Baxter Village, sometimes we get it wrong

Andrew Dys.

Two words that appear almost daily in The Herald and at heraldonline.com, right there above stories and news columns that prompt reactions ranging from chuckles to tears, shrugs to head-shaking, empathy to outrage.

That last one, outrage, is often centered on the issues Dys writes about – but sometimes the anger is directed squarely at Dys himself.

Such was the case with a column published online Tuesday and in Wednesday’s print edition.

On the day before students at York schools were scheduled to return to classes for the 2015-16 school year, Dys wrote about families in a mobile home park there. The children’s excitement about new bookbags, school supplies and getting back to school. The parents’ already missing having the kids around the house all day, as they had been all summer.

It read like a classic back-to-school story, until we brought in one word – mimosas.

In an attempt to make a point about how York County is home to a diverse range of families with widely diverging economic backgrounds, Dys made reference to what has become a back-to-school tradition among a group of mothers who live in Baxter Village.

The previous morning, after dropping their kids off for the first day of school in Fort Mill, mothers in that neighborhood gathered at a local wine bar to sip mimosas and toast the new school year.

While contrasting the two communities certainly was not intended to be a criticism of the Baxter moms, we understand that it came across as a mean-spirited swipe.

Judging by what we’ve heard, read in comments with the online version of the story, and found on our social media sites, many readers saw it that way, too.

We were wrong. In hindsight, it was the wrong way – and clearly the wrong time – to be making a point about income gaps and how many of our neighbors across York County are struggling to get by every day.

We didn’t intend to offend anyone, only to paint a picture of different lives coming together on the first day of school.

Obviously, it didn’t work, and we sent the wrong message.

We know the Baxter Village moms love their children as much as we love our own, as much as the York moms love their kids. We know they would do anything to make sure their kids lead happy, healthy and productive lives. We respect the sacrifices they make every day for their kids.

In fact, on Monday morning, a Herald photographer was assigned to go to Baxter Village to capture images of kids returning to classes at Orchard Park Elementary for that very reason – because we knew the parents there are deeply involved in their children’s education. What better way to show that – as we did in Tuesday’s print edition – than with photographs of smiling families walking hand-in-hand to school?

The role of a newspaper is to reflect its community from multiple viewpoints, and the role of a newspaper columnist like Andrew Dys is to comment from his unique perspective.

Sometimes he – and we – get it wrong.

This story was originally published August 20, 2015 at 9:45 PM with the headline "Baxter Village, sometimes we get it wrong."