Section 1:
Q: Why is local TV so bad? Everywhere you go,
it is bad.
A: I will tell you, Walter Cronkite sort of
epitomized or rounded it up for me in his
observations on that. He said, "If I want to
hire the reporter, I go to the local
newspaper and hire one off the paper." His
point is that you really get a grounding, an
education, covering the news for a newspaper
that you don't get for TV. I think the reason
for it is that they gear themselves to the
police beat almost exclusively. You see,
there is something. So-and-so was picked up
as a suspect in a robbery or a sex abuse
case. It is all geared to important stuff, I
suppose sure, but that isn't the news.
There's a heck of a lot that doesn't lend
itself to it. In the first place, you haven't
got the space to really tell the story.
We got some pretty good scoops while I was on
WHO-TV. We hung it on the Register pretty
good. One of them, some guy down at Scotport,
down on the river, some guy had been paying
extra for grain and had piled up a lot of
grain. Well, it developed, what he did, his
defalcation was over ten million dollars.
Well, we scooped the Register good on that
when I was on WHO-TV. I got a tip from a
grain dealer who was a member of the
legislature. He tipped me off to what was
going on. We hung it on them pretty good. The
Register ignored it for a couple of three
days while we went to town and then, finally,
they had to come through with it, too.
You can scoop people on TV. Sure. But you
cannot...look at the service that a paper
performs. Routine stuff, sure. There are
about twenty-five obits in the Register every
day. Whether you like it or not, and whether
they are drudgery to write, those are
important services to the people. And there
is an awful lot of stuff that just doesn't
lend itself from a space standpoint to TV. --
Section 2:
Q: Two questions. Why do people call you
"Lefty?"
A: Because I was a left-handed pitcher.
Q: When did you get the nickname "Lefty?"
A: When I was in college.
Q: Give me a definition of what news is to
you.
A: If you take the real broad...I might say
this in the first place, what my philosophy
of news is. I mean, the practice of news. I
always tried, invariably, on everything, to
translate what I had to tell in terms that
was understandable to the other guy either
reading or on the other side of the tube. I
translated everything in the legislature into
the terms of the people who were paying the
taxes. I think that is something that is so
fundamental, I don't know why everybody
doesn't do it. That's the way you make it
understandable and that's the way you make
your product worthwhile. So much money is
spent on television advertising for politics
and so forth, darn near all of it is wasted.
As I told one candidate for governor the
other day, "Spend your money talking to the
other individual on the other side. Talk to
him. Talk about things that he wants to know
about. What he is interested in. What he is
involved in." That sounds too simple, maybe.
But that is your service. That is the service
you perform.
In the first place, the simplicity, as simple
as you can make it, of your terminology is
very important. But you have just got to make
it understandable. And everything is
translatable in one way or another. That is
one of the reasons that television has a
tough time is because the brevity of the
medium is such that you just don't have the
means, shall we say, to translate what you
are trying to say into terms, and of the
scope, that is necessary for news.
As to news, you can write your own definition
on that. Actions or situations of vital
interest to the reader. When a man bites dog
type of thing, you know. That's the old
definition.
Q: When man bites dog.
A: Yeah. When a man bites dog, it is news.
When a dog bites man, it isn't. That is what
they used to say when I was in journalism
school. Not that they ever actually used it.
Q: A lot of people say the news is anything
that makes the person say, "Gee whiz."
A: That's not bad.
Q: What do you think the fundamentals of
being a good reporter are?
A: Beyond quickly realizing the absolute
essentiality of accuracy to the point
where...I was always scared to death of a
mistake. I always checked the phone numbers
at least twice or three times. All names.
Just when you let "Smith" go, it turns into
"Smythe," you know. Accuracy. Fairness, but
don't be a sissy about it. Don't be a coward.
