Act soon, a new race is on for Eugene accommodations during the reunion weekend

Hayward Field has just been selected as the site for the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials

By Don Mack and Mike Thoele

First, a word to the wise: Make lodging plans now if you’ll be traveling to Eugene for the long-awaited RG Golden Era newsroom reunion next year.

Overnight accommodations in and around town may be hard to find — and expensive — during the last week of June.

That’s because the 2024 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team Trials will be held June 21 to 30 at Hayward Field, USA Track & Field announced Sept. 21.

Our event is 1-5 pm Saturday, June 29.

Staying with friends or relatives in the Eugene area is an obvious solution. Another is for local RG retirees to open their homes for overnight guests. (Don and Ann Mack can accommodate four out-of-towners in two upstairs bedrooms with twin beds and a full bathroom.)

If you’d prefer to book your own lodging, check out the Travel Lane County website: https://www.eugenecascadescoast.org/

In other reunion developments…

We’re delighted to announce that Fred Crafts* has enthusiastically accepted our invitation to emcee the 4-hour gathering of newsroom alumni.

Mac’s Custom Catering will run a no-host bar from 1 to 5 and a buffet of light appetizers from 2 to 4.

Formal registration for the reunion opens March 1. Watch your email in late February for a print/online registration form we’re asking everyone to complete and return no later than June 15.

Costs for the event (including catering and sound system rental) will be covered by a registration fee of $50 per attendee.

Check the Golden Era website for occasional reunion updates and newsroom alumni news (like recently published books by retirees Bob Welch and Paul Neville).

RG Golden Era origins

For everyone who’s curious about the origin of the RG Golden Era reunion, here’s a nice backgrounder by Mike Thoele, a founding member of our steering committee:

The birth of the upcoming 2024 reunion of RG newsroom veterans flowed from an after-dinner conversation among a reminiscing handful of those journalists in February 2019.

What happened next would certainly be understood by any Bridezilla whose plan for a 15-minute nuptial ceremony at the courthouse somehow morphed to an extravaganza for long-forgotten friends and distant relatives.

That first conversation focused on the RG newsroom of the 1970s and inevitably proceeded to thoughts of, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get some of that bunch together again?”

The ensuing brainstorming led us to an initial list of a couple dozen potential invitees to a small gathering that we envisioned being held at the rural home of a retired reporter from that era.

But the guest list wouldn’t stabilize.

As we continued detailing the idea of a small reunion we would recall other former ’70s staffers who ought to be at the party. We had evolved to a nine-member steering committee and quickly found ourselves thinking also about newsroom alums of the ’80s and ’90s.

Establishing the whereabouts of former colleagues became an intriguing challenge to our mothballed reporting skills. The guest list grew. And grew.

Soon enough we were eyeing the Summer 2020 calendar, talking to caterers and prospecting event locations. In February of that year we picked a June date and fired out invitations. The response was enthusiastic.

Meanwhile, back in China . . . a pesky virus was troubling public health officials. By late winter of 2019 Covid had reached the USA.

In March of 2020 our committee reluctantly announced postponement of the reunion — and promised to keep the idea alive.

If there was a positive side to the setback it was that the 30-month pandemic interlude gave us loads of time to locate even more former newsroom staffers.

Now, in autumn 2023, our calendars are firmly marked for the June 29, 2024 reunion in the spacious lobby of the office building at 3500 Chad Drive, where many of us worked…until none of us did.

The concept has evolved. We still see the ’70s as the historical catalyst for this gathering. But we’re embracing the newsroom generations who came after us and signaling that all are welcome.

*Fred Crafts was The Register-Guard’s arts and entertainment reporter/editor for decades, retiring in 2004. His time at The Register-Guard was broken by stints as an anchorman/reporter for CBS Radio News in Los Angeles and Fine Arts Editor of the Los Angeles Times. After retirement, he founded, and ran, the audio theater company Radio Redux. He currently lives in Eugene and Prescott. AZ, with his wife Marti Gerdes, a longtime R-G copy editor and freelance writer.