BAR HARBOR — Mary Delamater has worked for the Sun Journal for 52 years and, on Saturday, was named this year’s Maine Press Association Unsung Hero.
The award, given annually, recognizes a person whose contribution to their newspaper is essential, but can often be overlooked.
“Mary’s daily contributions are absolutely essential,” according to Judith Meyer, the newspaper’s executive editor, “but there is no one in our shop who overlooks her many, many contributions every day.”
Sun Journal Copyeditor Mary Delamater was named the Maine Press Association’s Unsung Hero for 2024 Saturday during the association’s annual conference and awards ceremony in Bar Harbor. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal File
A skilled copyeditor by any measure, “Mary’s institutional memory of the people, the places, the stories and the history of the areas we serve is unmatched,” Meyer said.
Delamater was nominated for this award by Marla Hoffman, the Sun Journal’s managing editor/nights, who runs the copydesk for the newspaper with contributions from multiple reporters, photographers and editors, including many who have known Delamater for decades.
As Hoffman pointed out in her nomination, Delamater’s career at the Lewiston paper started “17 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mary’s career outlasted the Cold War. Through 10 presidents. Decades before newspapers went digital. From offset lithography and paste-ups to apps and AI, she has seen it all.”
Nixon was still president when Delamater first sat down at her desk, “hair perfectly coiffed, outfit on point, taking her first steps into a long and accomplished career as a journalist,” Hoffman said. “Our copydesk is Mary Delamater’s copydesk.”
Hoffman said no one in Maine journalism “knows more about Maine, its history, its geography, its people, politics, quirkiness and lakes. She is the real deal. In nearly 20 years of working in newspapers, I’ve never learned more from any one single person than Mary.” And, Hoffman said, “No story has been written that she can’t edit. No photo caption exists that she can’t add background to. Think of what’s happened and the history she has lived through in 52 years — an irreplaceable lifetime of knowledge.”
She has a treasure trove of newsroom stories, and meticulously keeps scrapbooks of some of the greatest stories, greatest “heard in the newsroom” quotes — and some of the greatest gaffes – the Sun Journal has ever published.
The reporters and editors she’s mentored over the years count in the hundreds, Hoffman said, and many “of the stories that have won top prizes at Maine Press Association awards ceremonies over the years have been edited by Mary, left better for having been touched by her tough but fair and unwavering hand.”
The impact Delamater has made on Maine journalism is immeasurable, Hoffman said.
Members of the staff agree.
Staff Writer Christopher Williams calls Delamater the newspaper’s “human library” who “occupies the newspaper’s moral center and represents the collective conscious of the Sun Journal.”
“She works every day to maintain its journalistic values and core tenets of truth-telling, accuracy of information and objectivity,” Williams said. “It’s not in her job description. It’s just part of what she does because of who she is.”
Tasked, often single-handedly, with proofreading stories and photo cutlines for grammar, punctuation, spelling, structure and, most importantly, clarity, Williams said “she undertakes that responsibility with a dogged determination that will often come to an unwitting reporter or photographer in the form of a nighttime phone call, or two, or three, plus an email.”
Staff Photographer Russ Dillingham said that “of all the invaluable, talented, dedicated and devoted people I have worked with over my four decades as a photojournalist at the Sun Journal, there is no doubt Mary Delamater has been my unsung hero since Day One. Every photographer, reporter and editor will back that up with a smile, remembering how Mary has saved their bacon time after time” because of her unwavering attention to detail and insatiable desire for accuracy.
Mark Mogensen, managing editor/days, said he’s never met anyone who has the same combination of traits of being a great editor, great communicator, flexible, determined, able to work under intense deadline pressure, boasting a wonderful sense of humor, committed to the truth and to the facts, being a team player with an amazing memory, all while “handling an extraordinary amount of copy and other tasks and never looks like she’s breaking a sweat” with “more energy than the sun.”
She is, he said, quite simply “a one-of-a-kind gift to us, to our readers and to the many writers and editors she has mentored.”
Staff Writer Mark LaFlamme, who has worked with Delamater for 30 years, said “a late-night call from Mary Delamater will inspire, in a reporter of any experience level, both fear and respect. Fear because Mary will absolutely not tolerate laziness or shortcuts in the copy that comes her way. Respect for the same reason.”
If a reporter files “copy that is incomplete in any way, Mary will call you on it. You thought you could get away with skipping a call to the small-town fire chief, but here is Mary coming at you with a request for comment from the chief and, what do you know? She has the chief’s phone number on hand, so there goes your last excuse for not calling.”
She is, LaFlamme said, “a walking, talking Rolodex of contact information. She makes our stories better by demanding more from reporters and she’s been doing this unflaggingly for decades.”
Meyer, who has worked with Delamater for nearly 35 years, remembers early in her career feeling protected and challenged by Delamater in equal measure. “Mary has endless patience working with young writers, and the high expectations she holds for herself make everyone around her better writers, better thinkers and better journalists.”
Delamater will “never let a public official wiggle away from accountability, she’s fierce about our breaking news coverage, she dives into school budget stories with gusto not because they’re interesting, but because she knows readers need accurate information to make the best decisions they can for themselves and their families. Her attention to detail and her strive for excellence are unparalleled, all because she cares so deeply that our readers are getting what they need from us every day.”
Meyer said that although “the Sun Journal is not the largest newspaper in Maine, we have long prided ourselves with being the scrappiest, and a good part of that stems from Mary’s energy and enthusiasm to chase, tackle and produce excellent hyper-local journalism from her perch on the copydesk.”
According to Meyer, she would not have risen to the position of the newspaper’s executive editor “without Mary’s guidance, her support, her encouragement, and her shining example of caring and commitment to the communities we serve. Inside our shop we sing her praises, but people outside of our newsroom don’t know her as the hero that she is. She absolutely is our hero. Every minute of every shift of every day.”
Copyediting is not known to be glamorous work, Meyer said, but it’s essential. “It can be thankless, and there have certainly been frustrations along the way. But Mary has committed her life’s work to the Sun Journal and we are forever grateful.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
