by Jill Ragar Esfeld
jill.esfeld@theleaven.org
“I’m just going to goof off for a bit, and I’m not going to think,” said senior reporter for The Leaven newspaper, Joe Bollig. “I’m going to mow the lawn; I’m going to take naps; I’m going to talk to the squirrels.
“There are a million different projects around my house that I need to do, and I have a stack of books as high as the house I’d like to read.”
And so Bollig, an award-winning journalist whose expertise in all things Catholic has benefited The Leaven almost as much as his reporting skills, is hanging up his keyboard for the last time.
As of Sept. 13, more than 30 years after he first started with the paper, Bollig has officially retired.
“Joe is a reporter’s reporter,” said managing editor Anita McSorley. “He won us lots of awards. But it’s also true that he is a very funny guy.
“He was the cut-up of our Leaven family for many, many years.”
And within that family, Bollig was known as the great explainer.
“He gave shape and substance to many a program that started out as just words,” McSorley said. “Priests and ministers talk to each other in a language not always easily understood by us mere mortals.
“It was Joe who served as our translator. He will be sorely missed.”
In 1993, Bollig heard about a job opening at The Leaven — ironically through a Jewish woman who was friends with his brother.
“She saw a notice for The Leaven,” he recalled. “So this nice Jewish lady tipped off my brother and my brother tipped me off, and I applied.
“My gratitude will forever be to the Chosen People for steering me to the Catholic newspaper.”
But The Leaven is a nonprofit newspaper with a tight budget, and Bollig was a seasoned reporter with a background in broadcast and newspaper journalism, as well as a master’s degree from the University of Kansas.
“They didn’t want to hire me because I was overqualified,” he said. “And I thought, ‘I really want this job.’
“So, I told them something really corny.”
The Leaven editor Father Mark Goldasich recalls that corny line as one of his favorite memories of Bollig.
“Joe was clearly an experienced journalist, and knowledgeable about the faith,” he said. “But it was when he told us that by hiring him, we’d be getting a Cadillac at a Chevy’s price that I knew we had our man.
“Ever since that time, Joe has put that way with words to use on behalf of The Leaven — the wider church, in fact. And we couldn’t be more grateful.”
Bollig may have called himself a Cadillac, but he’s never really seen himself that way.
“I’m a simple guy,” he said. “There are times when I’ve broken down complicated things like embryonic stem-cell research. But I consider myself a plain, vanilla, off-the-shelf average reporter.”
Perhaps his most essential quality to the tiny staff was the fact that he was a bit of an iron man.
“Joe could be counted on no matter what,” said production manager Todd Habiger. “After he had a heart attack, he was back at work within a couple of weeks churning out stories.”
Habiger also remembers Bollig’s commitment after an eye surgery to repair a torn retina.
The surgery happened suddenly while Bollig was working on an important story and Habiger went to his house to help.
“Joe has terrible handwriting,” he recalled. “So, he was peering through the bandages wrapped around his eyes trying to decipher his handwriting for me as we attempted to finish this article on time.”
Bollig grew up in St. Joseph Parish in Hays under the guidance of the Capuchin-Franciscan friars.
“I was an altar boy and I was really into it,” he recalled. “To me, the church has been a portal to beauty and transcendence and deep thinking.
“Here you are growing up in western Kansas and ‘Smokey and the Bandits’ is playing at the local theater. And then, you go to Mass and you learn about really profound truths of life and eternity.
“I admired the Capuchin Franciscans so much.”
That deep love for the church was central to Bollig’s reporting style.
“He’s read so much about church history,” said Habiger. “This job was like a ministry to Joe and he was absolutely brilliant at it.”
Bollig’s deep faith combined with his sociable personality made him an effective interviewer and an expert storyteller.
“I’ll always remember my first day at The Leaven,” said fellow reporter Moira Cullings, who now succeeds Joe as senior reporter. “I tagged along with Joe as he covered an archdiocesan convocation.
“As seriously as he took his reporting, he was equally as enthusiastic about the taco bar that was provided for lunch.
“I knew there would never be a dull moment working with Joe.”
The key to Bollig’s talented writing was his motto to always “look for the human being; make every story about people.”
To Bollig, the most important story in The Leaven newspaper was not necessarily on the front page.
“The most important story in the paper is completely subjective,” he said. “It could be the last tiny story buried inside because that’s the story that’s about your parish or it’s a story a grandma sees that mentions her grandson at a Catholic school.”
In addition to finding the human element in a story, Bollig was a consummate master at keeping the reader’s interest.
“You have to make readers want to start the story and finish the story,” he said. “You can’t force people to read. You have to entice them.
“Make them laugh, cry, angry, outraged; make them curious — but don’t bore them.”
What’s next for Bollig after taking it easy and putting a dent in his list of home projects?
What many people may not know is Bollig has won awards and been published as a short-story fiction writer.
“I’ll probably do fun creative writing,” he said. “I’ve already started a hobby of writing fiction. I entered a contest and it kind of went on from there.
“I’ve won several awards and I’ve been published in two anthologies.”
As he continues down this new avenue of creative writing, Bollig carries with him the gratitude and blessings of the archdiocese he served so well.
“Joe was an old-school reporter who taught me a lot about integrity, style and commitment to each assignment,” said Cullings. “He put his best efforts into every story no matter how big or small.
“There will never be another writer like him.”
