In February of 2007, when I was beginning to round up a small staff to launch this newspaper, I met Dan Testa at a coffee shop in Missoula. The interview was short. The job was his. And we headed next door to Charlie B’s to toast our new venture, which would later be called the Flathead Beacon.
In Dan’s first week on the job, he pieced together a cover story for our debut issue on the proposed Cline mine in Canada, which critics, including Gov. Brian Schweitzer and then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, feared would pollute the North Fork of the Flathead River, decimate bull trout and degrade water quality. It was just one of several complex issues Dan covered during his time here – his first full-time job after earning a graduate degree at the University of Montana.
But at the end of this month Dan will write his final story for the newspaper he helped create and move closer to his family “Back East” to take a job covering energy issues and power markets. With his exit, I will lose my first “senior writer” and assume the title of the “old guy” in the newsroom.
In his time here, Dan has interviewed everyone from President Barack Obama to former First Lady Laura Bush, from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to former British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell. But those were easy. Dan also covered Nazi sympathizers and white separatists in the area. And for that, he recently won the Public Service Journalism award, one of the highest individual honors the Montana Newspaper Association hands out each year. In other words, Dan will be missed. And not just for his contributions to the paper.
If you’ve met Dan, you’re familiar with his razor-sharp wit and unorthodox sense of humor. He impersonates local politicians, New Jersey natives and even musician Aaron Neville. He wears ‘70s hip-hop tracksuits to parties and bowties to formal functions. He has a gift, if you can call it that, for finding absurd videos online and laughing at them until he grabs his stomach. He wore a red-white-and-blue headband during dodgeball – except I’m not sure if he was trying to be funny then. The same goes for the trout trucker hat he wears when camping.
His dining habits are equally bizarre. He’s mildly allergic to alcohol but drinks local microbrews anyway while fighting sneezing fits. He loves cured meats, a sampling of which a professor gave him after he passed his thesis. And he considers himself a pizza critic, arguing that no slice should ever have more than two toppings on it lest they overwhelm the other flavors.
Dan has also perhaps been my harshest critic. He never hesitated to tell me when I was wrong, which is essential in a startup where being second-guessed is an asset. His opinions helped shape our product and during his tenure he helped oversee rapid growth at a newspaper that was launched with seven employees in an old shoe store on Kalispell’s Main Street.
With his exit, staff writer Myers Reece will be promoted and assume many of Dan’s responsibilities, the most apparent of which will be covering state politics. It will be a tall order, since 2012 features some of the biggest races in recent memory. But I’m confident in Myers, who has also been here since the beginning.
A lot has changed over the four-and-a-half years since I met Dan. For one, we’re now both in our 30s, the undisputed elders in the newsroom. But my confidence in him to run this place in my absence never wavered. So consider this my toast to his next venture. So long, “old” friend.