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September 21, 2006

Soldier from the North High Point & Jamestown area is killed in Iraq

Army Spc. Cpl. Robert Thomas Callahan died Tuesday in Iraq when the humvee he was riding in turned over. He was 22 years old and had a young wife.

Bobby Callahan grew up in that odd little area of Guilford County that I never know what to call. It's not in High Point city limits, but is almost entirely surrounded by the city and has a Jamestown address.

I spent a lot of time with his family today talking about him. They were incredibly gracious. I'm always amazed when families let a reporter into their lives during such difficult times. I know for some it helps with the grieving -- to talk about their loved one -- but they put in incredible trust in us that we will do the story right.

Bobby Callahan's death is a sad story. But the way in which he turned his life around before his second tour in Iraq is uplifting. See tomorrow's News & Record for the full thing.

Update: The Army release about Callahan's death can be found here. They list him at a different rank than what his family said last week.

Update II: Several people have asked me about services for Bobby. There will be a visitation Thursday evening, although family members have told me they would like to keep that private, and there will be a public burial at 11 a.m. Friday at Forest Lawn Cemetery. The obituary his family ran can be found here and there is a link from that page to a guest book where people can leave their condolences.

Also I caught up with the right person at Fort Drum today (Wednesday) and found out that Callahan was promoted posthumously to corporal, hence the discrepenancy above.

Update III: The story about his burial can be found here.

Posted by Jonathan Jones at September 21, 2006 5:33 PM

Comments

I don’t know who authored the headline for article of our local fallen hero but I found it to be extremely tacky. I do realize the person writing the article does not always write the headline.

I picked up my morning paper from the driveway this morning it was folded so the first thing I saw was “wild teen found”. My first thought was “wild teen found where”??? As I continued to read I was disgusted to realize the local paper was referring to a soldier who died.

Personally, I think this newspaper owns him and his family a public apology.

What was the purpose of using a tabloid headline?

Posted by: disappointed at September 22, 2006 11:40 PM

I was very disappointed in the headline that was written for a soldier, Bobby Callahan, who died serving his country in Iraq last week.

This young man put his life on the line for all of us so. We should be grateful to the young men who are sacrificing their lives and families for us. This headline should have been better written. I think an apology is due to his family.

Posted by: Marlene Patterson at September 23, 2006 7:01 PM

Marlene,

You could not before right; I am still waiting for the editor of this paper to comment.

I did notice the headline changed on the online version of the article unfortunately no comment from the paper as to why!

Posted by: disappointed at September 23, 2006 10:43 PM

I agree with both comments posted above. Yesterday I emailed the newspaper about this article. When I saw the headline " Wild Teen" I was apalled that a reputable newspaper would word this in such a tacky manner. They are no better than the tabloids when they will exploit someone's memory in order to gain reader's attention. I also agree that an apology is due to the family.

Posted by: Vickie Coleman at September 24, 2006 12:54 AM

"Disappointed", I'm certainly not the editor of the paper, but your comments have at least been heard by me. I was away from the computer for a couple of days, so didn't see them until this morning.

I understand all of the concerns listed above with the headline. It was not written by me and I can't really answer why it was used because I wasn't there. What I can explain is a bit about the headline writing process. When reporters turn in their stories they put a suggested headline in the file -- it's rarely the actual headline because we're often too long-winded and we certainly don't know the space the page designer will have to work with. The suggested headline is meant largely to help the copy desk know what the reporter thinks the gist of the story is.

My suggested headline for this story was "Fallen soldier found himself in the Army." -- I didn't realize it at the time, but on re-writing it see that it would be a bad headline because you can read that sentence two different ways: That a soldier figured out who he was in the Army, or that someone was in the Army who didn't want to be and died as a result.

When the story gets moved to copy editors and page designers they'll revise, or write a new, headline for the story that captures the sentiment of it and fits the amount of space they have open for a headline. It's not an easy process by any means -- sometimes a word you really want to use just pushes the headline off the page and you have to look for a synonym of some sort, while retaining the meaning.

The difference between online headlines and paper edition headlines has more to do with they way our publishing systems work than anything else -- and that's why it's not uncommon for the two to differ. Often the online headline is closer to what the reporter suggested because the Web site does not have the same space constraints.

As for Bobby Callahan's family -- I spoke with them several times on Thursday and again on Friday. Before the story ever went to print -- and before the headline was ever written -- I talked with them about my plans to lead the story with Bobby's wild teen years.

Throughout my conversations with his family they all kept coming back to how much he changed while he was in the Army. I wanted to make that the central theme of the story because it seemed so important to them, but in order to do so I had to deal with what I expected to be a sensitive topic -- who he was before the Army. I was surprised that his family was not only receptive to me starting with that part of his life, but endorsed it.

I spoke with them about it beforehand for two reasons: first, because I wanted to gauge whether they were comfortable with it; second, because I did not want them to pick up the paper on Friday and be surprised with what I had written.

I know all this doesn't answer several of the questions y'all have asked -- and that's because I don't know enough about what happened after I filed the story to be able to answer them -- but I hope it's given some additional perspective on how the story was handled by the paper.

Jonathan

Posted by: Jonathan Jones at September 24, 2006 11:15 AM

Thank you so much for the explaination of the operations of the newspaper world, but this in no way explains the lack of professionalism, on the part of the Greensboro News and Record, for the representation of OUR FALLEN SOILDER! This didn't just happen to the Callahan family but this happened to our community as a whole. It is the responsiblity of this newspaper to report the news and represent this COMMUNITY! Bobby Callahan died preserving the American dream for all of us and we should feel honored and proud to have him as a member of our community. I certainly hope that a WRITTEN apology is issued EXTREMELY SOON or I for one will bocot this paper! Shame on you!!!!!

Georgia Ellis

Posted by: Georgia Ellis at September 25, 2006 11:20 AM

My name is Todd ELlis. Im 19 years old and im from that same North High Point/Jamestown area that Bobby Callahan was from. Let me tell everybody something... Bobby Callahan was a great man. I grew up with Bobby and he was one of my baseball teachers. The one thing that I am sick of is how everybody keeps referring to the departed as wild teen and such. Its just disrespectful, the man gave his life for the rights and liberties that we live for right this very moment. DOnt be so quick to judge, Bobby Callahan is the most honorable man i know.

Posted by: Todd Ellis at September 25, 2006 11:51 AM

It's a very tragic situation when someone fighting for our country is taken away in the line of duty. My prayers go out to his family.

Posted by: Angela Miller at October 27, 2006 10:36 PM

I would just like to say that as you realized Bobby was not just a "wild teen." Bobby was a great man- he was my younger sister's husband. I did't know him long or long enough for that matter, but I hope that there are more people like you that realize who he was and what he thought he was accomplishing. I do appreciate the explaination as to why the title was as such and I hope that we can all just move past that and remember BOBBY.

Posted by: Jennifer at October 31, 2006 10:10 AM