Fallsnewspress.com - On the Mark: College course launched career

by Dorothy Markulis, Reporter

"For Women: Plan for the Second Half of Your Life."

That was the intriguing title of a class offered at the University of Akron's Community College 40 years ago.

Since both kids were in school and I had finally had some free time, I thought that might be a helpful class to take. It literally changed me, opening up the pages of journalism in my life.

And now, four decades later, I had the honor of interviewing the woman who taught that class, Kathryn Motz Hunter. She has earned the Akron Community Foundation's Bert A. Polsky Award for 2010, which recognizes her decades of humanitarian work (see story on Page 11).

Wow, talk about things coming full circle.

The class was great. Kathryn brought in representatives from different occupations and professions. We learned to write a resume. We heard from many successful women. We took a ton of aptitude tests.

My current office mates laugh -- out loud -- when I tell them I had the highest aptitude in computer skills, since I am well known as a techno peasant.

I digress.

A short time after the class, I screwed up my courage, took that resume in hand and, armed with my new-found confidence from the class, applied for a job as a part-time reporter at the old Falls News on Portage Trail.

I got the job! I know I never would have gotten it if it hadn't been for that class.

I started out writing obituaries, then moved on to columns, then school board meetings, then full-time employment and, later, the editor's job.

A couple of years after I became editor, Kathryn asked me to come back to her class to amaze her new students with my success story. Well, maybe not amaze, but at least explain the process, starting with the confidence the class gave me.

That was when I found out Kathryn was once the editor of the Falls News herself -- along with being editor of the Hudson Times.

How about that coincidence?

Last week when I was interviewing Kathryn about her lifetime of giving to others, we discussed the ink business.

She modestly discounted her editorial accomplishments.

"My dad lost his editor at the Hudson Times and asked me if I could fill in for a short time," she recalls.

A short time turned out to be 16 years, with the editorship of the Falls News thrown in. She led the two newspapers until 1963, when her dad, Clarence Motz, sold them to Lindsey Williams. I got my job with Williams in 1974.

In 1980, both papers were sold to Record Publishing Co. along with competing local papers, the City Press in Cuyahoga Falls and the Hudson Hub. The papers merged and are now printed as the Cuyahoga Falls News Press and the Hudson Hub-Times.

"They say there are two professions you never get out of your blood: railroading and newspapering," Kathryn said.

That certainly proved true for me. I retired -- then came back.

When the papers were sold in 1963, Kathryn, never one to rest on her laurels, decided to make it easier for women to re-enter the work force. That's when she came up with the idea for the course I took at Akron U.

She said she got the idea after reading Betty Friedan's revolutionary book "Feminine Mystique."

"Most married women just didn't work then. If a woman went to work, it was because her husband didn't make enough money. I have seen that whole idea change," Kathryn said.

And how. It's a whole new world.

"The class was certainly fun," Kathryn said. "It was interesting and challenging."

Amen.

Thanks, Kathryn, for steering me in the right direction. Count me as one of the thousands of people you have helped in your amazing life.

E-mail: dmarkulis@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-686-3943