Akron Life November 2022

in memory of Akron Life ’s founder

DON BAKER JR.

Colin Baker

[ 1940 -2018 ]

My dad, Don Baker Jr.’s, Publisher’s Page was the true beginning of our monthly Akron Life magazine. After the November 2002 issue, we took a few months off to work on what it takes to produce a monthly publication. Since the column below was published in the March 2003 issue, we have been monthly. For that issue, our staff photographer, Ray Saviciunas, who went on to win multiple Press Club of Cleveland awards, shot our first cover photo of the Akron Civic Theatre shortly after its auditorium renovation. A story on the freshly renovated Civic kicked off our yearlong Greater Akron 10 feature on 10 developments shaping Greater Akron. For our 20th anniversary this year, we created a list of 10 more emerging developments shaping The 330. My dad kept writing his column until shortly before his death in early February 2018, and I took it over at the end of the year. I would like to add to his list of thank yous. To all of the readers who have stuck with Akron Life throughout these past two decades, those who found us along the way and those who are new to the magazine, thank you.

Thank You

I don’t know what I expected after the pub lication of our first issue of Akron Life & Leisure : the magazine of Greater Akron. I think I was too busy helping produce it to think forward to what the reaction might be. I just assumed that

To all of you who have contacted me and the rest of the staff with your congratulations and words of encouragement, I say thank you. Thank you for validating our belief that the Greater Akron area is full of people just like you who care about this community and are as proud of it as we are. Don’t stop talking to us now that the first issue is history; we need to know what you think and base many of our story lines on suggestions from you, our readers. On the cover this issue is a spectacular photo of the Akron Civic Theatre taken by our staff shutterbug, Ray Saviciunas. I think it is a breathtaking shot that brings out the color and beauty of one of the Akron area’s most treasured landmarks. This shot came about because we wanted to use our cover space to show off what we think of as the new Akron. The new Akron, as we define it, is the places we take visitors when we want to show off our hometown; the people we talk about when we give credit for all of the good things that have happened in our area over the past 25 years; and the events or things that we feel best define this new Akron. We have 10 issues during the balance of 2003. We have decided to showcase 10 people, places or things that epitomize the best this area has to offer. We have compiled lists of what we believe those people, places or things are. From that list we have chosen 10 to feature on our covers during 2003. I won’t tell you in advance which 10 made the cut, because I want you to share your picks with us. Email or call me or any of our staff with your suggestions. We want to celebrate our home with you.

some people would love the new magazine and some would hate it and a whole bunch of other folks would react somewhere in the middle. I guess I just wasn’t prepared for the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response we got from all of you who saw, bought and read our first issue. I’ve been approached at church by people whom I didn’t think knew my name let alone knew I was the publisher of this new magazine. They wanted to congratulate us for producing Akron Life & Leisure and to tell me how much “we” need this magazine. People whom I hardly know have stopped me in elevators and hallways to tell me how much “we” need this magazine. I have received phone calls and emails from people I haven’t heard from in years to tell how much they liked our first issue. We have gotten letters from major civic and business leaders in the Greater Akron area, who actually thanked us for coming out with a publication about the Greater Akron area. Usually, in the publishing business, the only time we hear from our readers is to tell us we made a mistake or how wrongheaded something we printed appeared to them. We did, I must admit, get a couple of corrections to our restaurant guide; seems a couple of the establishments we listed were out of business or we didn’t list some newer restaurants that were in business.

Don Baker Jr. dbakerjr@bakerpublishing.com

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