Sources, luck are the roots of good reporting
A reporter is only as good as her sources.
In the case of my August story on the anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, my sources were excellent.
A semiretired manufacturer's representative, a retired college and high school biology teacher and a Chicago area theater artist - suburban holdovers of the Woodstock nation - shared memories of the iconic festival, held 50 years ago last August on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in upstate New York.
They waxed eloquent about the remarkable variety of music - some of the best they'd ever heard - some of it played by unknowns who went on to become legends. They recalled the enormous crowd, the endless traffic jam as well as the rain, food shortages and deteriorating sanitary conditions.
Their fondest memories centered on the camaraderie and good will they say existed among roughly 400,000 strangers during what each one described as a singular life experience.
Speaking passionately and enthusiastically, they painted vivid pictures of the event and the people they encountered: compassionate locals, tolerant police officers, generous concertgoers. They told hugely entertaining stories, each of which included references to waking up to Grace Slick (who they called Gracie) singing with The Jefferson Airplane.
Talk about good sources. However, I can't take credit for uncovering these Woodstock raconteurs. Social media and print media brought us together.
David Zacher, of Northbrook, saw our Facebook post asking people to share their Woodstock memories and emailed an editor offering himself as a source.
Laine Gurley-Galatte's 93-year-old father, a faithful reader, noticed a blurb in the print edition seeking Woodstock attendees and told the Wauconda resident, "the newspaper wants to interview you."
A hunch and a former colleague's recommendation led me to the Old Town School of Folk Music and former instructor Richard Pettengill, of Highland Park. The chairman of Lake Forest College's theater department attended Woodstock as a 15-year-old. He was captured in one of photographer Elliott Landy's crowd shots.
Natural storytellers, they made my job easy. I asked the right questions; they did the rest. More than anything, encountering David, Laine and Richard proved my maxim that it's better to be lucky than good.
If I've uttered that phrase once in the Daily Herald newsroom, I've uttered it a thousand times. Editors usually respond in one of two ways. (Three if you count the chuckles). Some say, "It's better to be both." Others insist that "being good, means making your own luck."
In the end, I guess it's a little of both.