News-Record.com

I don't know their names, but I wanted to thank the front desk staff at the Airport Marriott for helping me get my story on minimizing noise from the planned FedEx hub in today's paper.

The last in a series of three meetings at the Marriott on a noise-abatement plan for the hub was running late Tuesday night - very late. It was scheduled to end at 8:30 p.m., but the discussion was still raging at 10 p.m. - the time my story was due.

Fortunately, most of the story was already written based on an earlier meeting, but I needed to dictate some updates to the story from the late meeting. Unfortunately, my cell phone died around 9:45 p.m.

Unable to find a pay phone, I turned to the front desk staff, who were happy to provide me one of the phones from behind the front desk to call my editor despite the fact that a) I wasn't a registered guest and b) I'm sure I had a slightly crazed look in my eye because the story was late.

Five or six phone calls and an hour later, the story was wrapped up (thanks to Eric Dyer for taking my rat-a-tat-tat dictation and the copy desk for helping make some sense of the story). I wanted to thank the people at the front desk for helping, but unfortunately they were busy with actual paying customers.

But I just wanted them to know their help was appreciated.