Rich Heldenfels, who came to the BJ in 1994 as the TV critic, with Mark Dawidziak switching to critic at large, will retire from Ol’ Blue Walls on Wednesday, August 31, his 65^th birthday.

Rich writes:

“Folks: I am retiring from the Beacon Journal. I have some pieces that are set to run after that (retirement) date. I will continue teaching at the University of Akron and expect to keep writing in some fashion. And Connie (his wife) and I will remain in our stately local manor. But it's time to chart a new course.”

Well, this completes my triumvirate of TV critics who created masterpieces under my skillful direction, which I learned from the master, Patrick T. Englehart.

The first was David Bianculli (1980-83), who was responsible for the sun shing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida before he came to the BJ, then moved his vaudeville newsroom show to the New York Post, setting him up for a lot of ridicule, before later switching to Rowan University professor in Glassboro, New Jersey, National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” and his “TV Worth Watching” web site. David lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Next came Dawidziak, who brought his wife Sara Showman from Bristol, Virginia and Kingsport, Tennessee with him in 1983, and who later took his talents to the PD, and who puts on shows with Sara and sometimes daughter Becky, about Mark Twain, Edgar Alan Poe, Charles Dickens and anyone else who has white hair and a mustache. And knows more about the “Columbo” TV series than star Peter Falk.

And has written a dozen or so books about some of those personalties.

Dawidziak was still at Ol’ Blue Walls when Rich showed up – but with an R.D. Heldenfels byline at that time – as TV editor. Rich schlupped to Akron from Schnectady, New York. Rich had 32 impressive years at the BJ.

Dawidziak started at the Beacon in October 1983. He was the TV critic until 1992, when he became the movie critic. In 1994, began the critic-at-large title, which meant he reviewed movies, did TV, theater and books and probably swept the newsroom floor before he went home. He left the Beacon in June 1999, moving to the PD as TV critic.

Mark was born in Huntington, New York, not Brooklyn as I once thought for years. A graduate of Harbor Fields High School, Class of 1974, and George Washington University, he was in the Washington bureau for both Knight-Ridder and the Association Press.

Whoever takes over Rich’s TV coverage at the BJ won’t have the benefits of my tutelage.

I retired from Ol’ Blue Walls in 1996, and ever since have been traveling to 55 countries, 44 states, Mountaineer Field for every WVU football and The Villages, Florida for winterizing with former BJ State Desk reporter Paula Tucker when we aren’t at our Tallmadge home.

When I attend the Hudson Art on the Green, I always look for former BJ chief artist Dennis Balogh (a title held at various times by Joe Grace, Bud Morris and Art Krummel).

Paula and I found him today wandering about other 36^th anniversary HAG artists although his tent (#80, in case you’re looking) already was open.

Dennis and I have a lot of Ol’ Blue Walls history together.

Dennis drew some of the most memorable covers for the Channels TV guide that I gave birth to in 1980, under the sprvsn of Jim Nolan (those who remember Nolan know that he never used vowels in his memos, so sprvsn stands for “supervision.”).

When Jim and I were preparing for the launch of Channels, on the Sunday of the Super Bowl (which we hoped in vain would be the Siper Bowl, for Browns QB Brian Sipe – damn Red Right 88!), Jim had me provide him with another page proof for every period or comma he inserted.

Hey, I didn’t complain, because the $10,000 in overtime that year (really!) paid for The Pool That Channels Built on Morrison Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls. My children and grandchildren and my late wife Monnie and I enjoyed Nolan’s obsessive behavior for more than two decades. Every supersplash cannonball into the pool was dedicated to Jm Nln.

Dennis and wife Patty have three children, graphic designer Lori in New York City and two sons.

In other years at the Hudson show Paula and I ran into retired BJ photographer Denny Gordon’s wife, Bonnie, and her sculptures; former BJ chief artist Art Krummel, with his paintings; and former Features Department editor and columnist Connie Bloom, with her fabric art (formerly know as quilt art) as Ohio’s fabric art guru. 

The National Association of Black Journalists, National Headliner Awards and Creativity Annual are among Balogh’s awards.

 

He did portaits of the past presidents of Samford University in Alabama that hang on the campus walls.

 

He has illustrated the top CEOs of the year for New York Stock Exchange Magazine.

But I take credit for Dennis getting his training wheels by doing Channels magazine cover illustrations for me during my days as television editor at Ol’ Blue Walls. Yeah, right. He already was a legend by that time.

Balogh went from Cooper School of Arts in Cleveland to the Cleveland Press to the Columbus Dispatch to the BJ. Today, he and his wife live in Broadview Heights – phone (440) 546-9223 or email baloghstudio@yahoo.com if you want to renew old times.

