Clint CooperAfter a newspaper career with stops in the sports, news and features departments of the Chattanooga News-Free Press, Chattanooga Free Press and Chattanooga Times Free Press, I began my tenure last week as editor of the Chattanooga Free Press editorial page.
For all but about two years of my life, Lee Anderson was the editor of this page. I worked under him when he was, in effect, also the managing editor of the newspaper and knew him to be a community-minded, patriotic, fair and compassionate man.
He is both a fiscal conservative and a social conservative, and I hope readers of this page will find I am the same, with the perspective of a baby boomer rather than a member of the Greatest Generation.
Anderson is unashamedly a Christian and he called on his faith when considering his editorial opinions. I am cut from the same faith cloth, with the additional frame of reference of having covered a wide variety of faiths as well as an array of Christian denominations on the religion “beat” for the last 14-plus years.
As a lifelong Chattanoogan, I hail from a family that operated a small business, Cooper’s Office Supply on Cherry Street, from 1931 to 2010. Though we were comfortable, my brothers, sister and I understood that profits from the retail firm were plowed back into the business. In other words, we ate from no silver spoons.