Incidently, I have strong feelings on this
current discussion and argument that is going
on, it isn't even an argument, as to
anonymous sources. Geneva Overholser had that
big article in the paper in which she
denounced anonymous sources and quoted
anonymous sources in support of her position,
for God's sakes. Anonymous sources are
absolutely essential. It doesn't mean you
should just sloppily resort to them at all
times. But if you can't do it any other way,
use them and protect yourself by telling your
editor...or telling your editor in the first
place what you have and who you have it from.
In confidence, of course. And then, go ahead
and use it. The important thing is to get the
news to the people. It doesn't make any
difference what the source is. If you know
and you are sure in your own mind that the
guy knows what he is talking about, you have
to be careful that he isn't self-serving,
necessarily, but that doesn't mean that a
self-serving guy can't come up with the news
either. What I am trying to say is that there
is nothing tailor-made about this business at
all. Fifteen minutes from now, we don't what
the devil might bust in your face. In fact,
that is one of the attractivenesses of it.
You are always on the edge of something.
Maybe if you don't find any news, it is your
own darn fault. --
Section 3:
Q: Take us back to the newsroom at
Marshalltown. What were your working
conditions there?
A: If any of you are familiar with the
building up there, it is a sort of a Taj
Mahal. A very unusual news building. Ornate.
It was built just about the time I arrived
there. They had just moved into it. The news
conditions - we had this...pretty good
conditions, I would say. I mean, the
arrangement was fine. We had the big news
room, an editorial writers' room, the
publisher's office. Then the arrangement had,
within the room itself, Joe Whitacre, the big
cigar-smoking city editor who just sat there
and pounded out, he said as much as ten
columns a day, and I am not so sure but what
he did. Smoking the big cigar all the time.
Just pounding away. I sat across the desk
from him. Then Paul Norris sat in back of me.
We were the two reporters and both of us had
plenty to do other than just plain reporting.
Then Betty Ritchie, the Society Editor, sat
in back of Paul. Then, in the other room,
Mrs. Bovie read proof and the managing editor
was up in the corner. We could have done
without him, to tell you the truth. Then,
Bill Wildman sat in the wire room with Dan
Smith. Bill was a guy who, on a typewriter,
literally wrote all the heads. And they
counted, too. In those days, we used to count
them. When I say count, the lines would be
twelve or thirteen units. Bill sat there
between twelve and twelve-thirty and wrote
all the heads on the front page in a half
hour. Just typed them out.
It had all kinds of variations of individuals
as you do now, I am sure. Mac Thompson, for
instance, on the Gazette. That guy had the
damnedest memory I have ever seen in the
newspaper business. He was the whole wire
part of the Gazette. He would send up to the
composing room in the old days, he would send
up portions of a running story. Say there
were three or four running stories. He didn't
even bother to make notes. He would know in
his head the last thing that he had sent up
and how it would hook up to the next part. He
just had a photographic memory. I have never
seen anybody like him. --
Section 4:
I hesitate to be too specific on comparisons
because I really don't know what is going on
in the business now. One thing that I want to
emphasize to you, that was very different
than now, back in the '30's and the '40's, we
had the Associated Press, the United Press,
and the International News Service. The three
competing wire services. In the statehouse,
we had those three services, the Register and
the Tribune, and the Iowa Daily Press -
myself. And the competition was tremendous.
If you got a paragraph the other guy missed,
you took satisfaction in it. Everybody was
out to scoop everybody else. Now, who seems
to care? Over in the statehouse now, if they
don't get the story in the paper today, they
will get it in tomorrow or the day after
tomorrow. You don't have that feeling of
competition. And it was bitter. Especially
between the Register and the Tribune, the
sister papers. We had those five or six
entities. The governor met with the press
every day. That was a big advantage, because
old Clyde [Herring] would look in the
drawer...if he didn't have any stories and we
needed some, he would look and see if he
couldn't find something for us. So, he was in
the paper all the time.
We also had such things as this. Nels
Kraschel was governor from 1937-39, from
Harlan. Nels wanted the Register to get most
of the news. Well, under the Iowa Daily Press
pressure that I was creating, Nels, and
Gordon Gammack, who was a Register reporter,
they cooked up a deal by which most of Nels'
news came out under "Informed statehouse
sources reported that the governor was going
to do thus-and-so." We never got anything
because Nels was putting it out to Gordon.