After 21 years at the BJ, starting in 1985, Balogh was part of a major exodus in 2006 when 335 years of experience walked out the door. The place has never been the same, with the staff shrinking from 250 to less than 60. Those who remain are just as dedicated, but there are too many ownership downsizing alligators encumbering their efforts.

In 2000 the Beacon art staff included Terence Oliver, John “Derf” Backderf, Art Krummel, Rick Steinhauser, Phil White, Dennis Earlenbaugh and Dennis Balogh. It used to be if you said, “Come here, Dennis,” when Dennis Haas also was there, a crowd would show up.

Now, they’re all enjoying a second life without the BJ, just as I have for 20 years. But our beautiful and fun memories will live with us till we move into the cemetery permanently.

They are painting, making fabric art history in Connie Bloom’s case, enduring earthquake tremors in New Zealand every week in Massey University Journalism faculty member Cathy Strong’s case or traveling to 55 countries and 44 states, in my case (with Paula Tucker, former State Desk reporter, at my side), when we’re not spending 4 to 6 months in Paula’s 2^nd home in The Villages, Florida, where we escape Ohio’s winters that overwhelm our Tallmadge home.

Dennis reports that Art Krummel and wife Charlene Nevada sold their retirement home in Garden City, South Carolina because the nasty weather in Ohio they were trying to escape followed them there. They bought the place in 2010.

That’s why Paula and I rotate between The Villages, where it’s not as nasty as Ohio’s snow and ice in the winter, and Tallmadge, where it’s not Devil’s Oven weather like The Villages in the summer.

BJ Newsroom retiree has a fabulous trip awaiting him.

Instead of going to Alaska, he’s making a sharp left turn to Santiago, Chile and Ushaia, Argentina where he will board a small ship to cross Drake Passage to Falkland Islands and St. George Island.

Writes Chasm, an Ohio University and Steubenville High grad who lives in Stow:

“With good luck and weather, will be able to use ship's powerful navigation binoculars to get look at Antarctic Peninsula. Should be interesting.”

Indeed, Chasm.

You will be hitting places where I’ve never been, despite visiting 55 countries and 44 states.

Bon voyage!

He’s not the only BJ traveler. The folks in that Primo’s Deli photo have been to Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, just about every country in Europe and several in Africa and nearly every state in the USA.

And that doesn't include the BJ escapees in the next article on this blog featuring the travel of Sarah Vradenburg and Diane Wright.

Chasm began at the BJ in 1970 and joined Ted Schneider, Jr. and Lew Stamp in walking out the door for the last time in 2008. My math tells me that’s 38 years at Ol’ Blue Walls, or 12 years more than I put in under the tutelage of Patrick T. Englehart and Harry Liggett.

No moss growing on BJ’s rolling stones

Escapees from Ol’ Blue Walls certainly get around.

I just returned from five days in North Carolina.

BJ newsroom retiree Sarah Vradenburg out-did me. She’s on a Danube River cruise in Europe.

I loved the Danube cruise with Paula from Budapest through Vienna to Nuremberg, Germany.

Former BJ librarian Diane Wright will be out-doing both of us.

Diane will be doing a fall foliage cruise from New York to Halifax in September, a trip to Iceland in October and then a journey to Thailand, my favorite country of the 55 I’ve visited (along with 44 states).

This is a photo of me on Grandfather Mountain. As promised, Grandfather Olesky met Grandfather Mountain, which is 5,946 feet high near Linville, North Carolina.

The swinging bridge we walked across is exactly 5,280 feet high, which is one mile, therefore it’s called the Mile-High Bridge.

On the same day I visited Blowing Rock, frequented over the century by Cherokee and Catawba tribes, which is 3,566 feet.

And Mount Mitchell, at 6,684 feet.  The nearest higher peaks are in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the highland foothills of Colorado.

So in one day I ascended an accumulative 14,792 feet. Mount Everest in the Himalaya is 29,029 – highest in the world. I think I’ll skip that one. After all, I am 83 10/12 years old.

But it’s good to be home in Tallmadge . . . till the next trip.

After 54 countries, 44 states, 20 winters in Florida . . . who knows where that will be?

Grandfather Olesky – that’s me – will be going on Grandfather Mountain near Linville, North Carolina so I won’t be posting articles on this blog till at least Tuesday.

I’m giving up golf at the Sunny Hill senior league in Kent on Friday and the Brookledge senior league in Cuyahoga Falls on Monday – right when I’m in the middle of a hot streak of 7 par holes and 1 birdie hole for the 13 most recent holes – to be with my younger daughter, Monnie Ann, and her husband, Bob, at their vacation home about an hour from Charlotte and maybe a little closer to Grandfather Mountain.

