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How do you imagine the offices of TJG? Do you see us working in the bubble of Box 149? Or, do you see us with a large, well-paid staff in fine offices? Some of you write to us as if we had a big complex organization: "Gentlemen", or "Dear Sir" or "Attention: Department X". Some of you write to us in your first letter as warm personal friends.

This is our first anniversary. One year ago this Fall was the first printing of "Tommeyville Jr Gazette". It was just a step beyond the previous mimeographed copies put out by us when we were in the Respiratory Center and similar to those put out by almost all the other Centers. In brief, our growth story follows:

APRIL, 1958: Present Editors (3 horizontal respos -- living many miles apart -- and 2 vertical volunteers) rather casually inherited TJG. First mimeographed copy. Used old mailing list of 125 friends and patients of Toomey Pavilion (Respiratory Center).

JUNE, 1958: Investigated the possibility of a picture for the cover of our mimeographed sheets. We didn't even know how this could be done and felt wildly extravagant spending $9 for the printing of 250 covers. (We had doubled the circulation, which was a little hard on the mimeographing machine.)

So we went into print.

FALL, 1958: The first printing of TJG! We printed 850 with the help of a few wonderful donations. (We thought it was practically professional.) We printed our first foreign letters and our first letters from people in other Centers. Bless our early correspondents! The "Alumni News" was shrinking in its dominance in favor of articles of more universal interest. We even got extravagant and put four or five pictures inside the GAZETTE! Each picture cost $1.50 more for printing, and it was with great discussions that the decision was made. The GAZETTE was catching on, but it began to be obvious that to continue with the printing and growing mailing list, we would have to get more money -- somehow.

WINTER, 1958: Circulation 1,300! We started with no funds in the till, a great many ambitious plans, a swelling list of subscribers and a lot of faith. (It was hard work, but we had learned a lot, our readers loved us and we felt we had produced our masterpiece.) But we were in a state of exhaustion. We literally finished up in the hospital. When one of the Editors had to return to the lung with near-pneumonia, one of the volunteers tagged along with a drawing board, typewriting and the almost-GAZETTE, secretly borrowed an empty bed to eliminate commuting, and worked on together until TJG was ready for the lithographer.

The tail was wagging the dog.

We needed some help. The job was bigger than the five of us. We gathered together our "horizontal" respo family of regional correspondents, department editors and writers. We shanghaied our friends in the little town of Chagrin Falls and made them permanent "vertical" volunteer typists, correspondents, printers devils, filers, proof readers, artists and addressers. They all fell in love with the GAZETTE and the stories it told. TJG became a real community project.

Our office was in a suitcase which was carried from house to house to hospital, according to where the work was going on. We slid by with the financing of one more issue --12 contributors had believed in us.

SPRING,1959: Now we had 2,000 copies. We were beginning to use the language of the trade, patiently taught to us by our lithographer and printer. We learned how to "shoot the diagonal", "bleed in the gutters", and "layout a dummy". (With every new issue we put out, we laughed at how innocent we were just one issue ago.)

(Best of all were and are our letters from respos all over the world. Every letter that comes is read and reread. Every person is referred to as someone we know well. Their names are brought up in daily conversations: "Here's Olli in Finland who has the same involvement as John." "I bet Marie would like to write to this new person in Canada." "Remember what Donald did to solve this problem. Maybe this would help Al too." All the "workers" have their favorites among you.)

SUMMER, l959: "Polio Radar" has magic results. Our readers sent in so many names of their respo friends that we had 3,000 printed. We mustered still more good friends to help. They assigned themselves to work one hour a week or many days a week. A room in Sue Williams' home was turned into a GAZETTE office with files, catalogs on everything, three typewriters (usually a few volunteer typists and filers dodging the rocking bed), all the rehabilitation literature -- books, periodicals and pamphlets -- we can get our hands on, cutters, drawingboard, T square, paste pots and a confused bulletin board of "Don't Forgets."

We give visiting business men nightmares. "How are you financing this thing?" they ask. "From gifts in the mail -- usually small, a dollar or so, occasionally larger, twenty-five or fifty dollars -- from wonderful people who just believe in the value of the GAZETTE." This seems unbelievable to people of high finance. "Do you have enough for the next issue?" they ask. "No," we answer, "but that doesn't bother us. We got the last issue paid for and we have great faith that the future will take care of itself." So far, we've managed without subscriptions, ads, grants, foundations or organization -- just the readers.