Well, a funny dilemma occurred. A guy by the
name of Franz Jacobsen had killed his
sweetheart down at Ottumwa in a jealous rage.
He was sentenced to hang. In those days, we
had capital punishment. This was 1938. In
fact, I happened to see that guy hang. I
covered that one. Anyhow, Nels said to
Gordon, "I am going to commute this guy's
sentence to life." So, Gordon carried the
story. "Informed statehouse sources reported
that the governor is going commute the death
sentence of Franz Jacobsen to life in
prison." Well, Franz Jacobsen, down at the
pen in death row, got pretty expansive. He
said, "Oh, I never was in any danger of
hanging. I have got an uncle in Davenport and
he has got a big pull with the governor. The
governor wouldn't hang me in light of that
friendship." Word gets back to Nels and he
is infuriated that this guy is bragging that
political pressure is going to save his life.
So, Nels decides to hang him after all and
Gordon had to print another story taking back
the first one. In other words, predicting
that the governor had changed his mind and
Franz Jacobsen would hang. And he did hang. --
Section 5:
Q: Would you talk a little bit about some of
the lingo, some of the words, that we don't
hear too much in the newsroom today. You used
to end stories with -30-.
A: -30- is a telegrapher's way of signing off
a story.
Q: Other terms. Like the bulldog. The lobster
shift.
A: The bulldog was really a very preliminary
Sunday edition. That bulldog, that is one use
of the word. Another use of that word in
university in my time, when you are in a
fraternity house and you heard, "Bulldog,"
that meant there were some women in the house
and be careful with your language.
Q: Lobster shift is the overnight shift.
A: Yeah.
Q: Stringer, we know what a stringer is.
A: Stringer is a correspondent who got that
name from pasting up his stories and sending
them into be paid on the basis of, by the
inch.
Q: I am going to give you some more. Spike.
A: Spike is what...that is a story and it was
spiked because it was overflow and there
wasn't room for it. So you spiked you story.
It meant you killed the story.
Q: The PI.
A: That means the pie, you mean.
Q: Page One.
A: Pie also means getting the type all
screwed up. And Page One, of course, too.
Q: Lead.
A: That, of course, is how you launch
yourself into the story.
Q: Any others you can come up with? Graf
instead of paragraph. Folo - follow-up story.
TK means more to come.
A: Interesting from the standpoint of the
wire services, you would see all three
machines side by side. You have probably seen
them that way. They had their own nicknames
for each other. For instance, Associated
Press was rocks. They got that from the name
of the president, way back, was Mr. Stone.
Leavitt, why Leavitt, I don't know, was the
nickname for the United Press. And Epito for
International News Service.
Q: A lot of old-time journalists I used to
work with used the expression "legging a
yarn." "I have to go out and leg a yarn."
A: I never heard that one.
Q: Then there were legmen.
A: A legman is a guy who goes out and picks
up the stuff. Really all he does is relay it
to the relay man over the telephone. In other
words, he doesn't write anything. Jack Lingle
was a legman who was shot in Chicago. He just
gets the facts, but he doesn't write them.
Q: Any other terms you can think of that were
used in your day that probably aren't used
today.
What term did you use for a photograph?
A: We used to have "sob sisters" for women
reporters. --
Section 6:
Q: Can you talk a little more about that.
Why did you call them "sob sisters" and
what did they cover?
A: That was because the women were inclined
to have family stories or have some sad story
of some sort or other. They called them "sob
sisters." Actually, there is a belief that
there weren't very many women reporters, but
there were always women reporters, and some
good ones. On the average, I have known some
awfully good women reporters. Some of them
were under-estimated and some of them took
plenty advantage of their sex. I never will
forget when the WACS, they were the women in
the Army who were not nurses. The WACS were
created in Des Moines. This is where they
started. This was the women's West Point. The
purpose of it was to recruit a lot of women
to do the behind-the-lines works. Cooks,
stenographers, various other administrative
duties in the Army so it would free that many
more guys to fight. And, don't ever think
that wasn't big-time stuff. Of course, when
the WACS came into existence, that gave birth
to all kinds of ribald stuff all over the
county. These women coming into the "man's
Army." To a point where the government was
very worried over all this emphasis on sex.
