Section 1: A: A little while ago I was talking about
the Register's Big Peach sports section and
football coverage. It was really very
important and it was really sensational.
George Yates was, of course, a part of that,
from the very beginning. And George Yates
was a stately, a sophisticated-appearing man
and some people thought he was pompous, but
he really wasn't. He was really a nice guy.
He was head of the photographic department.
They tell the story one time when he was in
Iowa City for a football game. He was on the
sidelines. And all the photographers in
those days, they had the light meters,
checking the light and George looked over and
he looked up and down all those guys who were
doing this and he put his palm up and he
said, "Well, I think it is probably 200 at
F8." He was reading the light off his palm!
Another thing, I told you, I used to travel
as a spotter on those things and one of the
longest trips was up to Norman, Oklahoma, for
the Iowa State-Oklahoma game. One year, we
were flying down there and Bob Long, who was
then chief photographer, just got a new
camera. And it was really a camera, it was a
zoom camera. It was really a fancy, fancy
thing. This was years ago. And he was going
to try it out. And we spent the whole time
going down there, reading the instruction
book. And I just thought to myself, I don't
think this is the best time to test it out.
But it was an impressive looking piece of
machinery, the big lens on it and everything.
When you set it up in the press box, all the
other photographers came around and oohed and
awed and all this sort of stuff. We went
along with shooting the game, and we got
about twenty minutes and we came back home
and he went in the dark room and he came out.
And I said, "Bob, what do you got?" And he
says, "The film wasn't going through the
camera." [laughter.] And he spent all the
time reading instructions for it and he spent
I don't' know how many hundreds of thousands
of dollars for this new piece of equipment
and it didn't even work.
Q: But he learned something, didn't he?
A: Yes, he learned something. --
Section 2: Q: Before the tape ran out, you were
talking about the Register's role in Iowa.
You were imagining a farmer sitting up there
in the eastern county, what should he plant?
That's a quandary for them today, because he
is not informed.
A: I'd also find out what would happen if
he went to Iowa State University and asked
them what he should do. I suspect that he
probably wouldn't get a straight answer from
Iowa State University which is doing some of
its own research on it. But that's all the
more reason why, if a newspaper is going to
set the agenda for the state, that they
should be out front on that story. And
they're not out front. They were not out
front on the hog lots. They weren't out
front on gambling. They're just bringing up
the rear. That's not what a good newspaper
is supposed to be doing.
Q: Before we started this interview, I had
mentioned also some of the plans about the
newspaper being a public trust. And with the
diminishment of the Register as the way it
was, right now, we don't see the paper that
we have and the public is losing because of
that, because either there are scandals that
we don't' know about. Maybe there is some
bureaucrat taking money under the table that
we don't know about and the Register's role
or the newspaper's role is to find that stuff
out.
A: That's right.
Q: I wonder if you would comment more on
that, the fact that we've lost a public
trust, not just the fact that it is a quaint
paper that used to be - I mean, it was a
great paper that used to cover Iowa, but also
there is something more vital than that.
A: Well, sure. It's a vital part of
democracy. The newspaper does indeed have a
role in how a democracy works. That's what
the first amendment is all about. And that's
where our roots should be. But you have to
have a motivation and the motivation is sort
of an intangible. I mean, you have to get
mad. The problem with many newspapers and
this is true of the Register, as an
institution, they just don't get mad about
anything. Well, you got to get mad about
something because there is a lot of things to
be mad about. The environment and all that
stuff. The Register is ticking around it,
but you ought to be a leader in that sort of
thing. Democracy works if newspapers do
their job. If they don't do their job, if
they are a lapdog instead of a watchdog, then
democracy doesn't work near as well. And
it's like you said, it is a public trust.
The problem is, most people don't see it that
way anymore. Too many readers don't see it
that way anymore. Too many readers see it as
an invasion of somebody's privacy. Too many
readers see it as the victim is too often
harmed by what newspapers print and do and
say about them. Too many people don't
believe newspapers are credible enough to
believe what they tell them if they do run
across something. And it's very easy to lose
your credibility and it's very, very hard to
get it back. And what's happened, not only
in Iowa but in other states is the dominant
newspaper has gradually lost its credibility.
People don't look to it anymore. Part of
that is because of the changing lifestyles,
the two-worker families, and too much
dependence on TV. I mean, TV in this town is
just atrocious. TV News. It's just
atrocious. They really don't do anything.
