Gere McClellan, author

In January 2018, I was — rather unexpectedly — the editor of the Mansfield News Journal and the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum. Twenty years earlier, I would have considered the job an impressive accomplishment, but as it happened I neither sought nor wanted it. The newspaper business had changed, and so had I.

At that time in my life, I desperately needed more time for family, but being editor — the only editor, mind you — demanded my attention round the clock. If you ever want to hear a lecture on how being able to do a job doesn’t necessarily mean you should be doing it, give me a call. We’ll just say I was miserable.

On top of everything else, the News Journal building had been sold and its contents were being cleaned out. Our staff would remain in the building, in a small portion rented from the new owners. For the most part, all it meant was that we all got to take home some free office furniture, because everything we weren’t using was bound for the dumpster.

The newsroom already had been moved to a smaller room on the first floor, but the library — also known as the morgue — had been left up on the second floor. A newspaper’s morgue is a treasure trove of information. It’s home to all of the old photos, clip files, back issues, reference books and heaven-knows-what that past staffers thought worth preserving.

When our sister papers downsized, all of those treasures landed in the trash. I figured if I had to be editor, I should at least make sure some good came out of the experience. I arranged for the News Journal’s morgue to be handed over to the Mansfield Memorial Museum for safe-keeping.

The late Scott Schaut, the museum’s curator, was a true character. His passion for local history was boundless, as was his enthusiasm for preserving the News Journal’s morgue. Best of all, he was willing to come and haul it all away: All I had to do was let him into the building and show him to the service elevator.

When the appointed day came, I let him into the building and got back to work. Next thing I knew, he was standing next to my desk, clearly agitated. One of the morgue’s 16 file cabinets was gone, he told me. I assumed I had misunderstood him, so I went upstairs to look.

The library was a long, narrow space with two long rows of old five-drawer file cabinets arranged back-to-back running up the center of the room. Sure enough, one file cabinet was missing. It wasn’t even one from the end of a row — it had been right in the middle of the row facing away from the door.

How was that even possible?

OK. Someone could have come in with a hand-cart over the weekend, maneuvered it out of the library and down the hall to the service elevator. It was physically possible to remove the file cabinet.

But why? Well, as I mentioned, it had been open season on office furniture in the building. It was very possible someone had assumed that file cabinet was unwanted and decided to take it home — not a big deal. I kind of thought that cabinet had been empty, though I wasn’t sure.

That didn’t explain why someone would pass on all of the much newer, nicer file cabinets sitting empty on the first floor, though. We asked around the building, but no one admitted taking it. Most of the circulation staff worked nights, though, so it was hard to reach everybody. I had a strong suspicion that whoever had taken it just didn’t want to be told to bring it back.

I dutifully reported the disappearance to my boss in Cincinnati, who didn’t seem very concerned. I mean … it was a very old, probably empty file cabinet the company was going to throw away anyway. Scott Schaut wasn’t happy about it, and I was totally creeped out by the idea that someone could just waltz in the building and haul away a five-drawer file cabinet. You don’t just tuck something like that under your arm, you know?

Schaut had that room empty by the end of the day — he wasn’t about to risk having anything else go missing. And that was that. End of story.

But by the end of the week, I had turned the incident into the basis of what was supposed to be my first novel. I worked out the whole plot. It became my little beacon of hope: Sure, I hated my job, but when I finally had some time, I was going to write that book.

Except when I finally did write a novel, it was some crazy thing about robots. Then I wrote another book.

So now, it’s finally time to turn my attention to “The Missing Morgue,” which is the novel’s working title. I started writing before 2024 was two hours old — right after our traditional sauerkraut and pork feast. Hopefully, that will bring me some luck.