But there was all kinds of little stories
flew around the country. One of the least
which I remember: One WAC recruit said to an
officer, "Where do I eat?" He said, "Oh,
you'll mess with the officers." And she said,
"Oh, yes. But where do I eat?"
They had some feminine equivalent of Mike
Royko down at St. Louis. When the WACS, for
two or three months before they actually were
founded, when they were setting it up, I was
with the Associated Press and, brother, I got
all kinds of scoops. It was really great
stuff. Then, when all those women reported
descended on Des Moines, and they were not
above nuzzling up to the officers, they
scooped the hell out of me. In those days,
you know, going into a woman's bedroom. My
God, no man ever did anything like that. So,
I got scooped plenty.
The Associated Press sent me a wire. I was
with them at the time. The WAC commanding
officer was Col. Ovetta Culp Hobby. She was a
newspaper women from Houston and she was a
beautiful woman. So, the AP feature service
sent me a wire saying, "Please get a picture
of Mrs. Hobby in a bathing suit standing on a
the diving board in the camp pool." I showed
that to the public relations guy, Vann
Kennedy of the WACS. He said, "Here we are
trying to hold down on this sex business and
you want cheesecake on the boss?" I didn't
get that one. But, another time...you see,
the old time regular Army guys, they just
hated the idea of women coming into the Army
because they were really tough old guys.
Don't think they weren't. Old Sgt. Eaton was
one and he had charge of the distribution of
the clothes to the WACS. All the various
kinds of clothes. I said to him, "Sarge, give
me a list of the clothes. I will make a story
out of that." "I can't do that. That's
classified material." I said, "What in the
hell is classified about a bunch of clothes?
How is that going to help Hitler?" He said,
"You are absolutely right." And he gave me
the list. I wrote sort of a facetious story,
something to the affect that, "There will be
no need of WACS bulging in the wrong places.
The Army is going to issue each one of them
two girdles." Something like that. And it hit
Page One all over the country. Oh, God. And
was I ever in the doghouse. Man, oh man. They
were ready to kill me. So, to take the edge
off a little bit, I wrote a poem about the
WACS. I wish I had it, and a lot of other
people do, because I remember only one line
was quoting Mrs. Hobby as saying, "Keep your
quips off the hips of our ladies." Something
like that.
That is another thing you have got to
remember about in this business. You have got
to remember you are going to need lots of
practice in getting into the doghouse. There
are going to be an awful lot of people not
liking anything you write or not liking some
things you write. It is not a sissy business,
I will tell you that, as you well know. And
you have got to sort of keep in mind that you
are the guy representing old John Q. Public
out there in the press conference or out on
the firing line someplace. You can't listen
too much to the lobbyists who are on your
neck all the time. Either raising hell with
what you have written or trying to steer you
in certain ways.
Q: Can you talk a little bit more
about the women's roles in the actual
newsroom? Were they left out of social
circles? Did you ever see women being given
something besides "crying" types of stories?
A: I wasn't particularly aware of it, to tell
you the truth. I really mean it. Some of
them, I remember, well, this isn't
necessarily appropo to what you are saying,
but Agnes Arney, she was a tough gal. She had
an assignment to cover the Iowa Methodist
Church conference. It was held in an old
church someplace. She wanted certain facts
that she couldn't get, so she wormed herself
into the sanctuary and crawled under the pews
all the way up to the front in all that dust
and dirt to get the facts that she was after.
I have known quite a few women who were just
not very much different than men in how they
proceeded. In the legislature, there is no
difference.
Q: Tomorrow, we are going to interview Mary
Bryson.