They don't cover the legislature unless there
is an abortion bill or something being
debated and then they give it thirty seconds.
They do very little investigative reporting.
And if they do some, it 's mostly in the
consumer end of it, which is okay. That has
to be looked at, too. But we're talking
about really important parts of state
government and the legislature that simply is
rolling its own way. We don't know what is
going on. This legislature is probably, the
current one in Iowa, it's probably done less
as a legislature so far than any other one I
can remember. I spent ten years covering
those bozos so I know a little bit about how
the place works and how it should work. --
Section 3: Q: What can you tell an aspiring
journalist today? With the changes that have
occurred in journalism and with what you see,
what the papers have become?
A: Well, and I do talk to young
journalists some yet even though I'm not
around the Register a lot. Come aboard,
because there is a lot of room for newspapers
to improve and these are the kind of people
that newspapers need. People that have a
sense of cause. People who feel strongly
about the first amendment. People who feel
strongly about our political system going
awry. People who don't like what is being
done to some smaller indefensible part of the
population. People who don't like what Iowa
is doing to itself environmentally and why
are we letting all these things happen to us,
when we know they're wrong? Why do we let
people build hog lots almost anywhere they
want, even in flood plains, without local
people having any say in it? What happened
to their principle of home rule? You can
write these things. I've written editorials
about them, but you have to keep pounding
away at them and you got to keep asking the
question and you got to keep finding where
things are going wrong and where things don't
work, like the hog lot program. I would say,
if you want to do those sorts of things,
young people, then please come. We can teach
you how to do that if you are willing to
learn and if you have a sense of duty.
A: People that go through the Ames Tribune
- when Mike Gartner and Jerry Gerlach bought
that paper, their whole notion was to get
really bright young people and teach them
good habits and then help them get a job on a
larger paper, help them make the next step
up. And I think that's part of the function
of a small paper that wants to do its job for
the profession. I used to talk to them a lot
up there. And they stay a couple years then
they leave. I mean, they go to St.
Petersburg. They go to the New York Times.
They go to the Denver papers, God knows,
where they get good jobs. But not everybody
wants to do that. Not everybody understands.
So you have to get somebody, some young
person that understands what newspapers are
all about. I don't know whether they teach
this in journalism school anymore or not.
But when I was in journalism school at the
University of Iowa, I certainly was because
of a guy by the name of Walter Stigleman. I
don't know whether you go back that far.
Walter Stigleman was an old newspaper guy who
ran classes in reporting and editorializing
stuff. He was a wonderful man! He was also
an adviser for the Daily Iowan when I was
helping run it. I can still see him. They
picked the Daily Iowan up- they had a copy
room right across the hall from the newsroom
and picked the Daily Iowan up and he would
shake it out, like this, and look at it for a
while, two or three minutes, and he said, "It
looks just like a college newspaper." And
that was one of the worst things he could
tell us about it, because we didn't want to
put out a college newspaper. We wanted to
put out a regular newspaper. And they had
guys like Bill Porter who was a magazine guy
and some guy by the name of Barnes who had to
resign because he didn't have a master's
degree and he couldn't teach anymore if you
don't have a master's degree. And he went
off to edit a newspaper in Illinois or
somewhere. But they took time to instill
what newspapers should be doing. And I
assume some of that is going on now, but I
have no idea. I know Bill Zimma went from
here to there and I think he understood all
that. --
Section 4: Q: You go back a ways to the fifties,
anyway. Newspaper lingo was a lot different
than it is now.
A: Sometimes when I am up in Ames, I slip.
And when I was editing the paper, I wrote a
lot of headlines. And I'd be working on a
headline and I'd say, you know this headline
doesn't count. And they'd look at me and
say, "What do you mean it doesn't count?"
Well, you got to count a headline to see if
it is going to fit. One unit and fat letters
get one and a half. You got to count it. A
space gets one. What they do now, is put it
up on the screen and if it doesn't fit, they
shrink it. If it's too slow, they build it
up. But they don't know what it means. They
don't even know what a piker pole means.
They never heard of a piker pole before.
Q: What is a piker pole?
