Longtime former Herald columnist John Peel talks about the latest chapter in his career recently. After 20 years at the daily paper, during which time he wrote mostly human-interest stories, he has quit to pursue helping people write their own biographies and family histories./Photo by Jennaye Derge

Turning the page

Monday mainstay starts new chapter with ‘Life Preserver’ project

by Ted Holteen

One of the first things I remember during my early days in Durango in 1995 was a mug shot of John Peel accompanying whatever sports or news column he may have been writing at the time and thinking to myself, “ someone should punch him.”

I’m happy to say that in that case, first impressions were way off, as despite what I thought of as a smug mug, I can’t imagine the last two decades of Four Corners journalism without John. However, as you may or may not have noticed, the Monday paper has been just a bit emptier for the last month.

From 1993 until June 5 on the pages of the Durango Herald, John profiled the good and bad, ugly and pretty, lucky and cursed, and just about anyone of any interest in the neighborhood. Many times the result was an award-winning column that tugged at the town’s collective heartstrings; at other times, Peel couldn’t help but feel he was the scribe of last resort.

“When I started doing the side column for news (he had done sportswriting for his first 4-plus years) I tried to come up with a title for it but it just never happened,” Peel said during one of his first days of life post-Herald at the Lost Dog Bar & Lounge. “That’s why it was never defined as to what it was about.”

Such ambiguity is a double-edged sword. World War II vet restoring a Russian T-34 tank? John can handle that. Little girl with SARS had a piano fall on her head and now there’s a facepainting fundraiser for her? Sounds like a John Peel story. But what’s crazy is that John could take those stories, from the mundane to the repetitious to the absurd, and make them matter to us.

With such a gift for finding the essence of human subjects, it’s only natural that John’s next chapter will be doing so as a business. Through John Peel’s Life Preserver, he’ll put his biographical skills to work putting family histories and life stories on paper for posterity. More on that in a moment, but first let’s take a brief look at the life of a man who’s spent so many years looking at the lives of others.

The necessary data: Peel was born July 20, 1961, in Denver, which is only significant because it means his eighth birthday coincided with the moonwalk and likely spurred a craving for attention that never went away. High School was Wheat Ridge class of ’79, then a degree in journalism from Drake (which is in Iowa – who knew there was stuff in Iowa?) in 1983.

Heading back west, John’s first job out of college was in Wyoming at the Laramie Daily Boomerang, which Google says is a thing, but he soon tired of writing about donkeys and donkey accessories and ended up back in Colorado working in Fort Collins at a bike shop called Mountain Bike Specialists. Ed Zink would purchase the mail-order business shortly thereafter and relocate it to Durango. But that’s another story – the point is, it shows John to be an OG when it comes to the world of mountain biking.

That alone makes it inexplicable why in 1986 he took a job as a sportswriter with the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, which doesn’t have as much mountain biking as Colorado and probably had even less in 1986. Peel tells me that despite being a 25-year-old living in Florida in the late 1980s, he never found himself part of the cocaine scene. I’ll take him at his word, but after about four years he was ready for yet another change of venue, albeit a familiar one.

“I wanted to live where I wanted to live, and I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in Florida. I wanted to get back out West,” Peel said.

After considering several mountain towns, he chose Durango and worked at the since-relocated Mountain Bike Specialists (when he first met a 35-year-old up-and-comer named Ned Overend). A couple of seasons doing snow reporting at Purgatory followed, as well as a stint at Pine Needle Mountaineering, and in 1993 he dusted off the journalism degree and took a job at the Herald as a sportswriter. Most people know the rest from there, but why leave the news game now?

“The business has changed, and writing in-depth, well-reported stories is not the direction it’s going,” Peel said. “Tweeting and posting stories as quickly as possible is the reality, and that’s fine, but it’s a different direction and just doesn’t suit me. I’ve had this big idea for a long time, about 14 years, and just never put it into action.”

Well, now he has. For a man who’s made a career of getting to know people and introducing them to the public, John Peel’s Life Preserver is his transition from the media into the service sector of the business world. Kind of like a contractor, or a plumber.

“The concept is that a lot of people do research, collect knick-knacks and scrapbooks but don’t have the time or the skills to put it in a form that will last – whether it’s a 1,000-word summary or a long book form, they want something to share with their families,” he said.

He’s got cred outside of the newspaper as well, if one were to question his ability to transition from the confines of broadsheets to the longer form of a book. Always an avid outdoorsman, in 1998 he published Mountain Biking Durango and re-wrote Paul Pixler’s 300-plus page Hiking Trails of Southwestern Colorado with his own updates. Whether in a busy newsroom or a quiet home office, a writer writes.

And though that still-smug looking mug won’t be peering out at us every Monday any longer, Peel will hardly be a stranger. I know firsthand that he can often be seen on local tennis courts where he hasn’t lost a step no matter how many years north of 50 he’s gotten. I clearly remember the two times I’ve beaten him, though I’m sure he’d be hard pressed to recall the 40 or 50 matches that went his way.

And for those who remember the radio, John will be revisiting his sports journalism past with a monthly talk show on KIUP (97.3 FM/930 AM), at a time to be announced. He’ll co-host it with Fort Lewis College professor Jim Cross.

“We’re both really smart about sports,” Peel said. “If you want the flavor of the local scene on the radio, that’s what we’re doing. So listen to it.”

Whatever you do, don’t call him retired. Though this latest and most public chapter has ended, Peel will keep adding to this story – and many others – with no regrets.

“There’s always a love/hate relationship with your job and temptations to leave, but obviously for 20 years it was enough love to stay,” he said. “As the business changed and it made it more tempting to leave, it made it easier to leave, and I’m happy how it went down.”

Learn more about John Peel’s Life Preserver at www.jplifepreserver.com.

Ted Holteen writes about people, for people. If you know a person, let him know – egholteen@yahoo.com.