Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Remembering Janice [10-4 ... Thanks]

Posted Feb 16, 2009 by Jeff Houck

Updated Feb 16, 2009 at 05:46 PM

There’s a saying that no man is a hero to his own valet. The reason: They’ve seen too much.

I’ve always suspected the same is true for copy editors when it comes to the writers with whom they work. Anyone who has had the misfortune of being a backstop to my wild pitches of verbiage (this sentence included) cannot possibly hold me in high esteem for very long.

Considering that, I am very fortunate to have been in the editing hands of Janice Hall. For more than six years, she and I worked to produce the Tribune’s Flavor section. There’s no way to calculate the number of misspellings, grammatical bear traps and tangled, illogical recipes from which she patiently saved me.

She occasionally would ask a question about a story by e-mail. And most times, Janice would finish the dialogue with a simple response: “10-4 … thanks.” The reply was so ever-present in her e-mails, I joked with colleagues that one day I would write a Wagnerian opera for Janice titled, “10-4 … thanks.”

In December, I wrote a column about the best things I ate in 2008. In it, I originally wrote, “Daniel Boulud and Gavin Kaysen‘s Brand beef duo with caramelized beet and gratin served during the Bocuse d’Or USA gala at Epcot.”

“Should this be Brandt beef?” Janice e-mailed to ask.

“Yes,” I answered. Turns out the spell-check program automatically converted Brandt to Brand. I’d been in too big of a hurry to notice. Janice outsmarted the technology.

“10-4 … thanks,” Janice replied.

I sent a note to my editor, noting the Dec. 30 date of the question. “Will this be the last ‘10-4 … thanks’ of the year? ::: fingers crossed ::: ,” I joked.

“Roger that,” my editor replied. “Already got one myself, yesterday and today.”

It wound up being the last 10-4 that I got from Janice.

A few weeks later, she was reassigned away from food stories in a newsroom shuffle of duties. After that, she was out on sick leave after breaking her arm. She had been in and out of treatment for cancer for all the years I had known her. The broken arm didn’t stop her. With no sick time left because of her cancer treatments, she eventually returned to her desk to edit copy with one good wing.

You would rarely have noticed anything was wrong by judging her mood. Through all of her medical travails, she’d still take time to send me a kind note when she liked a story I had written. We had different tastes in stories, but she was generous with praise nonetheless. It helped my cause that she also liked to cook and that we shared a great fondness for Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Mike Alstott.

On Saturday morning, Janice died from cancer at age 61. It’s a testament to her sweet nature that I heard from many saddened friends and former colleagues when I posted news on a blog about her passing.

On behalf of every reporter and reader who benefitted from Janice’s patient and meticulous nature, I can only say, “10-4 … thanks.”