A: A piker pole is one of the most needed
parts of a newspaper's arsenal. We used to
have a city editor on the Tribune who used to
come in every morning. His name is Arnie
Garson. He's a wonderful, really marvelous
guy. He'd come in. He had a little routine
he went through every morning. I'll never
forget the first day he did this. He'd reach
in and he'd get his piker pole and set it
out. And he'd get his paste pot and set it
out. And he'd get a stack of copy paper and
set it out. He'd get all these lead pencils
and set them out. And then he'd pull out a
set of side rule - you know how they use a
slide rule - and somebody would write a tax
story or somebody would write a story with a
slide rule - it scared the beejeezus out of
most of us. There was a city editor that
used a slide rule, for crying out loud.
Q: To check the numbers?
A: To check your numbers. Well, the
folks, now they don't have any sense of - I
mean...I used to really like the composing
room. The editor went down every day and
watched them put the thing together and a
good printer was really fun to watch. They
don't know - people today don't know what a
lead is, for example. You'd watch a good
printer lead out a story - it's like slow
motion. They don't know what a gambash is,
they don't know what a c lot is.
Q: What are those?
A: They're typographical terms.
Q: But leading is what? The spaces in
between?
A: The little thin pieces and they'd put
them between each line in order to fill up
the space in the form. They don't know what
a turtle is. A turtle is a rack - it's a
rack that when they make up a page in this
form, the lead, and they slide it off the
desk and they got a turtle they roll up and
crank it up so it's just level, then pull the
thing off from the make-up table over the
turtle, which is on wheels and then they roll
it around. One of my favorites was pig man.
One of my favorite guys in the newsroom was
the pig man. The pig man is the guy that
takes all the lead that has been used and
returned and re-smelted and he takes all that
and he melts it down and puts it back in
forms, blocks that hang into the pot of the
linotype machine. The linotype machine casts
things in lead. So they used it to replace
the lead reservoir. And it's a dirty, hot
smelly job. But the pig man that I remember
was really a nice guy. He was always dirty.
Every Christmas, his wife would make peanut
butter brittle. And he'd bring boxes down
and he'd sell it. A dollar a box. I went
down one day and I bought two dollars worth.
I brought it back up to the newsroom and
Flansberg said, "What's that?" I said,
"Peanut brittle from Al, the pig man down
there." And he looked at me and he said,
"You're not going to eat that, are you?"
[laughter]. I said, "Well, I think his wife
has better sanitary habits than Al does."
Now they all talk in computer-eze. I still
don't use a computer. I don't have a
computer in the house. I write everything in
long hand. I think better in long hand. I
re-write through a typewriter. And then when
it's ready to go, I hand it in and somebody
up - if I handed in an editorial, then
somebody sees that it gets in the magic box.
But I'm just too old to learn that damn
thing. I'm too afraid I'm going to hit a
wrong button.
Q: A word processor?
A: A word processor. Yes. I've never
used one. Oddly enough, one of my jobs at
the Register in the early days, was to get
the Register started on electronic processing
word machines. I remember a guy by the name
of Dick Klein and myself went out to MIT.
They had some sort of a seminar on what the
newsroom of the future is going to be. And
of course, they were way ahead of everybody
else. They scared the beejeezus out of
almost every editor there. We really were
going to have to do this?
Q: Big capital investment.
A: Yes, and I was a part of that early
study. It started with character readers,
machines that you put stories in and it would
read it and put it in the computer.
A: It was what they called a scanner. It
was a big machine and you had to type the
story just right and you had copy paper with
red lines all around it and you couldn't type
over the red line. It was just the beginning
of it. But that caused us more headaches and
more problems because half the time it
wouldn't work. And it was usually just
before you finally got a story in the paper
and the machine wouldn't read it because of
something. We had two of them in the
newsroom. I got so mad one time, I put one
of them out of commission. I was trying to
get a story through in time to get in it the
newspaper and the damn thing wouldn't work.
I just hauled off and kicked it. And it cost
about $35,000 to get the damn thing fixed.
So I've got a built-in...I can remember when
we moved electric typewriters in to the
newsroom and some people were upset about
that. One of the wisest things I ever did, I
figured I was going to give Gammack the first
electric typewriter in the newsroom. Gammack
was a hunt and pecker. I said, "If anybody
can get used to an electric typewriter, if
Gammack can get used to an electric
typewriter, everybody else can, too." So I
did that and he went along with it and pretty
soon he really got to like it. And we didn't
have any problem with electric typewriters. --
Section 5: I want to tell you a story about
Raffensperger. It's a little bit out of
resolution, I guess, but we talked about it
earlier. He was the first - I'm sure you're
right - he was the first correspondent to set
up an office in eastern Iowa, in Davenport.
