Tribune-Star reporter Pat Pastore's career draws to a close

Pat Pastore recalls the time she climbed a sycamore tree along the Wabash River and watched employees of a major pharmaceutical company skim dead fish from the water's surface and then bury them.

She had been investigating allegations the company was dumping chemicals into the river, resulting in fish kills.

Company employees, concerned about the dumping, had tipped her to what was going on -- and she zealously pursued the story.

Pastore, 66, a Tribune-Star correspondent and reporter since 1982, has covered everything from sensational murders to descriptive pieces about the historic Parke County covered bridges.

On Friday, as Pastore's reporting career drew to a close, she recounted her colorful and sometimes perilous experiences as a Tribune-Star reporter. Pastore has retired, and Friday was her last day on the job.

She's written about fish kills; serial killers; corporate leaders caught poaching ducks; and mine blasting that seriously damaged homes in Vermillion County, where she was born and raised.

"Her career is in so many ways an index of some of the biggest news stories in the Wabash Valley for the past 25 years," said Max Jones, Tribune-Star editor.

He said he's always had great respect for Pastore's work ethic and no-fear attitude. "She would take on anything at any time. She set a great example for others," Jones said. She also had great credibility as a reporter.

Former Tribune-Star Editor Merv Hendricks said Pastore "was one of the most courageous reporters I have ever seen."

Before other media began reporting on VX, Pastore helped enlighten and educate the Wabash Valley about the deadly nerve agent stored at the Newport Chemical Depot.

Before she wrote the first word about VX, she did in-depth research and studied voluminous files on the topic, Hendricks said. Back then, information was much more difficult to access, he said.

Pastore had been a successful stockbroker in Colorado when she decided to return to Vermillion County to help her mother take care of her dad after he had a heart attack. An only child, "I wanted to be closer to Mom and Dad," she said.

She started her journalism career at a time when the newspaper wanted to expand its coverage of Vermillion and Parke counties. While it wasn’t the most profitable job, "I got hooked," she said.

She learned about government officials quietly making decisions behind closed doors rather than in public meetings.

Pastore became the public's eyes and ears, and her reporting prompted government bodies to conduct their business more openly before the public.

"It opened my eyes to a lot of things," Pastore said. "I had people come to my door practically day and night saying that these things had been hidden for years in both Parke and Vermillion counties."

Some of her biggest stories include:

-- A three-part series on the 10-year anniversary of the Hollandsburg massacre, in which four brothers were executed by four men in a thrill killing in the early hours of Feb. 14, 1977 in Parke County.

-- Stories about serial killer Larry Eyler, who preyed on young, gay men. Eyler was sentenced to death in 1986 for the murder of a teenage prostitute in Chicago. Before he died in 1994, he confessed to killing 17 other young men and was an accomplice in the murders of four others. In 1990, Eyler confessed in Vermillion Circuit Court to the 1982 murder of Steven Agan of Terre Haute.

-- Pastore was instrumental in covering the investigation and conviction of serial killer Orville Lynn Majors, the "angel of death." Majors was tried in 1999 and sentenced to 360 years in prison for murdering six patients at a western Indiana hospital by giving them lethal injections. Majors had been a nurse at the hospital.

-- In 1984, Pastore covered the Lodi "hog lot" murder of Marion "Red" Stonebraker, in which Stonebraker's wife, Loretta, conspired with two others -- including Loretta's female lover -- to have her husband killed.

"It was a story you had to be careful about writing" because some of the language in the courtroom wasn't appropriate for a family newspaper, Pastore said.

Other stories include last year's arson of the Bridgeton Covered Bridge, a story close to Pastore's heart. Four generations of her family have played, swam or run across that bridge, she said.

“I was there in the wee hours when the smoke was still coming up from the skeletal remains of that wooden bridge,” she said. Pastore has written several stories about ongoing efforts to rebuild the bridge.

Parke County Commissioner Jim Meece has known Pastore for several years. "Oftentimes, she's been our only conduit of information about what's going on here," he said.

Pastore cares about the Wabash Valley, he said. Without her reporting on efforts to reconstruct the Bridgeton Covered Bridge, "We wouldn’t be where we are" or made the same level of progress, Meece said.

While some of Pastore’s stories have been difficult to write, with tragic endings, others have been fun, including a more recent story she wrote in which senior citizens learned how to play an organ for the first time. “I’ve never seen happier people in my life,” she said.

She's enjoyed writing about the average, everyday person. "People have been wonderful. They let me come into their homes, they’ve taken me into their heart. They've been open and honest with me, and they gave me the ability to make a living, a good living," Pastore said.

She's won several reporting awards, including 15 first-place awards in professional competitions.

In 1987, she won the Kent Cooper Award for her 10-year anniversary piece on the Hollandsburg Massacre. That award goes to the best of the best in the annual Associated Press Managing Editors writing contest. Pastore is the only Tribune-Star reporter to have won the award, Jones said.

Pastore, who has some health issues to deal with, plans to remain active even though she won't be working full time.

She is of Woodland Indian ancestry and serves in many capacities with the WEA Indian tribe, and she is vice president of the Native American Foundation of Western Indiana.

She will be involved with the Minority Health Coalition and the Sisters of Providence Diversity Committee. She may do some freelance writing.

Pastore values the awards she has won and the recognition she has received, but there have been other, even more important rewards, she said.

One time, an elderly woman went to her house and gave her a plate with six sugar cookies she had made. The woman thanked Pastore for writing a story about her granddaughter's accomplishments.

"No one had ever written a story about anyone in her family before," Pastore said. The woman's kind gesture and appreciation "is the greatest reward you could ever have."

Sue Loughlin can be reached at (812) 231-4235 or sue.loughlin@tribstar.com.