These talented, caring
people are among the main reasons that I RAN to work at the BJ for 26 years,
once I ended my sojourn with the magnificent whirling dervish, State Desk
Editor Pat Englehart.
What a marvelous crew to
cruising along in the same boat with!
And with John S. Knight
as America’s greatest media owner ever and Ben Maidenburg as the greatest
reclamation projects publisher ever (when I was fired at the Dayton Daily News
for my union activitires after 13 years there, Ben proclaimed: “It was their
fault!”), it was as if I had been swept into Heaven before my time!
Think about it.
The first day I walked
into the BJ newsroom, when sexist thoughts were allowed, I looked around and my
brain told me: “Joan Rice and Janis Froelich are the two hottest-looking women
in this newsroom!
Turns out that Joan
Rice’s brain was even more beautiful, that she was as fashionable as hell in
her choice of clothing and a frequent and most helpful shoulder to lean and
complain on when management went into harrumph mode.
Alas, Joan long ago got
her reward in Heaven for putting up with me.
Joan and her
husband, former Summit County Sheriff’s Deputy Capt. Larry Momchilov,
passed away 12 days apart in 2016. They were married 36 years.
Joan’s identical twin,
Marie, was a media person, too, in television.
Michelle LeComte
was the leader of this ship. Well, officially. But, as the bottom part of this montage
shows, when Michelle was away on a cruise, we knew how to have fun without her,
too. When Michele returned from her vacation,
there was the lower photo on her desk with a note: “Having a great time. Wish
you were here.”
Bob Dyer was named Ohio
Columnist of the Year so often (he can tell you how many years; believe me)
because he made wit, humor and excellent writing skills an unbeatable
combination.
Bob
and I spent nearly two decades eating Blue Room food together. Miraculously, it
didn’t keep me from staying alive to be 89 years old. Maybe a nonagenarian
rather than an octogenarian, too, if I’m lucky.
Liverpool, Ohio native
Jane Snow, in my opinion, is the greatest food writer in BJ history. Ol’ Blue
Walls has had some great food writers, including sassy Polly Paffilas, so being
#1 in that crowd is like being the best Queen ever for Great Britain.
Jane also was a
formidable force for BJ management to deal with during negotiations with her
sitting across the table in her “Oh, yeah! Try it!” posture.
Denny Gordon was more
than an outstanding photographer. The guy rode his BICYCLE to Columbus and back
routinely! Can imagine the guts and stamina that took?
And also as nice a person
as you ever would want to meet.
Ah, Craig Wilson, chief librarian before becoming the wizard of Action
Line during his 40 years at Ol’ Blue Walls. Like Englehart he ruffled
feathers with his behavior and obsessions, but he was one helluva trainer for a
long string of reporters, including Betsy Lammerding and Connie Bloom, also in
these photos.
Craig irked the hell out
of me, but I respected the hell out of him because he could find a needle in a haystack for a reader who didn’t know
their way through the labyrinth of red tape in this world.
Columnist Jewell Cardwell
and I had a connection that only the late Bill Canterbury and I did: Southern
West Virginia.
Jewell’s uncle and aunt
lived in the Cinderella, West Virginia coal camp adjacent to Williamson, on the
Tug River border to Kentucky, where I met my wife, Monia Elizabeth Turkette
Olesky, whose parents, grandparents and 2 or 3 aunts all resided in that camp.
I called her My Mona
Lisa, a play on her first and middle birth names of Monia Elizabeth, during most
of our 48 years of marriage and 2 years of courtship. She lies in Northlawn
Memorial Gardens in Cuyahoga Falls under a double grave marker with “WV” below
both of our names. Eventually when I join her I will be the happiest soul in
the cemetery.
Jewell
subbed for the legendary columnist Fran Murphey while Fran was on an 8-week
journey in a variety of countries. On her final day as a stand-in for Fran,
Jewell showed up in Jewell’s version of Fran’s traditional bib overalls.
As for Canterbury, he
grew up in Wayne County, West Virginia, which I had to drive through from
Williamson’s Mingo County to get to Huntington. He was a mild soul with a quiet
sense of humor that was effective as someone doing it in a loud and guffawing
way.
