Donald
W. Bush
Celebrating 40 Years with STC!
By Sue
Heim, VP Membership
Don enjoying
the presentation
Don, surprised
as Sue presents him with a pen
On December 6 Don Bush celebrated his 40-year anniversary with STC—a truly auspicious occasion. At our December dinner meeting, we honored Don with a special presentation.
How His Story Began
Don's first technical communication job was in 1962 for McDonnell Aircraft. In 1961 Don was a journalism major working in public relations for Southwestern Bell when he heard about the job at McDonnell Aircraft. They wanted a "student of language" to help engineers write proposals. He was hired in 1962 and worked as a proposal analyst until he retired after 25 years. After he retired from McDonnell Aircraft, Don began teaching at SDSU where he taught for 11 years, until he retired from teaching.
Don joined STC (or rather, the Society of Technical Writers and Publishers) in December 1963. In 1981 he became an Associate Fellow. In 1989 Don became an STC Fellow. STC Fellowship is conferred on those who have attained such eminence in the field of technical communication that the Board, by a two-thirds vote of all members, deems them worthy of being singled out as one of the select few who have distinguished the Society and the profession.
Don is a prolific writer and editor. He has written two books and numerous articles. He started writing articles for Technical Communication in 1980. In 1990 Don began writing a column for the same periodical, after the editor talked him into it. Don continues to write "The Friendly Editor" for Intercom. His most recent article appeared in the July/August issue and was titled "The Most Obvious Fault in Technical Writing."
What He's Said
Don has written close to 30 articles for Intercom alone. Doing research for his presentation, I read many of his articles. It was very hard to pick only a few, but here are some of his more memorable quotes.
- In "Ethics for Editors" in the January 1996 issue of Intercom, Don wrote, "In addition to truth, fairness, and scientific objectivity, [we] should embrace espousing the interests and welfare of the reader, not just the publisher."
- In "The Most Obvious Fault in Technical Writing" in the July/August 2003 issue of Intercom, he wrote what is probably going to be one of the most oft-repeated quotes "...the greatest fault in published technical writing is not lack of grammar, consistency, or accuracy. Its most obvious fault is something that's far easier to control: wordiness."
- In "How to Edit for Content" in the January 2003 issue of Intercom, Don eloquently wrote, "An editor focuses on the most pertinent data and aspires to make the language move the reader."
- At the 1998 STC annual conference, Don presented a session on "The Tantalizing Technology of English." During this session he said, "As technical communicators, we have to know about management, computer programming, graphics, production... and many other skills, even keyboarding. But in professional technologies, we are not as proficient as the experts. Our greatest chance to shine as a professional is in the technology of English."
In November 2000 Don was interviewed in Technical Communication. He was asked what he thought to be the biggest changes in the technical communication profession. He said it was something he didn’t want to dwell on, but “…membership has dramatically changed. It used to be all old men. Now it’s all young women!” (Have you looked around at our dinner meetings lately? He’s not too far off!) Seriously, he was also quoted as saying that “…writing has improved considerably [as] many STC members are English majors.” He continued by saying that “We owe a debt to the Fog Index. [The] use of short words and sentences has become essentially a Bible for us in technical communication.”
To This Day
To this day, Don continues to support STC at the national and local levels. He does this by mentoring other technical communications professionals, writing articles for STC publications, and attending meetings. Thank you, Don, for all that you’ve done for us!