It should be an interesting hike up Grandfather Mountain, since the temperature forecast is for the 60’s once you hit the peak at 5,946 feet. That’s almost twice as high as any mountain in my native West Virginia. The journey at the bottom is forecast to begin in temperatures up to 90 degrees.

I remember going from 72 degrees at the foot of Mount Washington in New Hampshire to 20 below zero wind chill by the time we got to the peak at 6,288 feet. There are markers on Mount Washington of climbers who froze to death within 400 feet of the safety cabins because they couldn’t see them in the blinding snowstorms that pop up without warning.

Interestingly, nearby is Grandmother Gap. I wouldn’t touch that line with a 5-foot-8 Pole, which is my height at the age of 83.

Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Eastern United States. Grandfather Mountain, 70 miles from Asheville and the famous 255-room Biltmore mansion of the Vanderbilts, is the highest peak on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I’ve traveled to 54 countries and 44 states, so I’ve been to the mountaintop before.

The Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon, the Alps in Italy and Austria, the Great Wall of China, Harry Potter’s Middle Earth setting in New Zealand.

But it’s always a thrill to enjoy Mother Nature when you can see her work for miles and miles when you get to the top.

Or a master painter who puts Michelangelo and Picasso to shame when He created Yellowstone National Park's rainbow of colorful pools and the thousands of “sculptures” in Bryce Canyon in Utah.

While I am gone August 18-22, please direct all BJ Alums blog inquiries and information to Ken Krause, former BJ sports editor who lives in Medford, Massachussetts. Send the emails to Ken at kenneth.krause@comcast.net with your information or inquiry.

August 23^rd you can resume notifying John Olesky at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com

One of the Fiddlers passes away

It's sunset time for one of The Fiddlers on the Roof.

Brooklyn native Philip Fyvush Finkel, 93, died today.

Fyvush Finkel

He started as the innkeeper when Zero Mostel played fiddler Tevye in the 1964 Broadway show.  For the 1981 Broadway revival, Fyvush played the butcher. He played Tevye when “Fiddler” toured the country.

Topol was Tevye in the “Fiddler on the Roof” movie.

Finkel began his career more than 80 years ago.

He was in “Little Shop of Horrors and won an Emmy as eccentric public defender Douglas Wambaugh on “Picket Fences” TV series.

His funeral will be Wednesday at Sutton Place Synagogue in New York City.

Sunrise, sunset. Birth, death. I guess that sums up all our lives.

Ol’ Blue Walls reunions are never blue

BJ reunions happen all over the country every year. The latest was Aug. 6 at the joint convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at Washington Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C.

The Ol’ Blue Walls gathering was by former graphic artist Jemal R. Brinson, former reporter and columnist Carl C. Chancellor, former reporter Delano Massey, former reporter Andale Gross and current BJ executive news editor Mark Turner.

Brinson is with the Chicago Tribune, Chancellor with the Center for American Progress in D.C., Massey with Cleveland’s WEWS-Channel 5 and Gross with The Associated Press in Chicago.

Massey had a couple of stays at the Lexington, Kentucky News-Leader, including as Metro editor, after his BJ days.

Chancellor left Ol’ Blue Walls in 2008.

Gross went with the AP in Kansas City, 100 miles from where he grew up in Mobley, Missouri, immediately after leaving the BJ in 2006 along with 14 staff members with 264 years of experience at 44 E. Exchange Street. Later, he migrated to AP in Chicago. He started at the BJ in 1997 and was Guild unit chairman.

For years Siesa Key, adjacent to Sarasota, Florida, was the reunion place for BJ folks. The late printer Bill Gorrell had a rental complex across the street from what annually is on the list of top 10 or 20 beaches in America or the world, so a lot of BJ types, particularly printers, would gather there for poker and golf.

In my 20 years in Florida, I stayed all of February in Sea Castle, a vacation complex across the street from Gorrell’s Poor Bill’s rentals, and had reunions with Dave and Gina White, Terry Dray and Hugh Downing from Composing and Don Bandy and Jane Snow from the newsroom.

Printers Dick Latshaw and Sid Sprague and business department’s late Harold McElroy went even beyond that. They moved into retirement together on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, for a couple of decades. Dick and wife Pat live two blocks from Harold’s widow, Linda McElroy, and Sid wasn’t far away till he moved to Loveland, California with his new bride after Sid’s first wife died.

I guess we had so much fun together at Ol’ Blue Walls that these reunions are like a homecoming.

