PD and former BJ pop culture critic Mark Dawidziak of Cuyahoga Falls got a major review from the Niles newspaper for his performance as Mark Twain.

I’ll let the Niles article take over:

Twain impersonator brings humorist to life

By RAYMOND L. SMITH

Niles Tribune Chronicle

NILES — Samuel Langhorne Clemens talked to a few dozen people in the McKinley Birthplace Memorial Auditorium Saturday about fame, politics and health in ways that were nuanced, humorous and incredibly modern.

Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, wearing his classic white suit, with gray hair and mustache, and holding a long brown cigar, paced back and forth, saying he could quit smoking anytime he wants.

“I’ve done it a thousand times,” he said.

Twain was played by re-enactor Mark Dawidziak, a newspaper television critic, who has written five books about Twain and is working on a sixth. He was joined by Sara Showman, his wife, who played many of the characters written by Clemens.

Dawidziak and Showman are part of the Largely Literary Theater Company.

They were in Niles as part of the McKinley Memorial’s 100th anniversary celebration that will continue throughout the year. There will be a series of programs through the remainder of the year.

“This was built to be a place of public gathering and education,” said Trish Scarmuzzi, curator of the museum. “We are trying to bring more people into it.”

The centennial re-dedication of the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial will take place Oct. 14. It was originally dedicated on Oct. 5, 1917.

During Saturday’s performance, Dawidziak, as Clemens, talked about his love for adulation and praise.

“I scarcely in my lifetime listened to a complement so beautifully phrased or so well deserved,” Clemens said. ” We had in our own presence a most rare of a creature, that a humorist who was really funny and a congressman who kept his hands in his pocket.”

“They say you cannot live on bread alone, but I can live on a good compliment,” Twain said. “I can live on a compliment for about two weeks.”

Twain died on April 21, 1910, but many of his insights and general observations about human nature are equally relatable to today as they were 100 years ago.

During Saturday’s performance, Twain talked about being able to stop smoking anytime he wants.

“Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent,” he said. “I practice it myself on occasion. I make it a rule not to smoke more than one cigar at a time.”

Expressing his disdain for critics, Twain described he wanted to write for everyone, not just for the highly educated.

“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden,” he said.

Dawidziak said he began reading Twain as a pre-teen. He studied Twain extensively, but did not begin playing him until he was an adult.

He said Twain had extensive connections to Ohio.

“He wanted to live in Ohio,” Dawidziak said. “He planned to marry in Ohio. His plan was to mary Olivia Langdon, heiress from upstate New York. He was going to buy into the Cleveland Herald.”

That did not happen, because he could not get the right price from the newspaper.

“He always loved Cleveland,” Dawidziak said.

Dawidziak said Twain’s and McKinley’s paths would have crossed, but they did not know each other very well.

“He was not as close to McKinley as he was with Ulysses S. Grant and General William Sherman,” he said.

Roger Snell health report

Roger Snell

Former BJ reporter in the Columbus bureau Roger Snell’s health situation has reached, as Roger puts it, “what may be the end of my road in this life.”

Roger lives in Frankfurt, Kentucky with wife Linda and daughters Rachel and Hannah and administers a marketing program called Kentucky Proud that helps farmers transition away from tobacco and find retail markets for alternative crops such as fruits, vegetables and more.

Roger won a number of awards throughout his newspaper career, including the Silver Gavel, the American Bar Association’s top national journalism award, in 1992 for his investigation of ethical abuses on the Ohio Supreme Court. The Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers named Snell the Ohio Reporter of the Year in 1992 and 1993.

He wrote a book, “Root for the Cubs,” about Charlie Root, the Chicago pitcher who gave up a home run to Babe Ruth that became lengendary as a "called shot." After interviewing Root's daughter, Della Root Arnold, Roger unmasked the myth.

To read Roger’s amazing assessment of his situation, click on the blue https://www.facebook.com/groups/461235937406272/permalink/625784574284740/ for Stuart Warner’s relay on the Beacon Journal Newsroom Alumni Facebook page.

Charlene health report

10 days after her hip replacement surgery, retired BJ reporter Charlene Nevada has progressed to using a cane to get around.

With the blessings of her physical therapist.

Hip replacements in America soared from 138,700 in 2000 to 310,800 in 2010 and closing in on 400,000 a year today.