A: She is the wife of Bill Bryson, a very
top-flight sports writer. And Mary is a good
gal. I know her well.
Q: I asked her about her days at the
Register? How did her work compare to the
men's work? She said, "We worked hard. We had
a great time. They let me do anything I
wanted. They only paid me half as much as
they paid the men, but we had a wonderful
time."
A: I don't know about the salaries. One thing
we didn't know was what everybody else made.
They were pretty quick to...I got up to three
hundred and fifty bucks a week, which sounds
like peanuts now, but it was damn good pay.
They were pretty generous, I thought. And
then we also got stock, too. We got the right
to buy stock. I can't complain. As I said, I
can't imagine having a better job. --
Section 7:
Q: Were there any sacred cows at the
Register? Stories you couldn't touch.
A: I will tell you an interesting one that
happened. Nikita Khrushchev came to Iowa.
Premier of the Soviet Union. A tremendous
story and I covered that, along with other
people, of course. And a state agent tipped
me off the morning before Khrushchev came out
of the Fort Des Moines Hotel to drive up to
Coon Rapids that an Iowa physician had
offered the federal government quietly to
assassinate Khrushchev by poisoning him.
Well, I didn't work on much else that day
than that, because I had something that was
really a bombshell. I finally wrote it and
the Register didn't run it. They said, from a
context of international relations, somebody
decided that it was not a good thing to run
that. So, we didn't run it. About ten years
later or so, I wrote it again and they ran it
on the front page.
Q: Are you angry that they spiked that story?
A: I suppose you would call it spiking it.
Whether they physically did it or not. What
Chuck Reynolds, the news editor that night, a
very good newspaperman, he said, "I made one
mistake. I never should have told Eyerly and
Mac what I had. I should have just sent it
down and shoved it in the paper."
Q: How did you feel about it?
A: I thought it should have run. In fact,
that is the only experience that I had. You
know, another thing that you have got to
remember. You are under constant heat all the
time and anger, especially if you step on
somebody's toes business-wise. In a couple of
my legislative sessions, I made up my mind
that the truckers were getting by with far
too much murder on smaller license fees. I
was convinced by the evidence that they were
busting up the roads much faster than they
were paying for them in license. We went to
town on that stuff for months to a point
where truckers all over the United States
were taking the Register to see what we were
writing about licenses. One time, about ten
or twelve big shot truckers came into the
office, just fuming. "We want a conference
with MacDonald and we don't want that goddamn
George Mills in the conference." Well, I
wasn't in the conference. And it shook - they
made a strong enough case that it shook the
boss. I got word, "You better go easy on this
kind of stuff." My reaction was, "You are
going to find yourself with a sterile
newspaper if you do that." But, to their
everlasting credit, the very next day, I
succeeded in finding a story that said the
truckers had a spy in the highway commission
office in Ames that was tipping off the
truckers when the way stations were open
along the road to catch overweight trucks,
tipping them off so that the truckers just
laid over. As long as the stations were open,
they stayed off the road. The Register went
to town with it. Really played that story big
about the truckers' spy being in the office
and succeeding in keeping the way station
officers from catching some of these
truckers. The very next day, the Register
went to town with that story and then the
truckers just gave up on us.
On the other hand, the only time that
MacDonald ever shot me down. We had a fight
on what we called re-apportionment. What that
means is, the fight was over unfair
representation in the legislature. Little
counties were having just as many
representatives in the legislature as the big
counties. Adams County down at Corning has
only forty-five hundred people. They had one
representative in the Iowa House of
Representatives. Polk County at that time,
with over three hundred thousand, had two
representatives. It was just totally unfair.
Well, I went to town on that kind of stuff
during several sessions. The Farm Bureau came
in, they wanted to retain the advantage for
the small counties, and they came in and just
climbed all over MacDonald. They affected him
so much that he not only called a halt on me,
but he also took back what I had written in
an editorial. Took exception to what I had
written and don't think I haven't let him
know that plenty, to this day. But I also
give him credit that, in thirty years, that
is the only time he really didn't back me.