And as I said, he really came to know the
Mississippi River, which is really a great
part of America. And he loved the people on
it and everything. But my favorite story
about Raffensperger is when I was working the
anti-poverty program, and it was very
controversial, and they were going to hold a
meeting about it in Davenport, which is a
very conservative, politically conservative
town. They hired a hall in Davenport and
invited all the people that could use the
anti-poverty program and sent a couple guys
in from Washington to talk to them. Well, I
knew all this because I had spent so much
time on the anti-poverty program and I talked
with these people a lot, and they called me
and told me about it. And I called
Raffensperger and I said - and he didn't know
anything about the anti-poverty program, so I
said, "Well, I'll come over some Saturday
night and I'll come over, because this is
going to be a very controversial meeting and
I'll help." So, I went over and the first
thing I heard was that the state director had
been dis-invited. A guy by the name of Ed
Gilmore who was a political science professor
at Grinnell. And he was the state director
of the anti-poverty program. He was very
controversial also. Anyway, he was told to
stay away. "Don't go near Davenport, Ed, you
could get them all stirred up." It was a
fact of the matter he didn't - I mean, he met
them up in a cornfield north of Davenport
before the meeting and had words with them.
So they held this meeting and the thing is,
the Davenport newspaper didn't know a damn
thing about it. And Raffensperger and I - it
was a banner story in the Sunday Register
that went into Davenport, even though they
got the early edition. The Davenport paper
didn't even know it was going on. See, that
shows two things. One, it shows how
aggressive the Register ought to be, and one
it shows - that couldn't happen now. How
newspapers are competitors have indeed
improved over the years. I don't think that
would happen in Davenport now.
Q: They would have caught it.
A: They would have caught it. They
certainly should have. I'm told the
publisher was just livid because the Register
- they had 1,200 people there. And they had
this big meeting on a very controversial
issue and only the Register knew about it.
And Raffensperger of course, loved it. I
mean, that's part of the fun of newspaper, is
that you can beat the socks off somebody
else. And that's really, that's one of the
things that makes it worthwhile because it is
fun. And you can gloat about it and recall
it. Raffensperger and I still talk about
this some. Do you remember the time when Ed
Gilmore was told to stay away and he came up
into the cornfield, hid in the cornfield to
talk to somebody?
Q: Also the competition. I mean, if
you've got the competition at the same
meeting, you may be reading two different
stories the next morning.
A: Yes, you might be. Because I don't
think anybody in Davenport understood the
anti-poverty program like I did. Before I
started covering that, I read everything I
could get on the anti-poverty program. I
knew what all the things were supposed to be
doing, I knew what the aims were, I knew who
was doing it. I just briefed myself. I
spent weeks, a couple weeks doing nothing
except reading about the program. All the
pamphlets I could get. I did the preparation
for what the anti-poverty program should be
doing. One of the big controversies in Iowa
was, wow, middle class rich kids are going
into this anti-poverty programs. And it was
true, in some instances. Which meant the
fact that great stories occurred when Hubert
Humphrey was vice-president and he came out
to Iowa to give a speech or something and
[Harold] Hughes was governor and he though
well, gee, it would be a good idea to have
Humphrey and a small group of reporters that
headed over from the Register, just to have a
drink and talk and get acquainted. Well, we
did that and there was four or five, six
editors and writers from the Register there
and they had a couple drinks with the vice
president and Nick Kotz from the Washington
Bureau had been writing a lot about his
nephew back in Minnesota who was getting a
lot of benefits. And it really pissed
Humphrey off.
Q: Are you talking about Nick Kotz's
nephew?
A: Humphrey's nephew had been taking
advantage of some sort of an anti-poverty
program as a participant. And I'd been
writing a lot about the anti-poverty program
not reaching the real people and all that
sort of thing. So he was very touchy about
it. Somebody asked him about it and he just
exploded. Started swearing. Calling us all
sorts of bad names. He was the vice
president of the United States. He only had
one drink, as far as I know, so everybody -
Hughes just blanched. And everybody kind of
set back and nobody said anything, just let
him run himself out. Well, on the way out
then, he apologized to everybody. And gave
everybody a set of vice presidential cuff
links. Then later, when we got back, we got
a nice little note from him, saying that he
regretted that he exploded and used the
language that he did.