Charlene, who retired after 35 years at Ol’ Blue Walls in 2005 before working for Burton D. Morgan Foundation, a philanthrophy that provided grants to colleges, is married to Art Krummel, who was the BJ’s chief artist, following in the shoes of the late Bud Morris and Joe Grace.

They bought a 2^nd home in Garden City, South Carolina in 2010 which they later sold. That’s 13 miles from Pawleys Island, South Carolina, where retired BJ printer Dick Latshaw and wife Pat reside.

Dorell nailing Putin

Oren Durell with wife Ginny Knapp Dorell

Former BJ reporter Oren Dorell is getting a lot of attention for his USA Today article about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s opponents dropping dead. 38 of them in 40 months. Stalin must be proud.

Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza survived TWO poisonings.

A former member of the Russian parliament is gunned down in broad daylight in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. A longtime Russian ambassador to the United Nations drops dead at work. A Russian-backed commander in the breakaway Ukrainian province of Donetsk is blown up in an elevator. A Russian media executive is found dead in his Washington, D.C., hotel room.

They are among 38 prominent Russians who are victims of unsolved murders or suspicious deaths since the beginning of 2014, according to a list compiled by USA TODAY and British journalist Sarah Hurst, who has done research in Russia.

The list contains 10 high-profile critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, seven diplomats, six associates of Kremlin power brokers who had a falling out — often over corruption — and 13 military or political leaders involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including commanders of Russian-backed separatist forces. Two are possibly connected to a dossier alleging connections between President Trump's campaign staff and Kremlin officials that was produced by a former British spy and shared with the FBI.

Twelve were shot, stabbed or beaten to death. Six were blown up. Ten died allegedly of natural causes. One died of mysterious head injuries, one reportedly slipped and hit his head in a public bath, one was hanged in his jail cell, and one died after drinking coffee. 

Trump praised Putin in March 2016 as a "strong leader."

The FBI and Congress are investigating contacts between Kremlin officials and Trump's campaign advisers, as part of its investigation into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The story has Oren on the TV talk-show circuit. Oren and wife Ginny Knapp Dorell both worked at Ol’ Blue Walls, which is where they met. Oren covered Barberton/Norton and the swing shift on the night desk. Ginny worked on the copy desk. Both from 1998-2000.

To read his article, click on https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/05/02/dozens-russian-deaths-cast-suspicion-vladimir-putin/100480734/

 

Mark takes 'Twain' to McKinley

PD and former BJ pop culture critic Mark Dawidziak’s “Twain By Two” show has been around the country, including the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut.

At 1 p.m. Saturday, May 6 Mark and wife Sara Showman will do the full two-act version at the McKinley Birthplace Museum in the Memorial Auditorium in Niles, Ohio.

Previous venues include the Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, where Samuel Langhorne Clemens is buried; the Barter Theatre in Virginia, the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, and dozens of other venues.

Twain/Clemens was born in 1835 in Florida, Missouri, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri and died April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut.

Haley’s Comet greeted his birth and his death.

He is buried in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery. I visited his grave.

In today’s dollars, Twain’s estate was worth $12 million.

William McKinley, 25^th President of the United States (1897 until his 1901 assassination), was born in Niles, Ohio but eventually began his law career in Canton.

Theodore Roosevelt became President after McKinley’s death.

1968 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for John S. Knight, for a selection of his Editor’s Notebook weekly columns, largely opposing the Vietnam War and defending the public’s right to protest. He had begun the column in 1936 and wrote it for four decades, “in a style that would range from the wistfully poetic to the angry and agonizing,” according to Knight biographer Charles Whited.

 

1971 Pulitzer Prize for General Local Reporting for coverage of the National Guard shootings that killed four students and wounded nine at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. It included seven pages of stories and photos in the May 5 paper, and ongoing stories in the following weeks that attempted to answer questions about the shootings and the decisions that led to the confrontation.

 

1987 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting for “The Goodyear War.” The special section reconstructed the attempt by investors, led by Sir James Goldsmith, to take over Akron’s biggest employer and loyal corporate citizen, Goodyear. It examined the potential effects on 13,000 local employees, schools, thousands of retirees, the United Way, churches and many other facets of community life.

 

1994 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for “A Question of Color,” a series that urged readers to examine and discuss race relations, attitudes and how race plays a part in housing, crime, business and education. It led to the formation of Coming Together, an organization that promoted racial harmony and cultural awareness, and President Bill Clinton came to Akron to take the community’s dialogue to the rest of the country in a televised town meeting.

