Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Getting to know the Gazette's Mike Day
Mike Day at his home in Rosalia.
ROSALIA - "Where's my picture?"
"How come it didn't get in?"
"It better get in next week. Put it on the front page."
Mike Day, of Rosalia, has been a contributor to the Whitman County Gazette since before the Warren Commission.
Some weeks have been more satisfying than others.
It started when he was a boy. His mother told him to come right home from St. Patrick's in Colfax after school to the apartment above the tavern on Main Street, where his father worked. He was to change clothes and go down to the Gazette office next door to pick up his Bulletins to do his route.
Day became a correspondent a few decades later.
The phone rings. It was regular morning at the Gazette, pick the year, anytime in the last 15.
"Jerry, it's Mike Day," said whoever in the office answered the phone.
"I'm writing the Bulletin," said longtime editor Jerry Jones, who retired last year after 53 years at the Gazette.
"So should I?"
Silence. Typing.
"No. I'll talk to him."
Jerry left the keyboard and picked up the phone.
"What time is it? I'm writing the Bulletin, I'm workin' here," Jones would say. "What? This is where? Thursday?"
And the next Mike Day news credit would be in motion.
Since the early 2000s, he has been the contact in Rosalia for people to submit news to him, which he brings down to the Gazette by mail or in-person.
Day, for much of his adult life, has been a volunteer at Rosalia High School for sports teams, riding on team buses, running video cameras, the clock, the scoreboard, and the possession arrow.
On the wall of black-and-white pictures in Mike Day's house in Rosalia, is a smiling young Rick Day.
Mike Day shared the house with his mother until she died in 2005.
It is Rick Day, Mike's brother, who held the career basketball scoring record for Rosalia from his graduation in 1964 until 2013 when it was surpassed by Craig Nelson.
At age 13, after the family moved to Rosalia, the boys' father began working for The Spokesman-Review distributing The Daily Chronicle in the mornings and afternoons.
Mike went to live and study at Lakeland Village at Medical Lake.
Rick Day went on to play basketball at the University of Idaho for four years.
Mike, born with a learning disability, played on the team at Lakeland Village. He stayed until he was 29.
Through his involvement with sports at Rosalia High School, he was later asked to go to the state 1B/2B tournament to run the mop up and down the floor at halftime on the two courts.
"He'd always show up and he'd do a good job," said Rick Day. "Some are born with a lot of abilities and others not as many, yet they still do a good job, which is a description of Mike."
Mike Day manned the mop for more than 20 years, including an auspicious assist in 2013 when he used the handle to poke a stuck ball free from the backboard and the rim during a girls' game.
He is known for selling things, including raffle tickets at the old Texaco station in
Rosalia, Lilac Festival buttons, and a list of other items to support school and town causes.
"A lot of who Mike Day is is determined by what he can do for others," said Roy Schulz, a Tekoa city councilman and longtime associate of Mike Day. "And we should all take a little bit of a lesson from that."
At some point, when Mike Day was a young man, he delivered newspapers for the Spokesman-Review and went around collecting money.
A man at one house said he couldn't pay him.
The next afternoon, Mike Day walked up the hill to see the man and his friends taking 12-packs of beer into the house.
"Hey, I thought you didn't have the money to pay me," he said.
Mike Day brought news to the Gazette because of his family. His mother Marge was a Gazette country correspondent for Rosalia.
"That's how he got through the door," said Jones, the former editor. "Somehow, after she died, it transposed to Mike was doing it."
It led to a slew of news items over years, some more complete or legitimate than others.
"You got the picture but you don't have the caption," Jones could be heard saying on the phone. "Mike, you've got to tell us who's in the picture, and what for."
Eleven phone calls later, it may or may not have ended up in the Gazette.
"Some key ingredient just wasn't there," said Jones. "But he's trying his best."
What did end up in the paper did not miss Mike Day's eye either.
"What is that hedgehog you got on the front page?" he said a couple of months ago.
Mike Day is paid for his submissions by the column inch, quarterly. He cuts out the items and sends them in. If any article said "Rosalia" in it somewhere, it likely got sent in.
"Mike, I wrote that," Jones could be heard saying on the phone.
"Put it in my news," Mike Day answered.
Indeed, they call him Mr. Rosalia.
"Mike's just had his fingers in everything around town," said Tanya Charles, an across-the-street neighbor, and relative by marriage.
"The town, for years, they've looked after Mike," said Rick Day.
Rosalia High School once presented him with a surprise honorary diploma and cap-and-gown. The Michael T. Day Scholarship is awarded each year by his siblings, including his sister Vicki in St. Maries, Rick near Medical Lake, and Kevin in Walla Walla. They have a late brother Cary and late sister Linda.
"Mike has a cheering disposition every time I talk to him," said Rosie McLain, Tekoa-Rosalia athletic director. "He keeps a positive attitude. Mike anticipates each season and wants to be helpful. He is a gift to our sports programs and support of our athletes."
And for Jones, in the end, he would always take another call from Mike Day.
"It was inspirational to work with him," he said. "I don't think anybody didn't like him."
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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