BILL HERSHEY'S LATEST BOOK ON OHIO POLITICS

 

Former BJ Columbus Bureau Chief and Washington Bureau correspondent Bill Hershey has a new book out, “Profiles in Achievement” – University of Akron Press, $24.95 in paperback.

I’d bet my Social Security check that Bill was meticulous about assembling it, as he always was during his State Desk reporting days when Pat Englehart ran that exciting tornado and Harry Liggett and I reassembled the mess Pat left behind.

It starts with Republican Ray Bliss being an errand boy in the 1931 Akron mayor race to Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine today. Almost a century of gosh-almighty reading.

Bill had 40 years of covering Ohio politics. You find a lot of skeletons when you’re around that long . . . and gems.

Bliss worked quietly behind the scenes as party chairman to elect mayors, governors and presidents. Bill and Akron U.’s John Green previously co-authored “Mr. Chairman: The Life and Times of Ray C. Bliss.”

Democrat Howard Metzenbaum earned a reputation as a high-profile political battler in the Senate.

His fellow Democrat John Glenn, already a world hero as the first American to orbit the earth, preferred a nose-to-the-grindstone approach in four U.S. Senate terms.

Democrats Eddie Davis from Akron and Louis Stokes from Cleveland made history – Davis as Akron’s first black city councilman and Stokes as Ohio’s first black U.S. House member.

Summit County’s Maureen O’Connor in 2010 became the first woman elected chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.

Akron Democrat John Seiberling, the grandson of Goodyear founder F.A. Seiberling, was a cerebral U.S. House member who could relate to rubber workers and match up intellectually with expert witnesses.

And behind a lasting legacy, much of the land that today is the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Republican Jim Rhodes, a coal miner’s son from southern Ohio, captured the governor’s office four times with his unique earthiness before becoming forever stained with sending the Ohio National Guard to kill 4 students and wound 9 others at Kent State.

Bill covered all the bases. He found plenty of goodies because Ohio has always had its finger in the pie of national political power.

As usual, Bill is quick to credit others. His email to me:

“Most of the stories are profiles I wrote for the Beacon Magazine.

“We also got valuable contributions from Bob Dyer, Steve Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Carl Chancellor, Doug Oplinger, Dennis Willard, Mike Cull, James C. Benton and the late Brian Usher.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the Who’s Who of BJ newsroom history. I remain astounded at how much talent was in the newsroom during my 26 years at 44 E. Exchange Street, mainly because the guy in the corner office was a millionaire with a caring for everyone who worked for him that made him more valuable to all of us than his financial assets.

People at the BJ, including me, would ram their bodies through brick walls for JSK.

As for Bill, he dived right in for the coverage spearheaded by a Pat Englehart protégé, Doug Oplinger, then the Business Editor, that won a 1987 Pulitzer for the BJ for its coverage of the Sir James Goldsmith greenmail attack on Goodyear that shoveled a ton of money out of Akron to Goldsmith and cost thousands of rubber workers their jobs eventually.

After graduating from Albion College, Bill got his master’s degree from prestigious Columbia University School of Journalism.

Bill lives in Columbus with wife Marcia and his dog, Rocky.

Rocky can’t hold a candle to Rover. Hell, no dog in Ohio can.

Rover popped up at a Hershey picnic in Dayton in 1974. Rover knew he had a soft target – so much so that Bill and Marcia took in Rover even though pets weren’t allowed and they lost their security deposit when they moved because of Rover, who became master of the household for 17½ years, in Dayton, Akron and Washington, D.C.

Rover babysat Marcia and Bill’s children, Laura, born in 1971, and Patrick, born in 1975.

Legendary “go to Hell” BJ columnist Fran Murphey once shared a couch with Rover when she stayed with overnight in the Hershey home during a Red Sox-Cincinnati Reds World Series game.

A photo of Rover and Fran tugging for the covers would have been a picture more valuable than the Mona Lisa.

But you and I will have to settle for one Fran took of Rover and young Patrick Hershey. If you aren’t charmed by it, Go to Hell! (Fran made be repeat her famous phrase of love; first time she said that to me I knew just joined the “in” crowd at the BJ).

Rover died on December 7, 1990, a day that will live in infamy in the Hershey family. Former BJ columnist Jim Ricci wrote Rover’s obituary for the Detroit Free Press where he had joined former BJ Managing Editor Scott Bosley, once the King of Keyser High School in West Virginia.

Rover was succeeded by, but never over-shadowed by Ike, a rescue dog who lasted 16 years; and then the Golden Girls, for their ages,  Shadow, Sam(antha) and Sambuca, all with double-digit lives.

Maybe Bill should write a book about what they fed their dogs to keep them alive so long.

After he revives his fingers from his latest publication.