A Father's Day tribute: Thanks, Dad, for kicking me out of the nest
With Father's Day just around the corner, I'm reflecting on how proud I am to have had a dad who was my career and life role model.
I'm most grateful for the fact that he kicked me out of the nest. Not literally, of course. He just launched me in his gentle, guiding manner.
I was a teen trying to decide on a major at Penn State, and I chose journalism. My dad, Wally, was managing editor at The Sharon Herald at the time. In the Army, he was assistant city editor of the Mid-Pacifican in Honolulu, a tabloid newspaper rebranded as the Stars and Stripes. He started his career in the Shenango Valley as a Farrell city reporter.
And although I grew up in a close-knit family, my parents both knew when it was time for me to fly on my own, and they gave me gentle guidance with reluctance, knowing I might be moving somewhere else.
But my father was firm about one thing. That I would absolutely not ever work at The Herald, as long as he was affiliated with it, and I would have to find a job on my own and develop my own self, career-wise, as a journalist. And quite frankly, I never expected anything different.
He didn't believe in nepotism.
He never criticized my work. He never told me how to write a news story.
Like a robin whose young are ready to leave the nest, he taught me, then just let me fly.
Now, as a journalist for 48 years in New Castle, I'm scratching my head as I cover the New Castle Area School District and see people running for school board then magically, their kids get teaching and principal jobs.
I guess I have to wonder why they don't kick their own children out of the nest as well, to see where they fly and how well they can develop on their own initiatives. Who knows how far they advance in life, or where their paths would lead them?
I understand the mindset they don't want their kids to leave home. But they're not doing them any favors. Just think of where they might go and who they might become if given the freedom to choose and go to unexplored places.
Thanks to my dear dad and his quiet advice, I was lucky to launch my own newspaper career through an internship at the New Castle News that I landed by applying through Penn State's journalism school. When I told my parents, they were surprised but happy.
During those three months of my internship, I quickly was able to make friends and contacts at the paper, and Maxine Carlson, The News' lifestyle editor at the time, loved my work and called me when I went back to school. Fred and Dick Rentz - the big bosses - Executive Editor Len Kolasinski, and Managing Editor Bob Vosburg had faith in her decision and gave her the go-ahead to hire me.
She said she was holding the job open for me when I graduated in another couple of months. That was 1978, 48 years ago.
I was elated. I was able to stay close to home, still within driving distance of my childhood home and parents in Hermitage and pursue my own career in a totally different community.
Although I was raised in Mercer County, I made Lawrence County my home.
I'm extremely proud of my parents for their strong ethics, as I hope I have made them proud.
My mom worked at a hospital. My dad distanced himself from my career decisions, although he was always there as a solid dad figure in my life.
They were happy I was working in a nearby town within a short drive, and they always did want me to move back in with them - what parent doesn't? But they understood that once launched, I was on my own.
They still got my full loving attention on weekends and those awaited phone calls every night, and I still got their loving attention in return. None of that ever changed.
When my dad fell sick, then my mom, I made the drive to Hermitage to be by their bedsides every day after work and on weekends until they laid their heads down at night, up until the very end.
I feel lucky to have had the career I have and the parents I had, and to have been able to stay so close to home. But I'm also proud to say I did it on my own.
I can't tell others how to live their lives. I only know that my father wisely knew what life was all about and he was right about it all.
On Father's Day and every day, he is and always will be my forever hero.
Debbie Wachter is a New Castle News reporter covering county government, crime and school boards.
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This story was originally published June 23, 2026 at 2:39 PM.