10 years ago The Gazette was poised for disaster -- the Y2K disaster, that is

Mary Sharp, our senior manager for news content, dropped by my office in late December with The Gazette's plans for covering the beginning of the new millennium. She had dusted them off these 10 years later because poring through them is such a hoot.

Mary led our overall coverage on this big event. I handled our effort out of Iowa City. The two of us collaborated on planning an eight-page special section that wrapped the regular Gazette and deploying reporters to various spots in Eastern Iowa to make sure that all things important did not collapse.

A lot of us wazzed out over that Y2K scare, based on fears that computers programmed to read dates would go into sequential disarray when going from 12-31-99 to 1-1-00. Vital systems, like lights and sewers, would shut off and we'd be in technical chaos, or so we surmised.

Billions were spent nationwide to make sure computers were ready for the switch and we had reporters and photographers stationed at critical places to see if all the work and expense mattered. The result was anticlimactic. It was evident by 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, that we had triumphed over computers and were on our way to the great things we thought would happen in the first decade of the 21st century.

Even so, moving into a new millennium only happens 0.1 percent of the time so it was a big deal worth noting. That eight-page special section was to become a keepsake. We sent reporters and photographers to hospitals, utility companies, government offices, The Eastern Iowa Airport, parties and other spots where people gathered.

Gazette columnists Dave Rasdal and the now-retired Mike Deupree held a non-millennium party at Cedar Rapids' Greene Square Park because, despite all the excitement, the millennium didn't start until Jan. 1, 2001, they argued. They held another party a year later the night of Dec. 31, 2000, to make their point.

All hands were on deck that night on the newspaper's production side, with editors and page designers working furiously to crank out something worthwhile. Final pages were kicked out at 1:25 a.m. for a 2 a.m. press start and then delivery.

I edited more stories for the following day's paper before leaving that morning of Jan. 1, 2000. On the way home I stopped at a convenience store around 6 a.m. There, on the newsstand, was the Gazette wrapped with the special Millennium section. It seemed like only a few hours earlier I was editing some of its stories because it literally had been only a few hours earlier.

The world didn't end at midnight but the way Eastern Iowans brought in the new millennium, apologies to Rasdal and Deupree aside, still made for an impressive story. Thinking about it for a few minutes was a treat.