came to be. (Well, as of this writing, on November 3, 2019, the paper's inaugural issue still awaits, but, this thing is, definitely, a go!)
We serve an ON TIME God. Thanks be to Him for that timing.
For posterity's sake, I'll just go ahead and leave the bulk of what I wrote in this spot. It gets to the heart of who I am and what this blessed little paper is all about. It mentions the Sweeny Herald instead of the West Brazos Herald, and I no longer work at Family Dollar. Sorry if that's confusing. I'm guessing its not THAT confusing. ?
Here goes:
I'm writing this "bio" in late February 2019, as news about The Herald's 2020 start-up is only beginning to make rounds. A lot of people around the area know me only as the the "God Bless You Guy" behind one of the registers at the Sweeny Family Dollar store where I've been an assistant manger since October 2018 (and, apparently, some customers have taken to affectionately calling me "Friar Tuck," too. Ha!). So, since The Vision calls me to begin leading community meetings about this venture relatively soon, I figured I should give you, Dear Herald Reader and Supporter, a little about my pre-Herald life, particularly my testimony of how God moved me from big-city (secular) media dreams in the 1980's to following His call to set up a Christ-centered newspaper in little ole' Sweeny, Texas in 2019.
Here goes.
I grew up in Corpus Christi (Latin for Body of Christ, by the way, but that's a whole other story), moved many times to attend colleges and/or take jobs all over Texas for 30 years, and finally settled in Sweeny with my wife Cheryl in 2014.
Though this blessed little city is where my mother grew up, where my parents were married, and where I spent many-a-holiday and summer vacation as a kid at my grandparents' awesome country home, it's, literally, the last place High School Don would have figured I'd end up settling to start a newspaper.
See, I'm a media guy. Since my high school days in the mid 80's, I've been a newspaper reporter, a radio DJ, a high school and college journalism teacher, an internet radio station owner, and a freelance media jack-of-all-trades for companies of all sorts.
And quiet little Sweeny definitely isn't a media hotbed. Ha!
Alas, -- fresh off a full blown Visitation of the Holy Spirit at my blessed Father's House Church (just down the road from Sweeny) -- I've come to fully realize God's Call to get The Sweeny Herald going.
And it's about time!
I spent several decades missing that Call!
Though I ignored Him, God first began reaching out to me with this Call via my grandmother in about 1983 when I joined my high school newspaper staff and started winning scholastic journalism awards. As grand parents are wont to do, my awesome Grandma loved to dote on me for all that success. When I'd call or come to Sweeny for a visit, she was always quick to ask about my latest articles and offer praise for my skill at writing.
But then, as all of the awards gradually turned into high-faultin dreams of a dignified, very-well compensated career in journalism, I found Grandma's reaction, well, strange.
I'd excitedly report that I was, one day, going to be a member of the White House Press Corp and/or a beat writer for the Houston Astros and/or the Editor of The New York Times with 15-20 Pulitzer Prizes to my name. And Grandma would just sort of ignore me.
"You know, Don, Sweeny never has had its very own newspaper," she'd say.
"There's a lot to write about in Sweeny, but the (Brazosport) Facts or the (Houston) Post hardly ever get to us," she'd lament. "We have churches coming out our ears, and I know ours (Sweeny First Methodist) is always doing something good. And we always have neat stuff going on at the library (where Grandma worked for decades)," she'd go on.
"Just something to think about, Don."
It was always awkward steering the conversation back to my own dreams after that. But High School Don was pretty stubborn. He did it anyway.
I hope you see my point by now, Dear Reader: I should have realized Grandma's "something to think about" was actually God's Calling on my life.
Alas, I didn't know God in those days (though I thought I did, of course). And I believed fully in my public school's encouragement to "follow your dreams, Don."
So I just dismissed Grandma as being a little off and followed my big dreams into a floundering career in small-to-medium market radio and newspapers. In about 2000, I transitioned to a brief, ill-fated, career in academia and then a years-long struggle to make it as a freelancer.
Thanks be to God, I never did put my name into the hat for a spot on the White House Press Corp and/or the Houston Astros beat. It's funny. I wouldn't even want a job like that these days. My "dream", clearly, was never my Calling!
Thanks be to God, I've finally thought about it, Grandma!
These days, I'm committed to God's Call to build The Sweeny Herald! As He would have it, the churches, and libraries, and families and businesses and Godly people of the West Brazos area will finally have their own media outlet! (And, if you've followed the Business Plan link above, you know Sweeny is only the beginning!)
Christ calls us to "therefore go and make disciples of all nations." (Matthew 19). And he's got some disciple-making Good News to share right here in Sweeny, Texas, USA. So let's go!