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Sanda Ionescu turned 100 years old in October 2022, and one of her wishes was to return to the place where she lived, as she says, "a large part of her life", at the National News Agency AGERPRES.
She has vivid memories from the time she was a journalist. She remembers the first newsroom she worked in and says that not much has changed, listing almost every destination of the rooms we pass by. She admires the photos arranged on the walls of the hallways and, because her sight no longer helps her like it did in her youth, she asks us to tell her their stories.
In front of the Central News Office, she stops for a few seconds and then stretches out her hand, as if impatient, to open the door. We enter and she sits at a desk.
"This agency, AGERPRES was established, which, how can I put, had seven newsrooms at the beginning, and after that, little by little, it took the scale it took, because at one point it was the only Romanian news agency, there was nothing else (...) I was really wondering if there would be people who knew that AGERPRES was founded in a modest house on Matei Millo street and not in this palace where we came," says Madam Ionescu, emphasizing that, over time, "AGERPRES has kept its identity".
She recounts a lot of, perhaps to keep her emotions in check. She tells us how the offices were set up, how the editors worked, shows us the work book and magazines featuring news articles written by her. The only thing she regrets is that the news in the magazines were only signed AGERPRES and she would have liked the editors' names to be written as well.
She graduated from the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in 1947 and after that taught, for a short time, at the high school she graduated from, the Carmen Silva high school. However, teaching did not appeal to her, so she participated in the competition at the Ministry of Information, Press and Culture. She worked as an editor-translator for two years, at a bulletin, translating Italian and French magazines.
"And that's how I started the activity until 1949 - 1950 when they told us, for whomever is interested, that the Romanian News Agency is being established," recalls Sanda Ionescu about how she became a journalist.
She says that she liked translating best and then making news, because the information was much more interesting. She liked to write from cultural events. To convince us, she brought news articles written by her. With the paper yellowed by time in her hand, she tells us about the time she was at a festival in 1953, from where she returned to the newsroom with statements that were then broadcast on news feeds.
Sanda Ionescu maintains that it is important for journalists to do their job passionately, to be convinced that they have chosen the workplace that best suits each one's qualities and possibilities, and she wishes her "colleagues" from AGERPRES to remember with emotion that they lived part of their lives at the National News Agency.
"I wish them to get to an age like mine, and to be able to remember with emotion that they lived a large part of their lives at AGERPRES. 30 years may even represent half for some, as Dante says, who considered that 36 years is halfway through life. (...) So, I wish them to always be (...) attracted to the work they do, not to do it for other reasons. I wish them good health and many years. AGERPRES is an absolutely necessary institution not only for the country, but also abroad. As long as there are agencies with tradition such as France-Presse or others, I think it is absolutely necessary to have a Romanian news agency and especially one with a very large range of work and activity. I wish you a long life!'' Sanda Ionescu told us before leaving.
