Bob Heisler was an editor at Newsday, five years removed from his editor-in-chief days at The Daily Orange, when one of the paper’s summer interns approached him.

‘Are you Bob Heisler?’

Heisler confessed that he was.

‘Oh my God,’ the intern said, awestruck. ‘I’ve seen your shoe.’

It was, Heisler thought, an odd conversation starter, ‘even for a summer intern.’ He listened in wonder as the intern proceeded to tell him what had become of a brown, leather wing-tip, part of a suit he’d stored in a D.O. filing cabinet as emergency business-wear for the times when he needed to look impressive. (‘Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.’)

When Heisler left, the shoes stayed behind. But rather than ending up in the trash, the Shoe, as it had become known, slipped neatly into festivities associated with ‘transition,’ the changing-over of the old Daily Orange staff to the new. The staffers were ceremoniously handing the shoe off from editor in chief to editor in chief during the annual party. As one assumed the mantle of leadership, so did one assume the Shoe.

Presumably one then held the Shoe aimlessly for a while and tried to figure out what to do with it while juggling drinks. Eventually it ended up back in a corner of the office to await next year’s event. (The fate of its twin has been lost to history.)

Thirty years after its owner graduated, the Shoe is the granddaddy of D.O. traditions, still making its annual transition party appearance. And Heisler, editor in chief from 1971-73, is amused, pleased and not a little nonplussed at its place in the hearts of D.O. alumni over the other innovations that took place during his tenure – which included the original declaration of independence from Syracuse University.

‘I thought we’d be remembered for the electric typewriters,’ he reflected.

Traditions settle on The Daily Orange like so many flakes of – heh – snow. Most exist briefly, then melt away under the climate of constant change. But a few stick, accumulating heft and weight, until they come avalanching down and bury some hapless editor.

Take the Shoe. At some point – no one is sure when – the tradition changed. The Shoe is no longer handed from outgoing editor in chief to incoming editor in chief. Instead, the incoming editor in chief drinks from it.

Drinks beer, specifically.

Usually cheap beer.

From a stranger’s shoe.

What are you looking at?

Surrounded and cheered on by current and future staffers, the editor takes the Shoe, brimming with alcohol, and chugs. And as beer cascades down onto clothing and floor, the editor’s face tends to maintain a glazed expression that says, while the body may be drinking beer out of a 30-year-old piece of used footwear, the mind has gone to the editor’s Happy Place.

But it’s the tradition that counts, really. And drinking from the Shoe is surely an emotional moment that will stay with that person forever.

‘I’d be lying if I said I remember a lot of it,’ said Eric Grode, lifestyle editor and editor in chief from 1991-94. ‘I don’t know if I was drinking a lot earlier because I knew I had to drink from the Shoe. It’s a little bit like when you get to the worm at the bottom of a bottle of tequila. You know it’s disgusting, but you’re not in a position to appreciate it at the time.’

Then there’s the sentimental acknowledgement of being part of something much, much larger than one person.

‘It actually was not that disgusting,’ said Tito Bottitta, current editor in chief. ‘No one’s foot has been in that shoe for years, which is a good thing, so in those terms it wasn’t so bad.’

And finally there’s the admiration of the former staff. ‘God, I wouldn’t drink out of the Shoe,’ said Barbara Beck managing editor from 1971-73 and a friend of Heisler’s. ‘I wouldn’t touch the Shoe.’

OK, so possibly it isn’t the most appealing, or, say, sanitary tradition ever conceived. But don’t underestimate its importance. The Shoe sticks where so many other traditions flag because it has meaning.

Maybe it speaks to following in the footsteps of the people who went before you. Maybe it’s come to symbolize, as 1978-80 reporter and editor-in-chief Scot French speculates, the tradition of shoe-leather journalism — pounding the pavement, talking to people, working hard, getting the story.

And maybe it’s a reminder, in an environment where the stress is high and the work unrelenting, to laugh at yourself.

‘I remember other moments of my tenure, but the one that stands out is the passing of the Shoe,’ French said. ‘It was funny to have it be an old shoe. It wasn’t a scepter. We didn’t take ourselves too seriously.’

Most of the Daily Orange traditions have that flavor to them, that significantly warped sense of humor. An ongoing tradition is the quote board, a corkboard with every editor’s name tacked to it. Whenever an editor is caught voicing a phrase that, taken out of context, sounds like a double-entendre, diligent officemates write it down and post it on the board, usually with a label.

‘If you want to call the Sheraton, and get some rates … The ‘Let’s D.o. It In Style’ Award.’

