Hey! Desdinova! I Think I Found Out What Happened To Brian Lewis

Lots of things are happening this Tuesday night. Obama, Clinton, Huckabee, Romney, McCain: hey, they are all winners in my book. Huckabee's spoke, Romney spoke, Clinton spoke. Still waiting for Obama and McCain. Those two missed the news window for the 10 o'clock news. Obama and McCain eventually spoke this evening, to paraphrase their speeches: yes we can and I'm glad I found a home. Now just waiting for the networks to call Missouri and California. Clinton's projected to win in California (11:22 pm), AP calls Missouri for Clinton. The Drudge Report has MO in Obama column at 11:26pm. I just heard Obermann say Obama was 9600 votes ahead in MO.

But perhaps more importantly, I think I found the answer to the question that has been bugging local blogger and masked supervillian Desdinova. As he writes on his blog, "Most underrated locally: What happened to Brian Lewis at the News Leader? I didn't always agree with him but I enjoyed reading his blog and his editorials. It was like overnight he was gone from the News Leader."

A while back, when we posted a riff we ripped off from Desdinova: Whatever happened to Brian Lewis? I didn't realize I would find out. And that it has a connection to my living in Springfield.

Back in 1964 my father brought my mother and all ten of us kids (we were a good Catholic family) to Springfield, MO. He was the newly appointed editor of the Catholic Mirror newspaper. We lived at 662 South Florence Avenue, just up the street from the girl's dorm. It is now the Ecumenical Center. Our next door neighbor was the head of the ROTC and across the street lived the Pastor of Cherry Street Baptist Church, Pastor Gilming, and his family.

Then we moved to 1822 South National, in a big red brick house on the Southeast corner of National and Sunshine, across from BJ Marsh's house (isn't that interesting). The house is long gone, it location is now a St. John's parking lot. But I think the magnolia trees that lined the driveway are still there. My father retired from the newspaper in the 90s and passed over to the other side on Halloween, 2003 (I think I'll let the mystery be)Anyhow, I still get the Mirror and I read it. I posted earlier about the new bishop and how he is a bonafide hero. In the February 1, 2008 print issue of the Mirror, , there is an article about the new bishop. The headline of the article is:

"As the papal nuncio in Washington announced the pope's appointment of Fr. James (J.) Vann Johnston, Jr., as our new bishop, Bp.-designate Johnston greeted the faithful in Springfield, Cape Girardeau"

That's quite a headline but what is more interesting is the by-line: "By Brian Lewis". The link on line to the article is here.

So, Desdinova, we know where Brian Lewis ended up but not why. We know he was a religion editor for Gannett previously, so this may be the natural place for him to end up, especially if he wanted to stay in the religious press.

While on line at the-mirror.org, I thought I'd take a look around, scope out the site and just see what's there.

At the top of the main page, in red, we see 'home', 'announcements', and eventually, 'contacting us'. I clicked on contacting us and got to this page.

It is a page with the mission statement(note the date), and a link to a map with links to parish information.

Friday, Oct. 19, 2007
Mission Statement:
“The Mirror, as the official newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, shares in the diocesan mission of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ by providing its readers with local, national, and international information pertaining to the Catholic faith.”
See map below for parish, mission, and chapel locations. Click here for a map with links to parish information.

See where it says, "Click here for a map with links to parish information"?, well, go ahead and do it.