Letters (and more letters) to the editor — Raymond F. Stoiber’s time-tested formula for seeing his thoughts in print: Peg ’em to the news; keep ’em short; keep ’em coming.
We reached Raymond F. Stoiber early in the morning, before he left for the betting parlor behind a Joliet mall, where he spends much of his days. Not that he gambles. Mostly he just hangs out with other seventysomething friends to talk.
Life hasn’t changed a lot for him since he was profiled as the writer of hundreds of letters to the editor over some 30 years. He still sends in an occasional observation:
“A side pleasure from riding the CTA bus along Addison Street to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game: enjoying the yards with lots of colorful flowers. The view from the bus is like a rolling, house-to-house flower show. So good!” He wrote that in July, his last effort published in the Tribune.
“It seems I can’t get it together like I used to,” he said, noting a decline in his barrage of letters always bearing U.S. flag stamps.
In March he was interviewed by Peabody award winner Scott Simon for the National Public Radio show, “Weekend Edition” — Saturday. Stoiber was surprised to hear that it had aired.
“I didn’t hear it,” he said. “I thought they ditched it because of what I said.”
When Simon asked why Stoiber hadn’t written to NPR, he replied that he had never heard of the station. Simon gave him the NPR address in Washington, D.C. You can hear the interview on the Web site npr.org, and you can hear Stoiber copying that address.
