Dan Berry
I am honored — not to mention tremendously thankful — to announce that Dan Berry has joined Last Best News as an ad salesman.
Dan retired from the Billings Gazette last year after a career of more than 25 years there. He and his wife, Kay, moved to Billings in 1979 and Dan joined the Gazette as an ad salesman in 1985.
He took two leaves of absence, each lasting about a year, giving him a total of 27 years in ad sales for the Gazette.
I knew Dan better than I knew most of the sales people because I covered City Hall for many years and Dan was heavily involved in downtown Billings activities. Over the years, he served on and chaired the Downtown Billings Association board, the Downtown Partnership and the Parking Advisory Board, all of which I covered from time to time.
Also, as Dan told me, “The whole family has had fun helping with events from the Strawberry Festival to the holiday parade. I’ve enjoyed watching downtown grow and become a vital part of Billings again.”
Anyone familiar with big companies in general and chain-owned newspapers in particular knows that the top managers are strongly “encouraged” to serve on community boards and such, and they inevitably list every such position every time one of those managers is promoted.
I don’t think ad salespeople were expected to serve on boards, and in Dan’s case I always got the impression that he was serving because he wanted to, because he really cared about the fate of downtown Billings.
When I started Last Best News last February, Dan was already retired, so I went to him for advice on selling ads. He not only gave me loads of good tips, he accompanied me when I went calling on some of the people he used to sell ads to.
Five or six weeks ago, I reached out to him again, asking him if he knew of anyone in town — there seem to be a lot of ex-Gazetteers at large in Billings — who might be interested in selling ads for me. I didn’t even ask Dan if he was interested. I’d seen enough of his Facebook posts to know that he was more than happy being retired.
I stood up, shouted, clicked my heels, turned a somersault and bought the house a round of coffees. That’s what I felt like doing, at any rate, but I didn’t want to make a scene, so I just shook Dan’s hand and thanked him profusely.
When I asked Dan for a little biographical information, here’s what he told me about his family:
“Kay and I have been married for 41 years and have two children that I’m incredibly proud of: Courtney, who lives in Portland, and Lucas, who lives in downtown Billings.
“Courtney is the program manager for a nonprofit organization called Schoolhouse Supplies; she married Jeremy Wright last summer. Lucas completed a two-year welding course at the University of Montana and is working at Montana Sulfur and Chemical.”
And I should mention that my own family has known Kay longer than we’ve known Dan. She has worked for School District 2 since 1983, and in 1988, the year before we moved to Billings, she went to work as a resource room teacher at McKinley Elementary School.
She stayed in that job until 2004, meaning she worked at McKinley for all the years all three of my daughters attended that school. Through a lot of staff changes at McKinley, Kay was the unfailingly cheerful, steady presence there.
Kay has been an elementary program specialist since 2012, and she and Dan are both looking forward to her retirement at the end of the school year.
I should also mention that Dan isn’t only working for me. As much as he liked being retired, he said, he missed his friends in the business community, which is why he has been doing some limited advertising sales and consulting.
If you’d like to advertise on Last Best News, or if you’d just like to catch up with Dan or bid him welcome, you can write to him at danberry@lastbestnews.com.