Jane Snow, probably the best food writer in BJ history, and husband Tony Gawaguchi are celebrating their 10^th wedding anniversary today.

Jane describes Tony as “the man who turned a cynic like me into a believer in true love.”

They were married in Vegas. Tony ordered it up via the Internet.

Tony was born in Japan. Jane was born in Liverpool, Ohio, across the Ohio River from West Virginia.

Jane’s research for a sushi story brought her to Tony’s restaurant.

Tony’s dad owned an American restaurant in Japan right outside the gate of the Air Force Base where Jane’s dad was stationed in World War II.

A sign Tony hung in their bedroom reads: “Forever. For Always. And No Matter What.”

You can check out Jane’s recipes by clicking on the blue https://janesnowtoday.wordpress.com/

“A typewriter means more to a newspaper than an adding machine”

- - John S. Knight

Jack Knight inherited the Akron Beacon Journal from his father, C.L. Knight, in 1933, at the depth of the Great Depression.

There was no money to meet the payroll. Employees received tokens they could take to local merchants who would accept them as IOU’s.

When he died in 1981 at the age of 86, Jack Knight had built a newspaper empire that was then the nation’s largest in terms of circulation. He was worth more than $400 million.

When JSK took his company public in 1969, he told stock analysts:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I do not intend to become your prisoner.”

25 years after his death, Wall Street got its revenge in 1974. An obscure money manager in Florida, trying to meet a profit target for his wealthy investors, forced the sale of the company. That was a sad day in American newspaper history.

JSK’s motto: “Get the truth and print it.”

In 1968, the year he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his opposition to the Vietnam war and for his support of the free speech rights of dissenters on American campuses, his Detroit Free Press and Charlotte Observer also won Pulitzers, making Knight Newspapers the first publisher in history to win three in the same year.

The BJ often helped employees finance home and car loans. That came from the top.

Bill Catalona caddied at Akron area golf courses for JSK. Catalona was accepted to medical school but had no money to pay his tuition, JSK gave him the first John S. Knight scholarship. Dr. Catalona practiced in Muscatine, Iowa. They were friends for life.

Ken Krause provided Gene's gems. Reporter Clark Hoyt provided information used for this article.

Costs spiral, ESPN dumps 100 on-air talents

ESPN committed itself to billions of dollars for the right to cover college and professional sports.

100 “on-air talent” will get the axe to help pay for it.

The Big 10 package with ESPN was for $1 billion over 10 years. The Big 10 replacement deal with ESPN and Fox is for $2.64 billion over six years.

ESPN, CBS, Fox and NBC will ante $39.6 billion over 9 years for NFL games.

Advertisers balk at escalating prices for commercials. ESPN has lost seven million subscribers in two years.

The math has stopped working.

There’s no free lunch. For 100 ESPN on-air talent, this runaway train has eaten their lunch . . . and breakfast and dinner and rent.

Employees at the BJ in 1979

John with Rebecca after his latest surgery

Dunphy surgery went well

Former BJ State Desk reporter John Dunphy, who has fended off esophageal cancer for years, had surgery Tuesday for his prostate cancer.

John's wife, Rebecca Allen, reported:

“Dunphy is out of surgery. Dr. Gill said everything went fine with no complications.

“John is awake. The worst is over. Let the healing begin.”

The surgery was at Keck Medical Center at USC where John had his esophageal cancer surgery in 2013.

John and wife of 9 years Rebecca Allen live in Lakewood.

John’s siblings are Steve Dunphy, who lives in Seattle; Harry Dunphy; sister Sister Patricia Dunphy; Maureen Dunphy Welling; Paul Dunphy; Peter Dunphy; Dennis Dunphy; and Christine Dunphy Barnett.  

John is contributing editor at Southland Golf and a former reporter for the Orange County Register in California. John is a Cincinnati Xavier University graduate from New York City.

Rebecca is deputy Features Editor at the OC Register.

At Ol’ Blue Walls, with the late Pat Englehart cracking the whip, John was a key reporter in the BJ’s coverage of the 1970 Kent State killings by the National Guard that brought the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize.

The Orange County Register's Grand Avenue building where John roamed the newsroom for years was swapped for quarters in Anaheim last week.

Will ring of lies end in Oval Office exit?

New York Times editorial writer Charles M. Blow wrote a scathing indictment of President Trump as a liar, liar, pants on fire x 1 million.

