Joe Distelheim presided over the Northern Star’s rapid evolution from a small-time weekly paper to a big-time near-daily. And, it all played out so quickly that he scarcely remembers leading the effort. Others do, though.

“Aside from the faculty, Joe to me was the real guide for the paper,” said Star friend Jerry DiPego, now a noted author and Hollywood screenwriter. “I could sense a real dedication to journalism, to getting it right. And that came real quietly with Joe. He was not a firebrand – just a quietly dedicated young man.”

Joe wrote his first sports story for the Star before he attended his first class. “My transcript would show that pretty well set the tone for my priorities at Northern,” he joked. He would ascend to editor for his junior and senior years – raking in a cool $27 a week.

As the new journalism department, the Star covered more and more news on a rapidly growing campus. Soon, it published twice a week, then three times, then four.

And, predictably, administrators grew nervous about the amount of news coverage the campus was getting. “Those were times when the university leaned on us,” DiPego said, recalling several times when administrators confronted Joe about Star stories they didn’t like. “Joe, in his quiet way, really stood up,” DiPego said. “He was a good example to us all.”

When he graduated in 1965, Joe took a reporting job at the Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal, where several of his Star friends had found jobs, too. This was an era when newspapers scoured the country for reporters, and an up-and-coming journalism school was prime recruiting ground.

In 1973, Joe moved south, to the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, where he’d stay as an editor until 1980. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” he said. “I said I was never living above the Mason-Dixon Line again.”

That was before an opportunity opened in Detroit: sports editor at one of the nation’s largest, most respected newspapers. He stayed 10 years – longer than he ever thought he would, but always with an eye toward returning south.

The chance came in 1990, to be executive editor at the Anniston (Ala.) Star. And four years later, he jumped to the 60,000-circulation Huntsville (Ala.) Times as editor – a career stop he says will be the last for he and his wife, Dottie.

Having seen the big-city side of journalism, Joe’s happy to lead a paper where decisions don’t require 14 committees and stockholder approval. Kind of like the Northern Star, come to think of it.

“Those wonderful years had a huge impact on my life,” he said of his time in DeKalb, “affirming my love of journalism, teaching me skills and values and responsibility, exposing me to faculty members and fellow students who would have a lasting influence.

“On the other hand, it was too damn cold.”