Betsy Lammerding was the
mellow voice and personality near the joined-at-the-hips desk for Joan and
me. Betsy was a home furnishings expert
who went to North Carolina a lot for the dog and pony shows companies put on
there.
Sarah Vradenburg had more
brains than I did, too. Not a high bar, but impressive nevertheless. BJ management
figured that out and later put her on the BJ Editorial Board.
Mark Dawidziak was the
best TV critic during my Television Editor reign. Mark told his fellow press
tour friends that “I have a better editor than you” during the annual Los
Angeles pilgrimages to meet, greet and interview the stars of the next season’s
network TV series.
And gives Hal Holbrook a
run for his money as a Mark Twain impersonator. Since Hal’s with Samuel
Langhorne Clemmons these days in the Great Beyond, if they both went north
instead of south after passing away, that’s a reunion I’d like to see and hear.
Because Mark was such
good friends with Peter Falk, even authoring a book with the help of Falk of
ruffled raincoat “Columbo” Fame, I got the opportunity to use the famous line
uttered in nearly every episode.
Falk phoned the Features
Department, asking to speak to Mark, who wasn’t there. We chatted briefly and
then I said, as thousands have said to Falk in his lifetime, “One more question
. . . “ Falk laughed generously, as if he had never head his famous line
repeated to him before. Classy people are that way.
Michelle was an
understanding and competent department chief who never bristled when she gave
me advice and I replied, “I’ll be the judge of that.”
Michelle knew that, to
lead best, sometimes it’s better to just let your crew row it that way.
Managing Editor Scott
Bosley was good at that, too. At meetings, he would listen, take good elements
from various underlings, add his expertise and go with it. Not like a pompous
boss who knows it all, but a leader not afraid to think maybe the privates have
a better idea than he does.
Scott also told others
about me saving, as Cathy Tierney relayed it to me, $300,000 by doing a simple
thing. I went to every typewriter in the newsroom and checked the repair notes
tucked in by those who came into the building to keep the machines clicking.
I said to myself, “Why
pay for typewriter repair when we have a computer in front of everyone in the
newsroom that can do the same job, with the help of a printer in the Newsroom, without
paying typewriter repairmen?”
So Scott, at my
suggestion, phased out nearly every typewriter, often handing them over to
departments in other floors.
In my 16 years in
Features, my department heads were Mike Needs, Doug Oplinger, Stuart Warner,
Jim Nolan (the guy who never used a vowel in his memos) and Bob Jodon.
Michelle passed away in
2010 at the age of 58 after being at Ol’ Blue Walls in the 1990s and at
Maryland newspapers for decades.
Doug never saw a John
Deere cap he didn’t buy and served a tenure as BJ managing editor, a major
climb from his babyfaced Green High student days as a BJ part-timer.
Connie Bloom was famous
for two things: 1. Her genius with fabric art, which made her renown throughout
Ohio. I have a sample of her work with, significantly, the word “Help” on it,
in the hallway that joins my dining area, my kitchen, my downstairs bathroom
and my WVU shrine den. I cherish it. Connie, like Michelle, has gone to the
Great Beyond to make quality quilts for Saint Peter.
Andrea Louie and I have a
union bond. We stood together on public property but a few feet from the Chapel
Hill shopping mall holding a sign that warned potential customers that mall
advertisers were supporting a newspaper that wouldn’t give us benefits our
Guild chapter was seeking.
An irate, distraught store
own came tromping down the steep driveway to our sign, harrumpted away in
disgust at our First Amendment expression.
Ah, Elaine Guregian.
Last, but not least, the amazing Armenian.
She left her role as BJ
culture reporter, and a fine, cultured one, too, to become assistant Northeast Ohio Medical University public relations
and marketing director at the Rootstown facility that produced my grandson, Dr.
Dylan Timberlake, who prefers
pediatrics and is doing it in Wisconsin with his Michigan State fan wife,
Casey, and my grand-granddaughter Eliza (she got the front part of Elizabeth,
my late wife’s middle name). They will gift my world with a 6th
great-grandchild in March.
Elaine’s writing skills has earned her Cleveland
Press Club’s Excellence in Journalism award for her “Women
in Surgery: A Rising Tide” article. Dr. Fauci’s gender doesn’t have a monopoly on medical geniuses,
Elaine’s article reminds us.