I’ve been retired from the BJ for 20 years but, when I see Jim Carney in a Summit County park or Joan Rice in a restaurant or former Features Department co-workers at Primo’s Deli, or play golf every week in the winter with retired printer Hugh Downing and former BJ State Desk reporter Bob Page (turned pastor), it’s like I never walked out the door on 44 E. Exchange Street.

The bonding lasts a lifetime.

Arianna Huffington

Arianna parting ways with Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington, Greek-American founder of The Huffington Post, will step down as editor-in-chief to start a new venture, Thrive Global, which will launch in November and provide content and training seminars on wellness.

Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, which owns The Huffington Post, said an interim editorial committee of other top editors will perform Huffington's role until her replacement is named. AOL paid $315 million in 2011 for The Huffington Post.

After that sale, reports were that Huffington and Armstrong were repeatedly at odds over the direction of the Post. Things got worse when Verizon paid $4.4 billion for AOL last year, then another $4.8 billion this year to buy Yahoo's Web properties, including Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News.

Huffington Post was started in 2005 as a liberal alternative to the conservative Drudge Report.

In 5 years, no World War II veterans?

According to statistics released by the Veterans Administration, World War II veterans are dying at a rate of approximately 492 a day.

This means there are approximately only 855,070 veterans remaining of the 16 million who served our nation in World War II.

Boy, do we owe those veterans a HUGE debt.

If they and millions of others who fought Hitler’s insanity hadn’t prevailed, I would have had to write:

Junge, tun wir die Veteranen einen riesigen Schuldenberg zu verdanken.

If 492 a day on average keep dying, then the last World War II veteran will die in less than 5 years.

God bless them all.

6 companies control 90% of the news you watch and read

Six corporations control 90% of what you watch on TV (cable and broadcast), at the movie theater and in magazines.

And they're working their way into controlling more and more of what's on the Internet.

I’m not concerned about who owns the Cartoon Network, but I am worried about a handful of companies pumping news information and political agenda into your mind 24/7.

For example:

Comcast owns CNBC and MSNBC.

The Walt Disney Company owns ABC.

News Corporation owns Fox News Channel, which is to the right of Attila the Hun because it is run by Rupert Murdoch, Fox Business News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Smart Money and Barron’s.

Time Warner owns CNN, Headline News and Fortune magazine.

CBS Corporation owns CBS, CW network, Simon and Schuster and Westwood One Radio Network.

Viacom doesn’t own any news outlets among the big 6, which means the other 5 can form an unofficial cartel and pile on with their agenda.

The Internet isn’t immune, either. 10 publishers with their 60 news sites account for 47% of total online traffic to news content. The next 140 publishers in size account for the rest. That’s 53% split into 140 pieces compared to 47% split into 10 parts.

I’m not big on guilt by association, but these are interesting facts provided by those out of scuttle Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign:

ABC News executive producer Ian Cameron is married to Susan Rice, National Security Adviser. 

CBS President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes, Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications. 

ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman is married to former Whitehouse Press Secretary Jay Carney 

ABC News and Univision reporter Matthew Jaffe is married to Katie Hogan, Obama's Deputy Press Secretary 

ABC President Ben Sherwood is the brother of Obama's Special Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood 

CNN President Virginia Moseley is married to former Hillary Clinton's Deputy Secretary Tom Nides. 

When there’s a Republican president, you see the same incestuous relationships, so it’s not a Red or Blue State thing. It's a bad-for-democracy thing.

Ask yourself: It is good for a democracy when 90% of the news come from a handful of conglomerates? If those five/six put their heads together, they could elect a ham sandwich as President.

Republicans or Democrats aside, is that what you really want for America?

Five teens and young adults (four from Springfield Township and one from Akron) have been arrested for arson of Green's one-room schoolhouse and for vandalizing another area park.

Police said they found items stolen from the park in one of their homes.

A sad day for Carol Eubank

This is an unhappy time for BJ Marketing Communications Department retiree Carol Eubank.

She is involved with the Green Historical Society. One of its prized preservations, the 1885 Lichtenwalter Schoolhouse, was destroyed by fire Monday night.

Even worse, the state fire marshal ruled it was arson. What scum would do that?

Carol Eubank

Lichtenwalter was the fourth one-room schoolhouse built in Green Township.

Carol reported:

“I have very sad news to report to you all. Last night Lichtenwalter Schoolhouse was destroyed by fire.”

Lichtenwalter served children living in District 13, which covered part of Green Township and Jackson Township in Stark County.  It was originally on Mt. Pleasant Road on land owned by Robert Boettler.  Boettler moved the schoolhouse to his land, which became Boettler Park.

