“My Life in the Candy Store” presented by Terry Hersom

Retired Sioux City Journal Sports Editor Terry Hersom will present “My Life in the Candy Store” at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 6 at the Betty Strong Encounter Center. Admission will be free; a reception will follow.

In his illustrated program, Hersom will cover highlights from his 45 years in the newspaper industry. Thirty-eight of those years were spent as The Journal’s sports editor.

He’ll elaborate on remarkable people he’s had the privilege to meet and interview, singling out some favorites, some least favorites and his regret over an interview that never happened.

 “Some years back, I went web surfing for an attribution for something I once read, comparing newspaper sports departments to candy stores. I’ve had no luck pinning down the individual who came up with this line, but it’s a pretty fair metaphor,” says the award-winning sports journalist.

Hersom will discuss the complexity of covering the Siouxland sports scene and his good fortune in dealing with an impressive array of homegrown individuals who have accomplished so much.

He’ll take the audience back to the youthful origin of his career when he and his older brother, Bob, dreamed of becoming legendary athletes.

 “Although we were quite mediocre in anything more strenuous than Parcheesi, we both wound up among the very limited number of people employed as sports journalists,” says the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native.

For more than three decades the Hersom brothers were among barely more than 900 in their business entrusted with a vote for the Heisman Trophy awarded each year by New York City’s Downtown Athletic Club.

In his youth, Hersom also was drawn to music. “I flipped a coin between a career in music and newspapering. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I took the one that looked like it would be the most fun,” says the father of two. “More than four decades later, I feel like it was the best choice, largely because it spared me from the dreadful task of having to grow up.”

Hersom served as The Journal’s sports editor from Nov. 27, 1977, until Jan. 1, 2016. He graduated from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids and University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

As a college sophomore, Hersom began his newspaper career as a part‐timer at The Waterloo Courier and then The Cedar Falls Record where he became sports editor just as he was beginning his senior year.

In August 1972, barely two months after graduation, he left The Record for The Ottumwa Courier where he worked until being hired to succeed Alex Stoddard who was retiring after 32 years as The Journal’s sports editor. Hersom and his wife, Linda, have two sons. Jason lives in Dakota Dunes and Jim in Omaha.