And he backed me in some awful tough stuff. --
Section 8:
A: If you are doing your job as a reporter, you
are going to be in hot water plenty, not only
with the news sources which you would expect,
but you are going to be in hot water with the
desk, too. You know that. So, you feel kind
of lonesome sometimes.
Q: That is a very interesting point. You feel
kind of lonesome. You are your own boss, in a
sense. You are in the middle. You are in the
middle of the newspaper because you get the
newspaper in trouble and they are feeling the
heat and then you are feeling the heat from
these sources. Talk, then, a little bit about
how you maintain. What you do everyday to
say, "This is what I am doing and this is the
right thing to do." Even though, on days,
MacDonald is angry at you, your wife is angry
at you, they are angry at you. How do you do
that? How do you keep your sanity?
A: You just say to yourself, "The SOB's. I am
not going to fold up at all." I think you
just intuitively, you don't voice it, you
just think it. You just decide, my God, you
are right. These guys are getting by with
murder not paying their fair share of taxes
and our roads are getting busted up. And you
have other situations. That is not the only
one.
The thing to do when you are covering
legislature more than anything else is to
look for hookers. A bill that looks just
perfectly decent and honest, you know. When
it looks like that, that's when you should
spend quite a bit of time trying to dig out -
what are they trying to pull here? And that
is quite a responsibility. Sometimes, you
catch some good ones.
Polk County got into a great big debt over
the Prairie Meadows Casino because the county
voted bonds to finance the casino and the big
shots in town got them to do that because
they were convinced in their own mind that
the track out there was really going to go.
It was going to be a very big success. Well,
there were lots of people in Polk County who
were not convinced of that and they were all
set to vote against it. So, what these smart
alecks in town did was to go over to the
legislature and get a different kind of a law
passed by which you didn't have to get a bond
issue passed. And don't ever think I didn't
go to town on that baby. But, I didn't know
about it until it already had passed and the
track started losing money. The first thing
you know, Polk County was eighty million
dollars in debt. That is the kind of hooker I
am talking about.
Around the legislature, there are always a
lot of guys trying to pull a fast one and you
have got to be on your toes. You have just
got to assume they are there to do it because
that is the way it works. --
Section 9:
Q: Let me point out a harrowing proposition.
Let's say you never left Chicago, you never
became a newspaper reporter, what would have
happened to you?
A: God only knows. I don't know. One of my
problems was, and it was a very serious
problem, I was just practically bereft of
money. I never should have gone to
Northwestern. Never. So that I really
hitch-hiked through college. I knew what it
meant to have a professor tap me on the
shoulder and say, "Mr. Mills. You can't come
to this class anymore. Your tuition isn't
paid." I suppose if I had enough money for
education at a normal pace, I would have been
very happy if I could have ended up teaching
literature courses someplace. I liked reading
that well and I liked good literature that
well. I still wouldn't mind doing that, to
tell you the truth. One of my grandsons is
doing that now. He is working on his Ph.D. in
literature. He teaches at Georgia Southern
University. I think I would have liked that.
Not that I was a good student, because I
didn't...I rang no bells as a scholar. So, I
ended up ringing no bells as a baseball
player either.
My getting into baseball at Northwestern was
a real fluke. I didn't play baseball in high
school. Some guy, when I was a freshman,
said, "Hey, have you played ball?" I said,
"Yeah. I have always played baseball. I love
it. Sandlot ball." He said, "Why don't you
come out? We are going to have a new
intramural freshman team." I said, "OK." So,
I went out. And before the rest of the guys
got out, I watched the varsity and the
freshman practicing. The freshman practiced
and I watched them and thought, "Gee, these
guys aren't so tremendous." Then the coach
called them together and said - I went over
and listened to the conversation and this was
their first time out incidentally - he said,
"Any of you guys left-handed pitchers?"
Nobody stepped forward. "No left-handed
pitchers?" On an impulse, I stepped forward
and said, "I am left handed and I pitch quite
a bit." So, he warmed me up and we played the
varsity. I pitched the first three innings.
