#MediaMonday – Happy Anniversary, Jim!

The year was 1999. The month was July. The station was KTAR.
In July 1999 – 15 years ago! – KTAR hired wily reporter Jim Cross.
We here at HMA – and we are guessing many of our blog readers – work with Jim a lot.
So, we thought it would be fun to re-share a great profile we ran on the Western-loving, spur-wearing resident cowboy back in 2012, just a few months before he became a grandpa. You can check that out here.
And, we also asked our team and some of Jim’s other communications colleagues where they were and what they were doing at this time 15 years ago. Some great responses!
Jim, in your honor, here’s what the rest of us were doing when you joined the KTAR team.
Scott Hanson:  I was with my family enjoying the cool weather and people-watching of Mission Beach in San Diego, where for several years we rented place on the boardwalk.

 
Abbie S. Fink: Like Barb (see below), I also have my Franklin Planner from that year.  According to that, on July 7, 1999 I had a live remote for a client at 6 a.m., a client lunch and then a board meeting for Florence Crittenton Services of Arizona.  Much easier to go back-in-time with a hard-copy calendar, that’s for sure!
Alison Bailin Batz: I had just graduated from Horizon High School and was contacting my soon-to-be ASU roommate to get to know her before we began cohabitating. However, the girl – can’t even remember her name – was dating some creepy dude 20 years older so really just used the dorm as a front for her parents. She moved in with Mr. Creepy instead. I met her all of once – and about died when her parents came to visit our dorm room, only to discover I lived there alone!
Kelly Potts: I was 8 years old and in the process of moving from South Carolina to Italy!
Whitney Liem: So 1999 was the summer before my senior year of high school. So, I would assume I was swimming A LOT (I was varsity and swam year round thru high school), and I’m assuming a San Diego trip was probably happening – I don’t think I was working so I was probably lifeguarding and teaching swimming lessons at Melrose Makos (a local swim team in the neighborhood on 26th and Cholla I believe are cross roads)…
Shelby Ray: I was visiting my mom in Pennsylvania that summer, and on July 8, 1999 my dad missed me so much he flew out to visit and take me on a quick trip to New York City. My dad, saver of things, still has the receipt for his plane ticket and our Les Miserables tickets!
Charlotte Risch Shaff: I was leaving Grand Rapids, Mich., and interviewing for a promotion producer/writer job at KNXV.
Gretchen Allen Pahia: Just started my first job in television! Just graduated from college a month or so earlier- started working as an associate producer at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas.
Shelly Talsma Everson: I was 13, so probably on summer break before 8th grade.
Barb Walters Harris: Scarily enough, I still have my monthly pages from my Franklin Planner so I can tell you. Was in my 6th year of being self-employed, had a five-year-old, and spent much of the month traveling — back to St. Louis for business, and then Philadelphia and New Jersey for family vacation.
Tim Tait: I was a juvenile probation officer for Maricopa County, working surveillance on kids on house arrest and intensive probation. Good times….
Peter Faur: Living in St. Louis, working for Mallinckrodt, the world’s largest manufacturer of acetaminophen, bulk morphine, bulk codeine. It was the only time during my career that I wasn’t working in communications. I had a rotational assignment doing corporate procurement, negotiating things like cell phone contracts and trucking contracts. Interesting times.
Nancy Ostrander Neff: That would have been my two-year anniversary as director of what was then the News Bureau at ASU.
Geri Koeppel: I was in my second year of living in Phoenix, freelancing full-time, writing biographical reference books, and had recently fallen in love and gotten engaged to Eric.
Jennifer Spangler: I was living in Los Angeles working at B|W|R Public Relations in the Entertainment Technology division.
Kirti Dwivedi: I was a counselor and a social worker, working with juvenile felons in Columbus, Ohio. Took a trip to Toronto to celebrate my boyfriend getting his master’s degree and enjoyed a rather wild Canada Day.
Ania Kubicki: I was opening the ski season in Argentina with Peter Martin Associates…. good times. It was a great press trip to Las Lenas. I quickly learned that only good skiers become editors of ski publications and that I really, really should not try to “take them on.”
Dave Murrow: Working as SAS for Edelman in New York City.
Diane Smith: Working as a morning show producer for “Good Morning Arizona” at Channel 3.
Deb Krol: I celebrated my first month as the PIO for the Arizona Commission of Indian Affairs and was preparing to head off to the UNITY: Journalists of Color Convention in Seattle.
Pat Elliott: In Silicon Valley managing marketing communications for PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ global TICE (Technology, Information, Communications and Entertainment) sectors.
Mark Scarp: I was starting the first full month of what would be 9-1/2 years working as an editorial writer and columnist for the East Valley Tribune.
Ryan Narramore: Summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school… Which means I had just gotten my driver’s license a month earlier and was working a summer job at Target.
Jackie Wright: All I remember is that I was living in Michigan and working as a marketing coordinator for Grant Thornton.
Nat Handler: Heading out on vacation after weathering the 1998-1999 NBA Lockout, culminating with the San Antonio Spurs winning the franchise’s first NBA championship, beating my New York Knicks 4-1, and handling 1999 NBA Finals Champs celebration and parade.
Shay Moser: I was a newlywed, kid-free, working full-time as an associate editor at McMurry (now McMurry/TMG), and attending ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Busy then, busy now, just in different ways.
Paula Hubbs Cohen: Was here in Phoenix, kids (now college grads) were very young, was doing some freelance writing for parenting pubs (“how to have a birthday party on a budget” – “how to travel with young kids, or we’ve now become the people we used to avoid…” etc), and w…See More
Mindy Haskins: I had just graduated from Dobson High School and obtained my first real job at ASU’s Vice President for Student Affairs office as a student worker. That fall, I started my freshman year at ASU’s Cronkite school.
Jake Poinier: Ironic that I’m posting after Shay, since I was at the other end of my McMurry journey. I was saving money like mad while plotting the launch of my freelance writing and editing business. I pulled the corporate ripcord in August.
Alison Bendler Walsh: Working on the newly announced (June 1999) merger between Honeywell and Allied Signal at the Aerospace division office in Phoenix.