‘You’re good … so flexible! The ‘Hard To Reach Places’ Award’

‘Over the break, I developed a deep affection for — no, fell in love with — animals.’

‘I was talking about the Pink Floyd album,’ said Bottitta, who contributed the last.

But for sheer wackiness, it’s hard to beat the holiday Secret Santa tradition. Everyone participates, from the newest staffers to the longest tenured. Names are pulled out of a hat. And for the next several days, editors find notes left on their desks or computers — instructions on what they have to do that day to earn their Secret Santa gift.

The daily staff meeting abruptly becomes fascinating.

People have dressed in drag, worn clothing made entirely of old Daily Orange editions, staged fights over the virtues of Seinfeld’s Bro versus the Mansiere, performed interpretive dance, composed and recited poetry on the joys of The Daily Orange, and spent the day sporting a paper bag with eyeholes. All for a gift that’s not supposed to exceed $20 and probably originates at Wal-Mart.

Meredith Goldstein, a former assistant lifestyle editor, managing editor and editor in chief from 1995-1999, remembers walking up to the Daily Orange building during training for her first D.O. position, which coincided with Secret Santa time. A fellow editor was on the roof in his boxer shorts, holding a sign that read: ‘Will Strip For Food.’

‘He was only out there for a few minutes – it was pretty cold,’ she said. ‘I remember looking around and thinking: ‘I can be part of this. I’m sick enough for it, and it’s sick enough for me.”

The ability to laugh, nurtured by traditions that encourage self-deprecation, is essential. Daily Orange editors spend 40 hours a week at the office, sometimes more, in addition to carrying a full slate of classes. Many of the traditions, including the small ones that come and go in a semester or two, tap into the need to blow off steam — like the short-lived sign on a wall in the design department, quoting a staffer, that read: ‘This Day Has Been Totally Vomitous.’ Exasperated designers rapidly filled up the blank lines beneath the slogan with dates.

But Daily Orange traditions have another, more serious purpose. D.O. staff changes constantly, often totally turning over within a few semesters. Traditions provide a vital — sometimes the only — connection to the past. A filing cabinet in the editor in chief’s office is covered with the signatures of past editor in chief and managing editors starting with Heisler. The walls are decorated with banners that bear the names of past editors and their catch-phrases.

‘The editors, copy editors, paste-up people … there’s so much on those walls,’ Bottitta said. ‘We talk about cleaning up the place but we don’t want to take anything off those walls. The people and their spirits pass through and you’re not remembered, but that’s what’s great about it. People are learning new things and trying to push it in a new direction all the time. I love that about The D.O. – it’s never the same entity.’

So the Secret Santas, the quote boards – no matter how inconsequential on the surface – are taken seriously. Bottitta remembered feeling real panic over forgetting, one holiday season, to compose an annual Daily Orange-themed poem in the vein of ‘The Night Before Christmas.’ Eventually he realized that some traditions will inevitably fade away or be supplanted.

‘You create your own community.’

But it helps to have that foundation when you’re sitting in your office with exams looming on the horizon, wondering how to fill the day’s pages with stories when your writers have gone to ground with the speed of startled bunnies.

‘It always made me feel the bigger picture – that kids before me were going through the same things, feeling the same things,’ said Kristin Ertel, design and photo editor from 2000-02. ‘There has always been a group [of] kids at SU putting together something for the student body. The traditions made me realize it’s not just me sitting in front of a computer.’

The most longstanding traditions are the ones that aren’t recognized as traditions: the passion for the paper, the long hours, late nights, and lack of sleep, the devotion to its maintaining and improving its quality. Diana ‘Dee’ Hatch, a reporter and managing editor from 1953-57, remembered marking up the paper daily to illustrate its highlights and low points to the staff. The managing editor still does the same critique today, the same way. Yet no one interviewed cited it as a tradition — it’s just perceived as part of the job.

‘The traditions are in the daily output of the paper,’ Goldstein said. ‘As long as that happens, and it’s still a daily paper, the rest is just icing.’

So maybe the Shoe lends itself to one more symbol, one more metaphor. Drinking out of it might be a difficult task, even unappealing on the surface. It’s not something anyone sane would willing expose himself too, and yet …

‘I swear they poured that beer in that shoe an hour before, and it was festering,’ Goldstein said. ‘But I remember thinking, ‘I’m so lucky’ when I had my mouth on that thing.”

And Grode, who got his first glimpse of a transition party freshman year, still remembers seeing the incoming editor in chief drink from the Shoe. ‘Wow, that’s disgusting,” he thought, and then, instantly, ‘ ‘I hope I get to do that someday.”

Published on September 18, 2003 at 12:00 pm