On the right side of the Ada Post Office entrance at 131 S. Main St., is a reminder of the Cold War: an (originally black and yellow) fallout shelter sign. It has historic rather than practical significance. The Icon was told that the shelter room is now used for storage.
Reuters news service reported in 2017 that “FEMA does not have a position regarding the signs and does not maintain lists of the old shelter locations.”
Effective October 1, 2021, I am the full-time editor-owner of the Bluffton and Ada Icons. In following founder Fred Steiner, I know that I have big shoes to fill. Fred took a big leap when he created the Bluffton Icon in 2009 and, in 2012, the Ada Icon. My leap from employee to self-employed is much, much smaller. I’m inheriting some 20,000 monthly viewers of Bluffton area news and some 8,500 monthly viewers of Ada area news.
I’m also resting on the shoulders of Icon tech master and interim owner Ryan Lowry, who is still the wizard who keeps the online magic working.
My library card is a tiny sliver on my keychain. It’s a key to lots of free stuff:
Print books
Audio books and Playaways
E-books
Magazines
DVDs
Music CDs
Video games
Interlibrary loans
Research databases
Public computers and high speed internet access
I am a big library fan. I have a vivid memory of being told (at perhaps age five) that I could check out as many books as I wanted to, or at least as many as I could carry. Eureka!
By Fred Steiner (Photo accompanying this column shows Fred Steiner and Ryan Lowry cutting the Icon’s first anniversary cake in 2010.)
Thoughts on:
• how the Icons came to be,
• journalism in a small town,
Here’s the thing:
You can earn a living working in your profession in a small, rural community. But, along the way, you can’t predict the encounters that hit like insects on a car window at 70 mph.
Want to know how the Icon was born?
The idea was simple.
Create a community news source available to everyone. Put another way, make it a rare medium that’s well done.
