There is a well-loved old orange coffee mug now missing from the back room and from the morning staff meetings at the Moody County Enterprise office.
Along with its owner.
For 47 years, Roger Janssen has called the newspaper office his second home. Coming in daily for dozens of years and most recently, arriving for some part-time hours.
But he’s decided to stay home on Mondays from now on as he quietly retired from newspapering the nearly 150 year old publication on December 31.
Through those years he learned how to sell advertising, take photos, develop film, shoot layout pages to make them readied for the printing press, print job work, write a few stories and even deliver papers back in the day when a carrier was absent.
Janssen came to work at the paper on August 15, 1977 and it’s a time he’ll never forget. Not just because it was his first day on the job, but because what happened the next day.
“My second day on the job, was monumental,” said Janssen who came to work as the “son-in-law” working for long-time publishers, Wayne and Dorothy Lyford.
“It was a Tuesday, and I was downstairs and I had the radio going in the darkroom. Doo doo doo, doo doo doo. Newsflash! Elvis is dead. So I came upstairs and put my head over the rail and said, ‘Elvis is dead,’ and Angie (Nibbelink) who was working on layout at the time said, ‘Oh, shut up! Get back downstairs, that’s not even funny.’”
“I thought, okay, and I went back downstairs. Then I heard her come back in from lunch, crying. I thought ‘geez, something had happened’. So, I came up and said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And she couldn’t talk. I said, ‘Elvis is dead?’ And she sobbed, ‘Yes….’”

There’s always been lots to learn on the way since 1977 and many hundreds of pieces of historical data has been recorded along the way during his tenure.
Even though 47 years is a significant number of years to work in one place, he’s doesn’t hold the record of years there on duty.
“I started as a darkroom guy and printer learning from Vern McConnell who worked 57 and one-half years here,” he said.
“I swore I’d never threaten that record time on duty.”
As the years clicked off, so does progress and the newspaper began the “computerized” era.
“In 1991, Angie, ML (Headrick) and myself sat here in the back room and learned how to run an Apple computer,” he noted.
“We sort of felt stupid learning layout and design then; it was a lot to comprehend. We had a gal come in and give us a day’s worth of training and then left us to look at those little eight-inch screen computers and figure the rest out ourselves.”
Janssen eventually caught on to the concept and is a whiz at the computer now with photoshop one of his specialties.
He’s worked under several publishers including his father-in-law Wayne Lyford, 10 years (1977-87), Chuck Cecil, 13 years (1987-2000) and, currently, Billy McMacken over his six decades of coming to the “shop.”
The depth that he provides when it comes to the stories there are to cover and the people that make up the broader community throughout the county will forever be tough to replicate; most people just do not stay in jobs this long anymore.
Janssen says he doesn’t know why he stayed at his position for so long. He has a few regrets about changing careers as he heads off into retirement. He says, what the Enterprise provided him, is an incredible sense of community and pride in what he and the team have created each week over the years.
“It doesn’t just happen,” said Janssen, of the paper itself. “It’s been a good job, good people to work with; that’s so huge and that’s why I stuck it out for as long as I did. I’ve never really had a day where I didn’t want to go to work. I know a lot of people who grumble all the time. I’ve never really had that. I still liked coming in…”
“The paper is in capable hands,” he said. “I’ve done my time. It’s time for someone else to do the job,” he says of his co-workers, Kayla Charles, Carleen Wild and ML Headrick.
Janssen will settle into retirement working on his Outdoorsmen Magazine that he publishes and distributes monthly, and will spend more time fishing and with family.
Should you catch him as he’s off on new adventures, chances are you’ll recognize him by the well-worn ceramic orange mug bought from Arnie Lloyd at the Coast to Coast years ago, as he sips on his coffee.  
Tell him hello and know that he’s always still game for sitting down over a fresh cup and sharing a good story.
He’s always joked that the day he leaves the paper for good, he plans to smash the old mug on his way out the door…last week, he wasn’t so sure.