Q: Wow.
A: But Hughes was really embarrassed. And
we didn't really say anything, we just ask
him about it. He was primed to explode.
Q: Now tell me again, you alluded to the
anti-poverty program several times. These
days, that would be through what? The
Department of Social Services? Is that a
group of programs?
A: The anti poverty program was a group of
programs in itself. And it was designed to -
Q: State?
A: No, national. It was Lyndon Banes
Johnson's - The War on Poverty, yes. And it
was a big thing in the sixties. And the
Democrats that ran it were determined that it
would help people in the inner city and help
the rural poor and it included a lot of
things.
Q: Food stamps?
A: Well, food stamps had been around. It
would include job training. And including
the most successful one was Head Start, where
they take young kids before they got into
kindergarten or first grade and run them
through the program so they were advanced
enough to take advantage of it. There was a
lot of food programs, food for the needy.
And there were rural improvement programs. A
lot of money. And it was very controversial.
And Iowa, it brought a lot of money into
Iowa. Ed Gilmore, he used to run the state
anti-poverty program. His office was in the
statehouse and I'd go to the statehouse and
I'd walk in his office and he'd lean back and
he'd hiss at me. Because of something that I
had done or something that I had written or
something that I wrote about that he didn't
know about and all sorts of problems. But he
took it all very well. And I really liked
the guy. But he wasn't a very good
administrator. His heart was in the right
place. His administrative abilities
were...part of the anti-poverty program, the
war on poverty, still exist. Head Start is
still here. And I think some of the job
training programs might have grown up out of
the War on Poverty also.
Q: Aid to Dependent Children?
A: I think all of that was probably going
on at least to some degree before the War on
Poverty started, but it may have been
absorbed in the process. One thing the War
on Poverty did was to give a lot of needy
people jobs because they were supposed to be
administered on the local level and a lot of
people who never had a job in their life
suddenly found themselves with a job, if not
a supervisor, at least a helper in the War on
Poverty. Bureaucracy.
Q: [completely inaudible]
A: Yes, and that's okay. That was part of
it. --
Section 6: Q: Let me ask you this. When you had a
specialty like that, when you were working on
the Interstates or when you were working on
the anti-poverty program, would there be a
time when editorial department had something
to write about, I mean, wanting to make a
comment on something particular regarding
that, would they come to you because they
knew you were the specialist?
A: Sometimes.
Q: Did you actually write the editorial?
A: No, I'd never write the editorial.
Because I don't believe that reporters should
write editorials on things that they are
covering. But I don't think reporters in the
newsroom should be writing editorials at all.
Q: But you were informed.
A: But I talked to them about it, and
frequently, yes, they'd come out and say
we're working on this. And I'd built up a
fairly extensive reference shelf on stuff.
They wouldn't do it every time because the
story was in the paper and it was sort of
self-explanatory and they could go ahead and
do it. I would think - I think that's a good
idea, for editorial writers to not only talk
to reporters but I think editorial writers
should do some of their own independent
reporting which I know Flansberg and
Cranberg's department, that's what they used
to do. They used to like it. They'd like
nothing better than to write an editorial and
scoop a reporter out in the newsroom, you
know.
Q: Cranberg, you say, part of the role of
the editorial might be to correct the story.
Not to say that you got it wrong, but say you
did get it wrong and there was something more
to be said.
A: I think that would be an aberration but
it would not be an aberration for them to
take the story and go one step further,
merely by making a telephone call or two, or
going to talk to somebody. And they used to
love to do that. And if I had anything to
say about it, I'd encourage it. Because I've
been writing editorials now for five years,
for the Daily Tribune up in Ames and for
Gartner. I suppose about half of them have
to do some original reporting either by
making a telephone call or going to see
somebody or just asking another question or
whatever. So reporting should be an integral
part of editorial writing.
Q: When you write the Register you weren't
in the editorial department, but did you ever
- I mean, you are a very opinionated person.
Did you ever aspire to move up?
A: No. I had too much fun being a
reporter. I mean, it's just too much fun.
