Josh Crotzer Remembers Tommy Martin of Gaffney

 Josh Crotzer was related to Mr Paul Beam, former school supe of Cherokee County SC, and also to my friend Mike Francis on his Mother's side. She was beautiful woman as are Josh's three sisters. For a while Josh wrote for the Cherokee Chronicle founded by Tommy Martin. Josh wrote the segment of the Gaffney Tunnel for Tommy's Labor of Love published four years ago on the 100 year history of Gaffney High School football, eighteen times state champion.

     Crotzer, a good Methodist majored in English at Wofford. It shows in this piece he posted today on facebook about our friend Tommy Martin, a character and Gaffney Icon.

       There's lots to say about Tommy E. Martin. Too many words to fit into a few column inches, were that my goal.

He made us laugh, for sure. The humorous stories, quotes, and barbs are seemingly endless.

“I’m smarter than I look. ‘Course, I’d have to be.”

His frequent generosity made us feel grateful. He was a man that very rarely said no when given the opportunity to help.

He warmed us with his kindness and mercy. He was uninterested in shame as consequence for mistakes. He just encouraged us to learn from them. Laugh at them, if you can. Do better and move on.

Perhaps, most significantly, he brought us together in his role as a newspaper man.

For my money, you can have your preachers and your politicians. They do fine work on our behalf (some at least), but give me a newspaper man like Tommy Martin, who treats delivering the news to his neighbors as a mission of service. A profitable venture it certainly is not, and Tommy was never fool enough to treat it as such.

He understood the power that even a little paper like The Cherokee Chronicle yielded, and he curated it for good.

Shining a light into darkness is an apt, although over-used, metaphor for journalism. But the light Tommy shone wasn't limited to the shady corners of our community that needed exposition.

It was for the unlit among us. He loved finding untold stories or new versions of oft-told tales. Like any reporter, a scoop and a big front-page headline excited him. But more often than not, he'd brag about the number of people that appeared in all the pages of a particular issue - the kids in a theatre production, the teams playing for titles, the organizations getting donations. Close-ups may win awards, but group shots meant more people "made the paper."

Having worked at The Chronicle from 1997-2003, I learned a lot from Tommy Martin, often while listening to him wax poetic while he waxed column inches in the old school method of laying out a newspaper. In addition to much more, he taught me about telling the stories of people and place. As a writer for South Carolina Living, I'm very fortunate to still be telling those kinds of stories. I get to travel through the state, meet people in places I've never even heard of, and capture a little something about them that's worth knowing.

In every one of those stories, I'm applying those lessons I learned from him. I’m taking the light he shared with me and sharing it with others.

Ann, Jon, Josh, and Tiffany, you are in my heart and prayers. We miss him dearly.