By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
To say that they have been invested in the community would be the ultimate understatement.
For more than three decades, Bruce and Crystal Rolfe have had their hands on the pulse of the Village of Climax, putting their collective heart and soul into covering the community as the owners of The Climax Crescent, a weekly newspaper they purchased in January 1990 from Ray and Kate Smith.
As owners, the Rolfes have worn many newspaper hats – reporter, editor, photographer, paginator, ad manager, circulation chief, bookkeeper, and, perhaps most importantly, tireless community booster.
Jointly, it has been their labor of love, a point that Crystal drove home in her farewell column in the September 29 edition of The Crescent.
“We did not know what it would take to run our newspaper back in 1990 when we purchased it from the Smiths, but we were willing to give it our best shot,” Crystal acknowledged. “That is the advantage being young and naïve gives you.
“As it turns out, it was our destiny. We never dreamed 33 years later that it would be the amazing journey it has been.”
Fortunately for readers of the weekly paper, the Rolfes brought a wealth of newspaper knowledge and experience to their respective roles with The Crescent, which has been operated out of their two-story home on N. Main Street since they became the paper’s owners.
“We were just two, twenty-something newly married people, who just happened to meet at The Three Rivers Commercial News and fall in love,” Crystal said of their origins in the newspaper business. “Both of us had newspaper backgrounds, starting young delivering newspapers in our home towns by bicycle. We went on to earn our degrees in different areas, but as fate would have it, I found myself always getting a job with a newspaper. I had a driving route delivering papers in the summers while attending Spring Arbor College and then advertising/layout with The Sturgis Journal.”
Upon graduation, she moved to Florida, landing a job with The Palm Beach Post, an award-winning daily in the coastal communities of South Florida. Several years later, she moved back to Michigan and began working with The Three Rivers Commercial News where she would meet the man who affectionately would become known as “Scoop.” His name, of course, was Bruce Rolfe, a sports writer who was devoted to covering the local sports scene from A to Z.
In fact, he was so meticulous that he soon would develop an unbreakable bond with his future wife who ran interference for him in the newspaper’s pressroom.
“It was me who laid out his sports pages on Friday nights after late sports games and he drove me absolutely crazy with his need to have every stat and coverage of the games down in his stories,” Crystal recalled. “He was then and still is a perfectionist. The pressmen would harass him endlessly as they wanted to get the paper done so they could go home. I became the ‘middleman’ and after dozens of ‘I’m sorry’ exclamations from Bruce, I would tell the ink-stained pressmen to go mind their own business so that I could get Bruce’s pages laid out quickly.”
It is just one of many “war stories” that the Rolfes have in their treasure trove of newspaper memories, which now includes their recent sale of The Climax Crescent to The Detroit Legal News Publishing, a group that now owns and operates 10 newspapers across Michigan.
The sale became official last month and ushers in a new era for The Crescent in Kalamazoo County. Fortunately, the future of the weekly paper will be mindful of its past, as Bruce has graciously agreed to continue in a writing role, covering village meetings and matters as well as the Climax sports scene.
“Detroit Legal News Publishing is proud to add this newspaper to its family of publications in Michigan and continue its legacy of service to the Climax and Kalamazoo County community,” said Ban Ibrahim, publisher of the newspaper group.
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