Covering politics is really, it's a joy. It
was when I did it. I used to - Letcher
doesn't do this as much now, Flansberg did
when he was writing politics. But it was
great fun to go out and travel with a
candidate. I'd go out and spend a day with
them. And sometimes I'd tell- all of them
have a driver, you know, that drives them
around. And I'd say, why don't you drive my
car and I want to drive the candidate. I've
got some questions I want to ask him. So you
got a captive audience. And you can really
ask him a lot of questions but some of them
he doesn't want to answer. I wished I
wouldn't have asked them. Some of them-
Q: You had reporters driving the
candidates?
A: Yes.
Q: You didn't get any resistance from the
drivers?
A: Usually not. I usually asked the
candidate and he'd say, "Yeah that's okay."
Q: [inaudible]
A: Yes, and during the Hughes campaign,
all the candidates for state office, they
traveled by bus a lot of the time. And I
used to catch that bus every once in a while
and I'd travel around with them. If you do
that, then you're not reduced to just writing
about what they said in a public speech,
which is quite likely not going to be a lot
of news anyway because you've got an
opportunity to carry it two or three or four
steps further by asking, "Okay this is what
you said, but what about this?" Sometimes
they say some astounding things when you're
the only reporter around. Dave Standley, in
one of his summit campaigns when the North
Koreans high jacked an American ship in the
Korean War, he told one audience, he said,
"By God, I'd get one of our ships and I'd
shoot them out of the water!" Well, that's a
pretty belligerent attitude. So he's the one
- I did ask him about that and I got him
talking about it. Just some astounding
things. And I wrote a story about it and it
was on page one of the Tribune and then the
state editions of the Register. And it was
such a belligerent stand and so unpopular at
the time, it may well have cost him the
election. I mean, his chief campaign guy
thinks maybe that might have done it. It
wasn't anything I did. You just do it by
being there. Gammack, finding out about the
invasion of Laos. It was just lucky. I
said, "Nah, you make your own luck by being
there." But you can't report on politics
unless you go out with them. And you have to
do it rather continually because you never
know when those guys are going to - and
that's what the fun of it is, campaigning
with them. And there are ways to get, ways
to have a good time. Hughes was a lot of fun
to campaign with . I remember, we went
through Panora. We would be going to have a
coffee in the old hotel in Panora and there
were only about six or eight people there.
Hughes was a little bit fusty because there
weren't many people there and I found out
that in the back room, there was a whole
bunch of women playing bingo. And I went up
to Hughes and I said, "You know, Governor,
there are a lot of women in there, playing
games." And he just walked through that door
and went around shaking hands. He was going
to hit thirty-five or forty women. I didn't
tell him they were playing bingo. So he did
that. He walked in there, went around
shaking hands. And they all started asking
him, was he in favor of legalizing bingo? Of
course, he had to say yes. And he did say
yes and I wrote a story about it. He came
out of that room and he had a smile on his
face. He said, "You son-of-a-bitch!" Hughes
was really fun to cover, and he didn't like
some of the things that we wrote. But he
understood. He knew what the role was and he
used to have some pet phrases. One of them
was that "This is no time to rest on our
oars. We're only in the foothills and the
mountains are still ahead." That was one of
his favorite pet phrases. And he'd use it.
One time, we were campaigning and there were
several other reporters along, Flansberg
amongst them. And we had a bet on as to how
many times he would use that phrase during
the day, starting at breakfast and ending
with a dinner meeting. I'd only got four or
five speeches and I won.
Q: How many times?
A: Six times. He was standing out by a
car waiting for his driver to come and I
walked up and had a big grin on my face. And
he said, "Well, what the hell are you
grinning about?" So I told him the story,
that I won, that the press crew had a bet how
many times he would say this. And he really
was a little bit hurt by it, I think, because
he never used it again.
Q: This is no time to rest on our...
A: Yes, "This is no time to rest on our
oars. We are only in the foothills and the
mountains are still ahead." That's a ringing
politician's phrase if there ever was one.
it didn't mean anything. --
Section 7: Q: I got a question for you. This was the
early sixties, at the time when...the time he
lost in '66?
A: Who's that?
Q: Harold Hughes.
A: Yes.
Q: Dwight Stinson happened to be his press
secretary and you would have been covering
Hughes at the time and you and Dwight were
fairly good friends.
A: We were very good friends.
Q: Did you have trouble asking...for the
governor?