Before NEO, Elaine was Development
Officer for Corporate and Foundation Relations with the Summa
Foundation.
Elaine began at the BJ covering classical music and dance, then
expanded her territory for Ol’ Blue Walls.
Before the Features Department, though, I was assistant State Desk
editor under Patrick Englehart, the whirling dervish who made upper management
uncomfortable but the BJ a bastion of accuracy.
With his trusty Tonto, the late Harry Liggett, as his side,
cleaning up Pat’s messes.
Pat was put in charge of the BJ’s coverage of the 1970 Kent State
massacre by the Ohio National Guard, sent there by Governor Rhodes in hopes
that it would help Rhodes win his Senate race (he didn’t, so justice prevailed
by 4 died and 9 were wounded by National Guard bullets and my 17-year
girlfriend, pregnant at the time by her husband, was only a few yards from one
of the bullets that tore into a KSU student’s face.
Pat was the best wrangler Bob Giles and Al Fitzpatrick could have
assigned the task. He whipped his reporters and photographers into a Pulitzer
Prize. And stacked a BJ storage room to the ceiling with notes and photos of
the carnage.
Pat and Harry taught me, a 38-year-old with 16 years of experience
already, twice as much as I knew when I was fired from the Dayton Daily News
for my union activities at a union-hating newspaper chain. Publisher Ben
Maidenburg knew about it, because of blackballing letters than Daily News
editor and nationally known columnist Jim Fain wrote to everyone who got my job
applications, but said, because I had been at the Daily News for 13 years
including as #2 in the sports department under the legendary Si Burick, “It’s
their fault. Pick a side and stick with it.” Then told managing editor Dan
Warner to make me assistant State Desk editor. Ben called Dan into his office.
Dan called Engelhart into his office. Pat came out, said, “You have a friend in
high places,” and told me I was assistant State Desk editor.
Don Rosenberg, another outstanding talent at the BJ, as classical critic, understands my Dayton situation. He was shoved out the door by the PD, where he went from the BJ, because he had the audicity to not bow to the greatness of EVERYTHING the Cleveland Orchestra did in his assessments. Powerful people talked to powerful people at the PD and Don was bounced for giving his honest, expert opinion.
So Don and I both paid a price for our principles, but abandoning them would be a far worst mistake. Sometimes you have to take one for the team. Don and I did.
The late chief honcho of BJ Composing Room once told me, “I’m not
that great. I look good because the printers make me look good.”
I took that to heart. People all around me for 43 years made me
look good, including the printers. Because I was a coal miner’s son I didn’t
look down on them for getting their hands dirty and not having a college
degree, as I did from West Virginia University School of Journalism.
When management broke up the State Desk and formed a Metro desk
because loyalty to and from Pat galled them, I was exiled to the Composing Room
to oversee printers putting the hot type into the pages.
Terry Dray and Red Reeves, learning of my precarious job situation
(Bob and Al had suggested that maybe I would be happier seeking employment
elsewhere; I joined the Guild instead because they breached the pact I made
with Maidenburg), they said: “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.”
EVERY time I was Makeup Editor on Saturday night the BJ went in
early. When I was on vacation and someone else replaced me the Sunday BJ went in late.
Bob and Al called me in, complimented me on my Makeup Editor work,
and said: “Maybe you were just a square peg in a round hole.” Easier than
saying “We were wrong to split up you, Pat and Harry,” who also were isolated
after the State Desk blowup.
The State Desk wake party was proof of the love and respect that
everyone, from Pat to the reporters, had for each other.
Dave and wife Gina White spent many Februaries in reunions on
Siesta Key, on Sarasota’s border, where My Mona Lisa and I showed up for a
month year after year. Dave and Gina owned a home near there.
I've got a
longing way down in my heart
For that old gang that has drifted apart
They were the best pals that I ever had
I never thought that I'd want them so bad
Gee but I'd give the world to see
That old gang of mine
I just made that up, right?
Sing along with Mitch Miller. Get it?
Composer Ray Henderson and lyricysts Billy Rose and Mort Dixon and vaudeville’s
Van and Schenck can fill you if it you don’t.
