The Business Record recently sat down with Randy Evans, the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, and he mentioned one of the people who mentored him early in his career. Gary Spurgeon was in charge of the Bloomfield (Iowa) Times, which regularly publishes a column by Evans. “The editor-publisher who hired me as a high school kid, I was asked to speak at his funeral a few years ago, and I said that technically I’m a graduate of the University of Iowa School of Journalism, but unofficially I’m a graduate of the Gary Spurgeon School of Journalism. Everything I learned in those formative years, I learned from Gary Spurgeon. When I retired, I told his wife and son that I wanted to pay off my tuition bill at the Spurgeon School of Journalism by writing a column for them. … We’re coming up on three years. It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done.” After his Spurgeon “graduation,” Evans went on to serve as an editor of various departments at the Des Moines Register for 40 years. In that time, he mentored dozens of other young journalists.