This “backstory” is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2023.
Lenora Travis first called Seven Days because she wanted somebody to write about the VFW. The club had made a deal to sell its headquarters on South Winooski Avenue in Burlington to the Champlain Housing Trust, which would redevelop the property into affordable housing while including a new, smaller space for the club.
Less certain was the future of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 782 barroom, a favorite hangout for some of the club’s members, veterans’ families and Burlington karaoke diehards. Travis invited me to stop by on the bar’s final night. She assured me I’d hear an earful from vets who were angry about how certain club leaders had handled the situation.
At the bar that night, a few people did vent. But I was struck more by the joy of the place, this local watering hole that was also a social hub for people who needed one. After a couple of hours, I put away my notebook and drank beers with some regulars while we listened to others belt out their favorite swan songs.
A day after the story published, Travis gave me another call. She wasn’t happy. I hadn’t been as critical of the bar closure as she’d hoped. I’d also made an error, she informed me. I’d written that Travis gave artificial roses to each of her favorite ladies. The roses, she corrected, were real. Travis had never given anyone an artificial flower in her life, she added.
I had made an assumption — a journalist’s cardinal sin — and by doing so I revealed more about myself than about Travis. I apologized and corrected the story, but I figured Travis would never come to me with another scoop.
Wrong again! The next weekend, she phoned me. Her apartment building on St. Paul Street had been damaged by an electrical fire, and now she and the other tenants were staying at a hotel.
The landlord, Joe Handy, wasn’t paying for her hotel stay, and repairing the building would take months. In the meantime, she and some of the other tenants of modest means were homeless. She thought Handy should foot the bill.
My colleague Courtney Lamdin and I looked into her claim. Travis was right. The city has an ordinance that requires landlords to cover tenants’ relocation expenses when they’re displaced through no fault of their own. But city officials hadn’t told Handy about his obligations because, it turned out, they had made their own errant assumption. “I presumed he is aware because he’s been in business for so long,” Patti Wehman, manager of the city’s Code Enforcement division, told us.
In the months that followed, Handy still refused to pay, so the city fronted the cost of Travis’ mounting hotel bill. Officials then put a lien on the Handy property in an ongoing effort to recoup the nearly $20,000 in city funds.
The city only intervened because Travis had invited me to her favorite bar — and then was willing to give me a second chance.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Most Forgiving Source”
This article appears in Dec 27, 2023 – Jan 9, 2024.
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