And got into FBI Director James Comey’s role in jimmying Hillary Clinton's election chances while protecting Donald Trump during the campaign.

It you want to read the frightening opinion piece which warns of another Watergate-like Presidential exit, click on the blue https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/opinion/birth-of-the-biggest-lie.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=keywee&mccr=domdesk&kwp_0=372148&kwp_4=1387557&kwp_1=611532&_r=0

Janice Grant Strode, who was a BJ Circulation secretary for 25 years, passed away Tuesday, April 18.



Janice was born in Mexico, a town in Missouri, but the family moved to Akron when she was 2 years old.

I don’t know the years that Janice worked at Ol’ Blue Walls but she’s in the 1981 employee directory that Advertising Makeup retiree Mike Williams provided, the 1978 and 1979 BJ Christmas promos and in the 1979 and 1998 employee directories that Ken Krause has.

BJ Advertising Art retiree Mike Williams remembers:

“Jan also typed and did the Girl Friday thing in the Ad Art department in 1976? and a few years after that.

“She was kind and welcoming to me when I spelled Gary Pembrook there for two years.

“Here's a Creative Services Christmas message from the Nov-Dec 1977 Tower Topics issue. She's peeking over my right shoulder.”

A year later, Mike added:

“In the next year's Christmas message (December 1978) she got the best seat of the group.”

Janice's cousin, Andale Gross, confirmed that Janice worked in Circulation.
 

Janice’s obituary:

Janice M. Grant Strode

Janice M. Grant Strode, 74, went home to be with the Lord on Tuesday, April 18, 2017.

Janice was born in Mexico, Missouri in 1942 to Raymond and Gladys Grant but moved to Akron, Ohio when she was only two years old. Janice retired from the Akron Beacon Journal as a secretary after 25 years of service; she was a member of Mount Calvary Baptist Church. She was a loving wife, mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother, sister, aunt, and friend to all her family and friends; she will be greatly missed.

Janice was preceded in death by her father, Raymond Grant; mother, Gladys Grant; brother, Clarence Grant; sister, Geraldine Woodson; and nephews, Michael A. Grant and Garland Marshall.

She leaves to celebrate a life well lived: her beloved husband of 51 years, Emmitt Strode Jr.; son, Shawn (Dierdre) Strode; daughter, Samara Strode of Columbus, Ohio; granddaughters, Makayla Strode of Columbus, Ohio, Carmalita and Brianna Bradley; grandsons, Sterling Powell and Excell Bradley; great-grandchildren, Sterling Jr. and JaBraylon Powell; brothers, Donald (Dione) Grant and Milton Grant; sister, Carol (Lonnie) Hubbard; and a host of nieces, nephews, other relatives, and close friends.

Funeral Services will be held on Tuesday, April 25, 2017. Calling hours are from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., and the service will begin at 12 p.m. at Mount Calvary Baptist Church, 442 Bell Street, Akron, OH 44307. Pastor Jack Streeter officiating, Interment at Greenlawn Cemetery, 2580 Romig Road, Akron, OH 44320. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to The American Heart Association at 3505 Embassy Pkwy. Suite 100, Akron, OH 44333. Procession will form and condolences may be sent to 896 Valdes Ave., Akron, OH 44320.

Stewart & Calhoun Funeral Home is handling the arrangements.

 

Unhappy day about Erin Moran

Erin Marie Moran, the Joanie who loved Chachi on the “Happy Days” TV series (1947-1984), is dead at age 56.

Erin Moran

Marion Ross and Tom Bosley played her parents. Ronnie Howard played her brother, Richie.

The #1 draw on the series was Henry Winkler as the cool and hip The Fonz.

Anson Williams played Potsie, Don Most played Ralph Malph, Pat Morita played Arnold, Penny Marshall was Laverne, Cindy Williams played Shirley, Robin Williams, who died in 2014, played Mork for 2 episodes before getting his own series.

Moran and Scott Baio reprieved their characters in the short-lived spinoff, "Joanie Loves Chachi.” Other "Happy Days" spin-offs were "Laverne & Shirley" and "Mork & Mindy."

Erin has been married to Steven Fleischmann since 1993, after divorcing Rocky Ferguson, her husband since 1987.

Bosley died in 2010, Al Molinaro (Al, who replaced Morita as the owner of the diner, the setting for many of the episodes) in 2015 and producer Garry Marshall in 2016.