Over the next few weeks, we will be bringing you a new series of articles entitled Learning the Ropes. This series will provide reflections from those who built The Amarillo Pioneer and what that journey has looked like over the past eight years.
By Thomas Warren III, Editor-in-Chief
Sitting at a table at Fuddruckers in May 2016, I was complaining about the Amarillo Globe-News with my father. Now, this was by no means an uncommon conversation, as I had frustrations with the AGN and the way it had been reporting on the City Council for a while. But this conversation ended up being a little bit different than the others.
“What if we started our own newspaper,” my dad asked.
I thought about it briefly before dismissing him. “You’re crazy, old man,” I was thinking. “This would never work.”
Still, that little comment from my dad ended up sticking with me — and I chewed on it for a few days. I wondered if it could really be successful. And, on top of that, I was planning on going to Baylor University when I got done at Amarillo College. How could I make it all work?
Despite the question marks, I agreed that it was an endeavor worth taking on. “Alright,” I told my dad a few nights later. “Let’s give it a shot.”
What followed was a few weeks of planning and a lot of talking to people in the community. Many people sympathized with us, but few actually gave it much chance of working. Still, I was a kid who had just gotten into business economics and had become obsessed with “Shark Tank.”
“What if this is the next big thing nobody sees coming,” I asked myself.
Well, almost eight years later, we haven’t gotten invited onto “Shark Tank.” And I’m probably not going to be the next Ted Turner in the pantheon of media moguls. What we have done, however, is create an institution that is uniquely Amarillo. Looking back, it’s really a miracle that everything lined up for this journey to happen in the first place. And much it is due to unexpected life changes.
When we put out our first edition through email in late June 2016, I’m not sure anyone had super high expectations. We did a little PDF newspaper that had some stories about the City Council and downtown. It was by no means high-quality journalism. Still, it was a launching point for what has become one of my biggest projects over the past several years.
Starting from that little PDF newspaper that about 30 people got to ending up where we are today, I am thrilled with the results. Still, looking back, I can see that any small change in my life or the lives of those of us who have made The Pioneer a reality could have changed the entire trajectory of this project. And there is one life change that I can look back to, in particular, as a turning point.
In January 2017, my grandfather fell on the ice in his backyard and broke his hip. He ended up in rehab and — after issues with being prescribed the wrong medications — was able to come home around March or April of 2017. Prior to this fall, my grandparents had been pretty independent folks. And all of that changed with this one little slip.
My parents asked other family members if they could help with my grandparents and nobody stepped up. So, with their son now out the door as a high school graduate, they were inheriting new responsibilities as caretakers for their parents. And they turned to their son — me — to help share some of the load.
What followed was several years of caretaking and a really unique relationship that developed between me and my grandfather. My grandfather and I had always been close, but spending a lot of time around him as a caretaker completely changed our relationship. We became even closer and he became personally invested in my work at The Pioneer. He wanted to cheer me on as I grew this from a small passion project into a real, operating business. And he did — even when he didn’t understand a thing about the technology we were using.
Helping my parents take care of my grandparents — and becoming even closer with my grandfather — I ended up sticking around and continued swinging the axe. No, I never made it to Baylor. And, no, I never got those Texas Ivy League credentials that I wanted. Still, I got something more important: memories with my grandfather, with him supporting me, advising me, and guiding me while I built my small business. And those are memories that I wouldn’t change for anything.
Looking back, had my grandfather never fallen, and had my parents not inherited their role as caretakers, I may not have stuck around and built The Pioneer. I might have ended up being just another statistic on the list of kids who left town when they graduated high school. Instead, I ended up becoming a community servant who turned my passion project into an institution.
What a crazy ride it has been. And I don’t think I would have had it any other way.