The renovated schoolhouse had been used by the City of Green Division of Parks and Recreation and Historic Preservation Commission and Green Local Schools to host educational programs. 

Carol, a 1957 Coventry High grad, lives in Portage Lakes, where she also is involved with the Portage Lakes Historical Society.

Carol also is the “queen” of BJ reunions. She’s always getting Ol’ Blue Walls escapees together for fun gatherings. The Circulation Department veterans keep circulating among each other.

I once ran into Carol while attending an event at the Greystone Building in downtown Akron several years ago. This woman gets around.

Kim lured back to BJ

Kim Hone-McMahan

Kim Hone-McMahan just couldn’t stay away from Ol’ Blue Walls, even though she retired from the BJ April 5.

She’ll be writing for Savor Magazine, which the BJ is shelling out if you shell out $9.99 a year to the BJ for four issues.

After being a BJ correspondent for 9 years and a BJ staff writer for 26 years, I guess Kim just couldn’t quit the BJ cold turkey.

Kim replaced Jewell Cardwell as a BJ columnist in 2014.

Kim says Savor “encompasses all things in life we want to savor, from stories of people who are doing something interesting with their lives to places with the best food for dining out to experiencing a culture that is different than our own.”

Monica Thomas is the Savor editor.

Kim is married to Chris McMahan.re that is different from our own.

Ah, Kenny, we hardly knew ye when this 1947 St. Vincent-St. Mary High School senior photo was taken.

Ken later became BJ sports editor.

Still later, he left Ol’ Blue Walls to become an advocate for culture, art, clean river and parks in Medford, Massachussettts, where he lives on Mystic River with former BJ business editor and writer Maura McEnaney, who works for Fidelity Investments, headquartered in Boston.

Syracuse University graduate Maura had a hand in one of the BJ’s four Pulitzers, for “A Question of Color.”

Ken almost didn’t get his senior photo taken.

Let him explain it

”I wasn't planning to get a senior picture taken, but my sister Karen Becker (St. Vincent Class of 1969) insisted I should, and hauled me down to the portrait studio at O'Neil's in downtown Akron. And my sister Connie Kluender (St. V-M Class of 1973) made the sport coat I'm wearing!

Ken has four other siblings.

Ken and Maura wound up in Medford because Maura has a lot of family in the Boston area.

Since leaving the BJ, Ken has been free-lancing for civic causes and charities.

Ken received the Ripple Award from the Mystic River Watershed Association for his efforts in protecting the integrity of the Massachusetts river. He’s also involved with Friends of the Mystic River, Medford Green Line Neighborhood Alliance and the Communications Committee of WalkBoston.

While visiting in Ohio last year, he and Maura rode bikes in Holmes County behind Amish buggies.

Former BJ Features editor and pet columnist Connie Bloom, a quilt art guru in Ohio circles, did an art quilt for Maura as a Christmas gift for Ken of the late and lamented Belle, a lab mix that Maura found tied to a fence in Firestone Park in Akron years ago.

It was the first Christmas in 20 years without a dog in the Ken and Maura household.

Maura wrote “Willard Garvey: An Epic Life.” Garvey built homes in the USA, South America and Asia for people with low incomes, is owner-operator of the “world’s largest” grain elevator, is the “largest private landowner in Nevada” and builder of Kansas’s tallest building—the Epic Center with its slanted copper roof.

When BJ legend Harry Liggett passed away in January, Ken and John Olesky put their heads together with the authority that Harry had given them and kept this BJ Alums blog you are reading going as a tribute to Harry – and Pat Englehart and Fran Murphey and Ben Maidenburg and John Knight.

 

Hear Connie Schultz roar

Connie Schultz, who has a Pulitzer Prize amid her accolades, takes on those who accuse her of supporting Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton because the former Secretary of State is a woman.

You know, the “Don’t vote with your vagina” insult.

Connie writes:

“We women have moved on, you see, and one of the things we left behind is men like Donald Trump,” patron saint of racism and misogyny.

To read Connie’s take on Trumph, click on

https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz/08/16/voting-like-a-woman

Is America on the road to fascism?

I try to avoid politics on this blog, but Washington Post contributing columnist Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, scared the beejeebus out of me with his article.

The title: How fascism comes to America.

The subject: Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump.

I don’t want to get into Hillary Clinton’s emails or what Donald Trump did with a 13-year-old girl here. This has nothing to do with Republican or Democrat. It has to do with America.

But if you’re interested in Kagan’s frightening word portrait, click on https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-how-fascism-comes-to-america/2016/05/17/c4e32c58-1c47-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html?tid=a_inl

Even if you’re not among those who wonder how the German people allowed a maniac like Hitler to embroil the world in a war, this is must reading