A: No. Nor would ask for it. Dwight was
a - he still is a very good fellow. I don't
see him often enough, but no I would not ask
to do that. First of all, I wouldn't want to
put him on the spot. And second of all, I
just think there are certain courtesies that
you observe and you live by them. Why screw
up a good relationship by demanding some sort
of special access. Actually you didn't
really need it with Hughes. Hughes was - he
had a press conference every day. It was
like the old time FDR days. He would sit at
his desk in the governor's office and
reporters would sit around on chairs and ask
him questions. And there would be maybe half
a dozen reporters, no more. And it was kind
of a leisurely, very orderly device and he
did it every day. So the access was
terrific. And if you campaigned with him,
why there was no problem with access because
he was right there. That's why a campaign
was so much fun. I've also traveled with
presidential candidates.
Q: For the Register?
A: Yes. For the Tribune when I was
writing politics. You know, sometimes you
can't even get close to them. I mean, Nixon,
you never did get to ask him any questions.
McCarthy was much more accessible. Eugene
McCarthy, because the Vietnam War, was much
more accessible. Bobby Kennedy was sort of
accessible. But still, there are really
memorable moments that I value as a memory of
those days of being close enough to have some
sort of an exchange with them. One of them
was Bobby Kennedy. I think I'm the only one
that wrote a story about it. He was
campaigning in Nebraska and he made an
unscheduled stop. It was at a home for the
mentally retarded. Of course, his family had
some mentally retarded people, but he said -
it wasn't on the schedule. He said he just
wanted to stop and go up and visit them.
They requested no photographers. Some of
these things were kind of gruesome, the
problems these kids have. I was maybe only
one of two or three reporters that went
along. I was curious. So I rode upstairs
and he handled and cuddled these deformed or
retarded children, talked to them, asked
about them for fifteen or twenty minutes out
of his day. And when we got back on the
elevator, he had tears in his eyes and tears
were coming down his face. That's pretty
impressive. I wrote a story about it. I
don't think anybody else did, but I did and
it got played inside the paper. But it was a
sort of thing that you just don't forget.
This was a guy who was eventually
assassinated from the type of family, running
for president would take the time to go visit
a hospital like that. It was very
impressive. And Eugene McCarthy - he was
fun, too.
Q: These were the days before the Iowa
Caucus?
A: Yes, this was before the '68 election
when he was, the anti-Vietnam and he was a
very bright man with a great sense of humor.
And I hooked up with him several times. But
what I remember the most was, there was going
to be a regional Democratic conference in
Rapid City, South Dakota. I saw a little
short in the paper about the Secretary of
State is one of the leaders in a Vietnam
protest, wanting McCarthy, wanting for
Humphrey to quit and for McCarthy to become a
candidate. It was just a little blurb like
that. It really piqued my interest, so I
called the Secretary of State. And he said,
"Yeah, yeah, we're getting it underway."
There is a guy who is a rancher, from
somewhere in South Dakota. He knows all
about it. And he'll tell you about it and
we're going to be active." So I chased this
guy by telephone all over. That's another
thing about the old days at the Register, we
had real telephone operators. And we had a
lady who was just this whiz at finding people
by telephone. She could work magic. Well,
she ran this guy down and he had his own
airplane and he was flying out, checking some
of his farms. He was in a motel somewhere in
Montana when she found him. So I asked him
about it, this guy, about the protest. I
wanted to know how strong it was, whether it
was just a fluke or what it was. And he
said, he insisted, no, there was something to
it. So I made a few more calls and I went
out to this conference. And it was, indeed
an anti-Humphrey, anti-Vietnam War really
strong segment of people. Who was the
senator, the guy who ran for president?
Q: Parker?
A: No, from South Dakota. McGovern.
George McGovern's top aide was there. And
there were all sorts of action going on in
the hallways in this thing and there was a
big meeting that a resolution was supposed to
come up. And of course, it was not open to
the press. So I became - the more I talked
with people the more I became convinced that
this was something that may well be pretty
important anti-Humphrey. And I knew it was
important when I discovered that Humphrey's
top political aid, a guy by the name of Bill
Canell, happened to show up in Rapid City,
South Dakota. And I ran him down and I asked
him why he was there and he said, "Well, I'm
just passing through." Jesus Christ, nobody
passes through Rapid City, South Dakota
without a reason. And one of his reasons, he
was there was to help stamp out this fire.
