RIO GRANDE – Janet Seitz has been with the Herald as the Classifieds Department manager for 35 years. In that great epoch, she watched both the Herald, and the town that houses it, go through incredible change.
Seitz has left the position she has held for 35 years, as well as her front-door desk, for a cubicle in the Herald’s Advertising Department.
As she left that position, she sat down with a reporter to reminisce on three decades of life at the Herald.
“I’m not sure you’ll get much out of me, I’m not that interesting. This will probably take five minutes,” she said.
The interview was over an hour long and not without tears.
She remembered a time when Rio Grande was covered in farmland. The plot where Walmart, and intense traffic, now buzzes was vibrant tillage during Seitz’s youth. The stretch of hotels that greet those who take Exit 4B off the Garden State Parkway was glazed over with grass and native plants.
“It was so sleepy here that you could roll a bowling ball down the road and not hit anything,” Seitz reminisced. “These days, you take your life into your own hands just by crossing the street to the bank.”
Seitz married her husband, Bill, at just 18 years old. They are both lifelong Cape May County residents – Seitz was born at Burdette Tomlin Hospital, now known as Cape Regional Medical Center.
“We lived on a shoestring during those first years of marriage,” she said.
Money was tight, and they lived with family while they searched for a studio apartment.
“We were just kids. We had no idea what we were doing,” she said.
Tight as money was, she and her husband bought construction materials whenever they could. Some concrete here, a palette of wood there. They soon bought a small plot of land in Goshen with the help of her family.
“We didn’t take a mortgage. My husband, his family, our family, we built the house ourselves by hand,” she said.
She and her husband live in that house today, and years later, they helped their daughter, Rachel Hamann, build her own house in the county.
Seitz is the longest-serving Herald employee – her active days here surpass even Publisher Art Hall.
She applied to the Herald at age 34, restless as her children entered school full time.
“When I applied for the position, I didn’t think I would get the job. I had no sales experience whatsoever. I could type a little bit, maybe 40 words a minute. Adequate. Maybe Gary Rudy (former Herald general manger) saw something in me and wanted to give me a chance,” she said.
“When I started here, we did everything by hand. It was like a beehive – you should have seen the place on a Monday,” she said.
Just two months into Seitz’s employment, the Herald building burned.
“I remember smelling the smoke. There wasn’t anything we could do. It was so shocking,” she said.
Seitz and the rest of the staff came to assess the damage on an early Saturday morning, dazed and confused by the news. They picked through the rubble and salvaged what they could, which was – by some minor miracle – enough to get the paper out the door that week.
“We all had to work out of random offices after that. The sales team moved into a building on Vermont Avenue. Some people worked out of Gary Rudy’s garage,” she said.
As that devastating fire faded into memory, the age of the computer rained down on the Herald.
“It was a big deal. It saved a lot of work for us. Some of those programs work even more smoothly than the ones we use now,” she said.
Those first computers were tiny Macintosh SEs, the kind of sleepy square machines that haunt retro-futurist artwork.
Seitz has faced many tight deadlines, sleepless nights, and the scorching pressure of newspaper life. But she has worked here so long that the death of beloved co-workers is inevitable.
She remembered the death of Dennis Hall, son of the publisher and father of the author, as the most devastating. He was killed at 36 years old.
But many of the deaths she has endured – famed editor Joe Zelnick and her first supervisor JoEllen Drabick – occurred in the individuals’ older years.
“It never gets easier,” she said.
Still, Seitz’s sadness and occasional cynicism are overpowered by the joy she brings to the office every day. She has been a gift to those who roam the Herald’s hallways and to those who call the Herald’s main line to place a classified ad.
But all great things come to an end. No, Seitz isn’t dead, even if the details presented here might read like an obituary. But her time as head of the Classified Department is over – she takes on a different role as an assistant in the Advertising Department and will hopefully (for her sake) retire one day.
Molly Richard is the new Classified Advertising Manager. She also manages digital and print subscriptions.
Richard has a background in advertising and publishing and has owned several other businesses.
Richard hails from Lafayette, Louisiana – the heart of Cajun Country – and lives in Middle Township with her husband and dog. She is an avid birder, loves to fish, and is learning to garden with native plants, and beautiful Cape May County is a great spot for all three.
Those looking to place a classified ad can call the Herald as they always have. Just don’t be surprised when a Southerner answers the phone.
Contact the author, Collin Hall, at chall@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 156.
