by Ruth Melville

Wiley Wood doesn’t quite remember when he joined the staff at Norfolk Now—turns out it was 2010—but he does remember his first assignment, to write a profile on longtime NN staff photographer Bruce Frisch (who himself retired last year). 

“I was furious,” Wood said recently. “I thought it would a stupid be puff piece.” But Frisch turned out to be an interesting and quirky guy. “It was fun, and an eye opener,” and a warning to go into each assignment with an open mind.

One of the perks about working for Norfolk Now—as all its writers and editors quickly find out—is that there are all kinds of events going on in town, and all kinds of unusual people living here, that you wouldn’t know about if you weren’t always on the lookout for good stories for the paper.

Wood says that some of his favorite assignments over the years came when he was approached by a town organization who wanted to get the word out about an impending project or request to the town. In 2018 when the water treatment plant needed to take on the huge job of relining the town sewer pipes, which would be an expensive proposition and raise water rates, they hoped the paper would write an article so that residents could understand what they were being asked to pay for. Wood spent days at the water treatment plant, learning about the process. “That guy Bill [William Hester, superintendent of the plant] is an ace at turning sewage into clean water,” he marvels. In the end, the project was approved.

Two issues that Wood followed closely were the years’ long effort to consolidate the Norfolk and Colebrook primary schools, an effort that was eventually defeated in 2015, and the controversial decision to build wind turbines in Colebrook.

What Wood liked best was getting dug into the intricacies of a complicated issue, following the story as it developed and laying out for readers the arguments pro and con. 

This, plus his head for details, made him the perfect person to regularly cover discussions over the annual town budget, especially debates involving the school budget. He likens it to a tug of war, with both sides—the Board of Finance and the Board of Education—presenting opposing arguments he could understand and sympathize with.

Wood also wrote many profiles over the years, ranging from an independent bookstore owner, to a man who grows shiitake mushrooms on logs, to a woman who designs and sews costumes for the Nutmeg Ballet. In keeping with his interest in Botelle School, one of his favorite interviewees was school superintendent Mary Beth Iacobelli. “I really enjoyed talking with her. She was articulate and generous with her time.” 

Of course Wood wasn’t just a writer for the paper, but one of the executive editors, responsible for putting together issues on a rotating basis with the other editors. An executive editor plans the upcoming issue, assigns articles to writers and edits them once they’re turned in, and then oversees the production process, from reading proofs to picking up the finished copies at the printer.

Wood remembers feeling like he was being thrown into the deep end of the pool the first time he was asked to edit an issue. But “when it all came together, it seemed a bit of a miracle,” he says. “What I liked best about being an editor was commissioning articles. You can think up a good subject, draw up a list of people who would need to be interviewed, and then assign the actual work of writing it to someone else. And sometimes you’re pleasantly surprised at the way a person takes your idea and runs with it.” 

Asked what he sees for the future of the paper, he replies that he wonders whether the era of the staff photographer is gone. “Bruce’s photographs are a wonderful document of the past 10 years,” but now, he says, we now live in an age where everyone has a camera on their phone. He hopes that the paper can expand its use of other media, perhaps including links to videos on the NN website.

When Bruce Frisch retired last year, it was Wood who wrote an article thanking him for all he’d done to make Norfolk Now a better paper. Now Wood’s colleagues do the same for him. We will miss him and the passion, intelligence and wide-ranging curiosity he brought to his work. For his part, he says he’s looking forward to reading the next issue of Norfolk Now.