No hit ball. Wow. That made me for the rest
of my life. I couldn't believe it. That
transformation in that one afternoon.
I had plenty of times when I got knocked
loose from my back teeth. I remember one guy
and I were...and he hit five hundred feet off
of me. It would have been a home run in any
ballpark in America. So, I had my tough
times, too. But I did make my letter a couple
of times and I did enjoy it a lot. We beat
Michigan once. I never will forger that. They
were always the champs. --
Section 10:
A: I had a paper route. Kids always did. A
buck a week is what you got for it. Afternoon
papers. I had six different kinds of papers
in my bag. Can you imagine that? The News,
the American and a Gold Coast paper called
the Post, and then three foreign language
papers. The Abend Post (German), the Arbeitur
Zeitung (German) and the Jewish Daily
Forward. You really had to be a bookkeeper
to keep track of who got what paper.
Q: Only one of those papers are still around.
A: None of them are.
Q: The Jewish Daily Forward still is.
A: None of the big ones are. The Tribune and
the Sun-Times were the survivors. The Tribune
was a fat morning paper. We had the Tribune
and the Herald-Examiner. They were the
competing morning papers. And, when I was a
little kid, the Record-Herald, too.
Q: The Daily News was there, too.
A: When I was a kid.
Q: Wasn't the Chicago Daily News around?
A: In those days, of course. The Daily News
and the Tribune, they were our Bibles. The
Daily News was an awfully good newspaper.
It is fascinating business. Its
attractiveness is uncertainty. You never know
what your experience is going to be. In fact,
it is still that way because I am still
writing enough stuff that I don't know for
sure what I am going to be writing tomorrow.
Another story that...I told you about the
twenty thousand words on the Cowles. Another
one that I am going to put together as soon
as I can, in connection with the people who
were in the institution for the retarded, one
thing I found out in connection with that
story was that a certain number of these
patients who were normal also were
sterilized. Believe it or not. Not only that,
I found out who one of them was. Two of them.
So, I am preparing a story for the Register
on the period when Iowa sterilized people.
Back in the...we had what we called...what
the devil did we call that law? The
technical terminology for sterilization. I
will tell you how bad it is, this story. This
guy and his sister, their parents never
should have had children because the father
had been in Clarinda seven times for
alcoholism and the mother was a plain
mentally involved, so-called insane person.
So, you can imagine what chance those two
kids had. When Malvin was six, he couldn't
even talk. And his sister was four, she
couldn't talk. So, what happened was that the
county took both of those children away from
their parents and then they had them examined
and had both of them declared incompetent.
Mentally retarded. For want of something else
to do, they put them into Glenwood - the
institution for the so-called feeble-minded
at the time. There they were for the next
fifteen years. Malvin, when he was eighteen,
they took him to Iowa City and sterilized
him. And they took his sister when she was
seventeen to Iowa City and sterilized her.
Well, after being at least somewhat
responsible for getting all those guys out, I
followed up on them to see what happened and
discovered how difficult it is to make a life
if you haven't had any preparation for life
through your childhood. Because these people
had no social abilities at all. They are
still struggling, but they are making their
own living. One of them in Omaha and one of
them in southern Illinois. It is a hell of a
story. It is a damn good story. And it is
just a question of me having enough energy.
Another thing that is a big problem for me is
the number of telephone calls that I get.
People who want information on certain
things. Of all conceivable kinds from all
over the country, they call you. One guy
called me right before you guys came. He has
got what he calls the Model A Club. They all
have Model A automobiles, Fords, from the
1920's. And they are planning on putting a
plaque on the Ford Building, the building
downtown which was the old Ford plant. You
see, Des Moines had a Ford assembly plant at
one time. Turned out two hundred and fifty
Fords a day. He wanted to know what I knew
about it because they are going to put this
plaque on. So, he spent a half an hour
picking my brains. You don't want to not be
helpful if you can, but it does run into a
lot of time. As does this. [laughs]