Well, they were not successful. And it was
pretty easy to find out what they did in the
closed meeting because all the other
anti-Vietnam protest guys were willing to
talk and they were there. Then I asked
McCarthy - we were at a cocktail party and he
was standing, looking out a window and I
walked up and introduced myself. I said,
"Are you going to run for president?" He
said, "Yeah, I think I will." He said, "But
I'm not ready to say so yet, ,but yea, I'm
going to run for president." The fact is,
they had a big meeting scheduled for a couple
weeks away, which he was going to announce
his candidacy. So I went back and I wrote a
letter. I wrote a story, saying he was going
to run for president. And why and a story
about all the protest and all that sort of
thing. And Humphrey's guy showing up and all
the people I talked to and McGovern being in
favor of it and all those things. And
Flansberg - it was on a Saturday and
Flansberg happened to be riding the city desk
at that time, helping the city editor. So I
dictated the story. Flansberg knew that it
was an important story but he had to work to
get it on page one. They finally did get it
on page one. Well, the New York Times
finally showed up. A wonderful guy by the
name of Doug Needleman who was the Chicago
Bureau guy. And on a Saturday - now I gave
him a carbon on my story because there wasn't
anything he could do. I said, "If you want
to talk to McCarthy about it, he's going to
be on this plane."
[interrupted by phone ringing].
A: The people I was talking to in the
hallways and the people that were involved in
the movement were urging him to run. And
that was part of the whole - that was the
reason for the whole protest and that's one
of the reasons why Bill Canell showed up,
Humphrey's top political guy, to try to stamp
out this sort of thing.
Q: But then you needed to give a carbon
copy to the New York Times guy.
A: After it was too late for him to make
Sunday and I knew him fairly well. So I just
gave him my carbon. I said, "If you want to
talk with McCarthy, he's on flight so and so,
from Rapid City to Denver. If you want to
catch that airplane, you can talk to him."
He did that and wrote a story for the Times,
which ran Monday. And all hell broke loose
among the Humphrey people. The McCarthy
people loved it. The story he wrote was the
same story I wrote, that there was a sizable
segment of anti-Humphrey people and because
of the Vietnam war protest, and they were
going to throw their weight behind Eugene
McCarthy for him to run for president. Well,
they'd already done that, you know. So he
had already made up his mind he was going to
run. And I just happened to ask him. I'd
never met the man before. Then I traveled
with him some, when he was campaigning.
That's when he had a plane. He had two
planes. One for himself and the press and
another one for these young kids that
followed him around, the camp followers. And
it was really something to be in the middle
of the night when McCarthy got someplace,
late at night, midnight, when McCarthy got
some place. And this other plane would come
in and all these kids would get off with
bedrolls and knapsacks and wrinkly jeans and
all those costumes of the day, flying around
helping him campaign by doing door to door
solicitation. They'd bed them in some, maybe
high school gymnasium or some church basement
or maybe even a hotel ballroom or something.
Hundreds of them. And they would stream off
this airplane at midnight with every thing
they owned on their back, just out of how
strongly they felt about the Vietnam war
protest. If you stop and think about it,
that's a pretty stirring thing. Even Hughes
was not sure, in the early days of the
Vietnam war protest, whether he agreed with
McCarthy because he was a good friend of
Humphrey's. I used to ask him the question,
every week just to trace his progress of
finally changing his mind. People were
working on him to change his mind. Every
week, he'd get a little less certain, would
start leaning a little bit toward the Vietnam
War protest and going against his old friend,
Hubert Humphrey and all of this, until he
finally said, "Yeah." The guy who was
working on him was a long time financer and
supporter of Hughes, Joe Rosenfield. He was
a long time executive of Younkers. He's got
lots of money. He made Grinnell College so
much money they don't know what to do with it
when he was on the board, but he is a very
smart guy. And Joe Rosenfield, I think,
convinced him of that. And Hughes ended up
-of course, he gave McCarthy's main seconding
speech at the Chicago convention which wasn't
expected. I mean, nobody knew that he was
going to do that until the day before. And
he had his seconding speech all written and
everything. But nobody knew he was that close
to McCarthy. And I found out after the
convention, sometime, maybe a week later,
that McCarthy was so upset when he looked out
the window over Grant Park of the hotel in
Chicago, all those kids out there and he saw
all these cops beating up on them on
television. And he seemed very upset. I get
all this from Hughes. He became very upset
and at one point, he called Hughes and said,
"Look. I can stop all this."
