Meet Dean Eckenroth Jr; Editor and Friend

By Lauren Curtis

To many in Coronado, Dean Eckenroth Jr. has become a familiar face. But most don’t know the long road that led Dean to where he is today, Associate Publisher of Eagle Publications, and valued friend to the community. Dean Kenneth Eckenroth Jr. was born on March 30, 1969, in Westerly Rhode Island. At a young age, his parents - looking for a change of pace - packed up their two kids and dog into a Chevy camper van and camped their way across the country. “When I was seven, my parents told us we were moving to Disneyland… We did visit Disneyland for a day or two, but we didn’t live there,” Dean laughed. Instead, the family landed in Chula Vista, where Dean’s uncle lived at the time.

Though the family was happy to start fresh in sunny San Diego, Dean had a bit of a rough start to his new life. “I was small, had a lisp, was in the gifted program, and a smart a**… so I got beat up a little bit,” Dean said of his early years in Chula Vista. “I was in Model UN, on the academic team, in band… I was a nerd,” he laughed. After spending a few years adapting to life in Chula Vista, his mom got a job teaching at La Jolla Country Day School. This caused the family to move to Poway in order to be closer to her work, subsequently transferring Dean to a new middle school. The family would remain in Poway for the remainder of Dean’s academic career. In 1987 Dean graduated from Poway High School and set off to attend the University of California Santa Barbara. “I lasted a year … ‘You can come back when you take your academic career seriously,’ I think that’s what the academic probation letter reads,” he laughed. After being “sent home” from Santa Barbara, Dean got a job back here in San Diego and began attending a few community college classes. In 1990 Dean’s father, Dean Eckenroth Sr., had just started the Coronado Eagle. Dean was still unsure of what he wanted to do long-term but did feel the need to give college another shot. He enrolled at San Diego State University and decided to completely change directions. “What I had gone to UCSB for was micro-bio and bio-gen, it wasn’t what I was really interested in… So I went back to SDSU for philosophy.”

During this time Dean was working three jobs to get by. Little did he know that one of those jobs would be the first taste of his future, life-long career. “I was helping with the paper… walking around the Cays with a cart delivering papers by hand.”

newspapers, he ran printing presses. “My brother and I might go to work with him (Eckenroth Sr.) on a Saturday for a couple hours and crawl around printing presses… so I was exposed to it but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do,” he explained. Dean wanted to be many things throughout his life, including an archeologist and a naval pilot. One thing that list did not include was becoming the editor of a newspaper company. Though he will admit he has always had a fascination with consuming the written word. “I mean… I did read the Wall Street Journal to the class in Kindergarten,” he laughed.

By 1992, Dean had quit his other jobs one by one and started to focus on his work with the newspaper. “It just happened… it kind of came easy to me and that’s how any family business works right?” When Dean started full-time at the Eagle, there was only one computer in the entire office. “You would just print out rows and rows of text, the whole paper was built with a wax roller, an Exacto blade, and a paste-up grid… You had rolls of tape that were one point, two point, three point black lines, you drew boxes with tape and you cut things out and put them in, you manually did the graphic art.”

After a few years and a few more computers were added to the office, Dean became more involved with the production of the newspaper and was able to envision what it might be like to be editor. “We were one of the very first newspapers at any level, certainly at a community level, to transition to being fully paginated in the computer… and I’ve always done that.”

Dean has worked full-time with the paper for over 30 years, and has been the editor - building almost every single paper - for over 20 years now. “I think there are only two or three newspapers that I didn’t build… one being my honeymoon and again when I had my heart attack.” On the day before Thanksgiving in 2018, Dean was playing in a father-son soccer game in town with his son Connor. He started to feel some chest pain during the game, and when he got home he had a heart attack in the shower. Dean ended up going through a quadruple bypass at the age of 49. “[The Cardiologist] said if I hadn’t had that heart attack when I had it, I would have had it within a year or two and been dead on the spot… I got lucky.” Dean admits that the heart attack was one of the hardest things he’s gone through, but tries to look at it as he does with most things in his life… “Sh** happens,” he laughed.

Dean is known by those around him to be hardworking, so much so that he even built the paper with a broken neck at one point in time. “I was always taught by my parents that you just work, you show up and you go to work, and that’s what I do.” You may think working in a neck brace would be difficult, but not for Dean. For Dean, the most difficult aspect of his job has also become one of his biggest roles; being outwardly social. Dean considers himself to be extremely introverted and being so well-known around town has been somewhat of a learning curve. “I don’t think I’m good at it… It does not come naturally to me, I’m more comfortable at home reading a book,” he laughed. Over the years he has learned to overcome some of his naturally introverted tendencies to become a friend to much of our community. If you’ve ever taken a walk around the block with Dean, or gotten a coffee with him, you know just how many people stop to chat with him along the way. Though he makes it look easy, it has taken him years to get used to so many people knowing his name. “My favorite part of this job though,” Dean started with a smile, “is that I have been able to spend every day with my dad for 32 years.”

Beyond feeling immense gratitude for the opportunity to work alongside his dad for so many years, Dean is also thankful that this community brought him and his wife Maureen together.

“Funny story, I actually met her 24 years ago, she used to work for Joe Woods in town and I’ve been friends with Joe for 30 years... I met her way back then, and I remember meeting her.” When asked if she remembers meeting him all those years ago, he simply shook his head and mouthed “No.” with a big laugh. Maureen and her two children moved back to Coronado years later. Upon returning to town she and Dean hit it off and quickly forged a relationship. “So I gained a 12-year-old and a five-year-old… instant family, which has been fun,” Dean said of Maureen’s two children, Connor and Kayla. “My wife trusted me enough and thought I was good enough to be a dad when I didn’t have any experience… I have two kids now, and I have two grandchildren… I’ve always looked at it as a gift that she shared with me.” Today Dean lives here in Coronado with Maureen and Connor and their beloved dog Sadie, whom you may recognize from her many newspaper and magazine cameos. Dean has taken on the role of Dad with ease, creating a special bond with both of his children as they’ve grown into young adults.

Dean’s goal with his life is the same as it is with the Eagle & Journal; to look back and be able to say “I did good, I did the right thing, the world is a better place.” Dean realizes that the newspaper is able to be such an integral part of the community thanks to its loyal members. “Sometimes you’re successful on your own and sometimes you’re as successful as the community lets you be…

There’s a ton of people who have come along with us and I think they’ve all had their hearts in the right places and it’s kind of a group project… I am thankful for that.”