Standard-Speaker reporter Jim Dino retires after 38 years
Apr. 1—Jim Dino told stories of Hazleton business to a generation of Standard-Speaker readers.
His articles in the newspaper, from which he recently retired, read like tours of Humboldt, Valmont and McAdoo industrial parks that bypass chain link fences and enter factories where workers made anything from pickle jar tops to steel superstructures.
He logged company openings and closings, tracked highway projects and visited mom-and-pop owners in a community where people recognize him by the Cleveland Indians cap on his head and the "JD the DJ" license plate on his vehicle.
They hear his voice on regional radio stations as well at weddings, carnivals and cancer telethons when he disc jockeys.
A Little League coach for 20 summers, Dino grows a beard in winters to pose as Santa Claus at Laurel Mall.
His first article in the Standard-Speaker covered the pending sale of a Stroehmann Bakeries building on West 23rd Street to Central Air Freight on June 8, 1983. His last article, on March 11, told about a raise for tax collectors in Weatherly Area School District.
In between, he followed events that shaped the region: the opening of Humboldt Industrial Park, the state's hand off of Hazleton's hospital, the strong-mayor government to which the city switched and growth of stores at Laurel Mall and along Airport Beltway.
Dino wrote of another beltway, Route 424 on the city's southwest, which took 20 years to build. He covered a seven-year effort to douse the Jeanesville mine fire and followed a wind turbine project on Broad Mountain that zoners rejected after 24 meetings in 17 months.
In 1988 while doing a story about the opening of Summit Manufacturing that fabricates steel poles in Valmont Industrial Park, Dino met the company's founder, Raj Pawar. Dino kept chronicling the business, which Pawar sold twice, bought back from bankruptcy in 2004 and took over again in 2014 after another owner transferred work out of Valmont.
When Grand Central furniture and appliance store opened, Dino told owner Tom Brooks that he looked like game show host Monte Hall, and Brooks ran ads with a slogan borrowed from Hall's program, "Let's Make a Deal."
Now Brooks' grandson does television commercials for Grand Central.
"Their family has grown up here 38 years. I followed the story all the way through. I was proud to do that," Dino said.
Dino spent 17 years as a police reporter. His television columns looked back fondly at shows that consoled him as a teenager after his parents divorced and he and his mother moved from Kelayres to Middletown. And he reported on local government.
"If you take all the municipalities and all the school boards and government entities and counties," said Tony Greco, a retired city editor at the Standard-Speaker, "he probably covered every one."
He met four governors, most recently Tom Wolf, who spoke during a drug forum at Penn State Hazleton five years ago with state Rep. Tarah Toohil, R-116, Butler Twp.
"I asked, 'Do you think we will ever legalize marijuana?' They both said, 'No way,'" Dino said. "My how things change."
Dino interviewed NASCAR drivers, country star Charlie Daniels and happened upon 16-year-old pop singer Tiffany Darwish when her tour bus stopped at the former Blue Comet Diner for a late-night snack. She was eating spaghetti at the counter and introduced the guys sitting in a booth and traveling with her as the next big band, the New Kids on the Block.
But he also covered local entertainers and drivers in the Weatherly Hillclimb. He reported on bocce ball tournaments and pierogi eating contests and woke before daylight to talk with shoppers on Black Fridays. At school graduations, chamber of commerce breakfasts and firemen's parades, he was there with a notebook.
Dino seldom missed a meeting of the board at CAN DO, a group that recruits industries to the Hazleton area.
"Jim understood the community. He understood business. He understood economic development, and he understood CAN DO. It made him an extremely effective reporter in that regard," said W. Kevin O'Donnell, who retired this year after leading CAN DO for 47 years.
O'Donnell said Dino even attended orientations year after year for new CAN DO board members because he always heard something new.
"It was more data going into this data bank, so to speak," said O'Donnell, who would telephone Dino as a quick reference about when a plant opened or how many people were hired on.
Similarly, colleagues yelled across the newsroom to Dino, perhaps to ask the name of a local official or tap into his memory for phone numbers.
"We used to call him the Dino Directory," said Ed Socha, a retired Standard-Speaker editor who has known Dino since they were teenagers and played baseball at the field of Jeddo Stars Athletic Association near their homes.
They teamed up again at the Standard-Speaker, where Socha coached young reporters as night editor.
Before joining the Standard-Speaker, Dino earned a degree in communications from King's College, worked more than two years at WQEQ Radio in Freeland and had just been chosen president of Freeland Area Jaycees.
He broke onto the airwaves through the Radio Club at Hazleton High School that did programs for WAZL Radio downtown.
By his senior year, Dino had a part-time job at WAZL and a radio operator's license. He worked his way through college at radio stations.
While manning controls overnight at WQEQ, Dino also covered municipal meetings for WAZL, where Patrick J. Ward was news director. Ward recommended Dino for a job at the Standard-Speaker to Bill Morgan, the managing editor then.
"Jim had a great ride at the Standard-Speaker," said Ward, now president of United Way of Greater Hazleton. "When Jimmy covered me, we would have a few laughs, but when it came time to interview the friendship was put on the shelf if he had questions."
Before starting at the Standard-Speaker, Dino worried because he could not type, a skill he picked up on the job.
He taught himself newspaper writing style by reading articles of Bill Berry, his mentor as a police reporter, and Chuck Gloman, whose son and Dino were chemistry lab partners in high school.
"I always gave people the benefit of the doubt and told both sides of the story and let the reader decide," Dino said.
Standard-Speaker employees celebrated his career Wednesday, but Dino last worked March 5.
Since then, he has helped at the Lenten food sales at the Tresckow Hosey, the social hall of the volunteer fire company where he lives.
"We have homemade haluski, stove rags, which I call Slovak tortillas. We make our own Manhattan clam chowder. We have pizza. We have potato cakes — that's Tresckow's version of heroin," Dino said.
Volunteering has been part of his makeup since days with the Jaycees. He pitched in at the American Cancer Society, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and lectored at churches in Freeland, Tresckow and Hazleton. Currently he is on boards of Greater Hazleton Civic Partnership, CAN DO and Hazleton UNICO.
"I intend to keep doing that now that I'm retired, and see my grandsons and my kids," said Dino, who has a son, Michael, and a daughter, Heather Laughman. She and her husband, Spencer, have three sons, Levi, Phlynn and Callahan.
Newspaper colleagues knew that if they needed a weekend off or couldn't find a childsitter, Dino would switch shifts with them.
"We used to go out together, socialize together. We had a lot of fun together, and we put out a paper," Dino said.
He played the newsroom like a night club, impersonating anyone from President Nixon to legendary Sports Editor Ray Saul.
He and his coworkers wrote song parodies about each other and made bogus newspaper pages to celebrate personal milestones.
For a long time, a cover from a weekly television magazine hung in the newsroom showing pictures of copy editor Dallas Deluzio, sports writer Marion Valanoski and Dino grafted over faces of stars from a screwball comedy "Three Amigos."
"I always tried to make things humorous," said Dino, who outlived the other amigos, "because the longer you laugh, the longer you live."
Contact the writer: kjackson@standard
speaker.com; 570-501-3587
