Section 1:
Q: We've done in the past with Carolyn, we're
doing some of what you call housekeeping by
talking about circulation of the newspaper
and the size of Grinnell. So, let me just ask
some preliminary questions like that. What is
the circulation of the Herald?
A: Circulation as paid is about thirty-three
hundred. Size of the town is about ninety-two
hundred. You have to understand that about
twelve hundred of that is college students
because they are counted in the population.
Q: How old is the paper?
A: A little bit older than I am. The paper
was founded in 1868 and is has been in my
wife's family and our family since 1944.
Q: What, if any, is the main print
competition?
A: The main print opposition? Competition is
always the shoppers. The newspapers regard
that as a cancer. They have no news staff to
pay and it's all advertising and it is
distributed free. That is a very difficult
opposition to battle against.
Q: Do you have radio or TV?
A: We have radio in Grinnell. We have KGRN.
Frosty Mitchell started the station, not
started but bought it, and he no longer is
the owner, but it is a good station. And then
there's another one, KRTI, which is owned by
the guy that owns the Newton station, too.
KCOB. And then he owns the one in Grinnell.
There are two radio stations. One FM and one
AM.
Q: Anything else we need to know? There is a
profile sheet which I will hand out. I wonder
if you could just talk, in general terms,
about how the Herald-Register is run in terms
of what constitutes a small town newspaper?
How is it different from the Cedar Rapids
Gazette or the Des Moines Register?
A: Well, it is different in many ways. Right
now, we have three people that write. We have
a news editor who writes news and does the
editorials. My wife, I'm 78 and she is 75, I
believe, she still works, and she is the best
one we have. She is a crackerjack writer and
she loves it. We both should be retired, but
we're not. We're still having fun. She writes
full time. Then we have a sports editor who
is about anywhere from half to three-quarters
time. That's what Steve Clem did. Steve was
one of your students. He was a crackerjack.
He learned very well incidentally. He
acclimated very quickly. His background was
good and his stuff was very well written.
But, he kept commuting from Iowa City to
Grinnell and he had problems with his car and
his girlfriend, now wife, lived there [Iowa
City]. So he found a job with the Advertiser.
He writes news for that.
Q: He has since quit.
A: Oh, has he? Who's he with now?
Q: He is working privately. They have started
some work as fund raisers, he and Mary Clem.
A: Principally, the person who writes the
stuff makes up the page. In other words, the
guy that writes the front page news, he makes
up his own front page. The guy that writes
the sports makes up his page. My wife makes
up her pages. And I sweep the floor. That's
about the sum and substance of it. We print
twice a week, Monday and Thursday. We also
have a shopper of our own, which we're still
doing some battle with. The advertising staff
is three people and they sell advertising.
The advertising and subscriptions are our
lifeblood. But, advertising is what really
does it.
I told Brian earlier, this is the beginning
of my fiftieth year there and I still have
yet to see the first day that I hate to go to
work. I have seen that in other things that I
have done, but not in the newspaper business.
It is still fun. I was reading a quote just
the other day. Katherine Graham of the
Washington Post said, "If you like your work
and you feel that it matters, what could be
more fun?" Something to that effect. That's
not the exact quote, but that's the thought.
I think that is substantially what the
newspaper business is. You feel that you are
contributing to an ongoing history of your
community or of your metropolitan area,
whichever you are in. I happen to have fallen
in to the country journalism field. Should I
explain how?
Q: Sure.
A: I was an accountant. A very good one. It
saved my life during World War II. I was in
the Army and they needed accountants and I
looked up and thanked whoever is up there for
sending me to Chicago to settle terminated
war contracts. I did very well. I was a
corporal and got promoted to warrant officer.
A chief warrant officer. We had to pay by
staying an extra year, but that extra year
didn't matter because nobody shot at us. I
explained to Brian that people say to me,
"Boy, you must have had an easy life." I
explain to them very carefully that doing all
that drinking and chasing those women was not
easy. If I had known how long I was going to
live, I would have taken better care of
myself.
I got out of the service and I liked Chicago
so much that I decided to stay. It wasn't
only Chicago that I liked. It was this gal
from Iowa and her father owned the newspaper.
It took her a little while to convince me
that maybe I ought to come out and give it a
try. Accounting and newspapering are poles
apart. There's no connection. I finally
agreed that I would try it for one year,
knowing full well that I would retreat to my
comfortable job in Chicago that I dearly
loved. I had fun at accounting. I went to my
boss and I said, "I'm giving you seven weeks
notice because I am going to leave. I love
the job." He said, "Stop. Whatever the offer
is, I will meet it." I looked at him, and to
this day, I can still see the look on his
face. I said, "Please, I am taking a fifty
percent pay cut to go to Iowa." He said,
"You're out of your mind." I said, "I think I
am. I will get well in a year."
I fully intended to return to Chicago. There
wasn't any question in my mind that the
newspaper business was not what I was meant
to do. But, as I got into it, I began to have
a little fun and recognized a lot of wonders
of the small town life and living. I was
raised in a small town, five hundred people,
but it was back east and you would drive for
two minutes and you were in another town and
another town and another town. This sort of
small town living startled me. I objected to
the glass house living. I objected to a lot
of it. But there were so many good things
about it. I liked getting to the golf course
in five minutes and not having to wait for
three other guys for a tee-off time. I liked
the fact that I could go home for lunch. I
liked not fighting traffic. There were a lot
of things I liked. Of course, we got into the
child raising business after we decided we
would stay. We had six children. There was no
better place to bring up your children than a
small town. I think they had every advantage,
a small town with a college, especially a
very fine college like Grinnell. I learned to
love the newspaper business, but at the same
time, I think, the way of life also had an
influence on it.
Q: You have been in the business for fifty
years?
A: March 1, I began my fiftieth year. Yes. --
Section 2:
Q: I was wondering if you could talk about
some of those jobs you had. You were a
reporter, you were an editor, you were a
photographer. Talk about some of the days
when you were working with hot metal and
print doubles and all of that.
A: Hot metal. They talk about the romance of
printing. Believe me, that's a crock. You
worked with hot metal and you didn't get
burned. It was heavy. You put the paper
together; that meant you picked up lead and
moved it. If you didn't have strong fingers,
the lead would buckle and they would call
that "pie" and you would have to carefully
read upside down and backwards. Put the damn
thing together and proof it. In each page,
there were hundreds of separate pieces and
they had to fix that page this way and this
way so they could lift it up, get it down on
the floor, over to the elevator, downstairs
to our press and on the press. To get one
page down, it took two men to lift it off the
stone and get it downstairs. A double page
took four men to lift up a double page ad,
get it down, put it down in the elevator.
Four men to lift it up. The day that we
converted in 1972 to what they call "cold
type" or offset, one of my friends, who had
been there longer than I had, and I saw a
young woman walking around carrying a double
page ad with two fingers. That's the day we
became believers. Four men to two fingers. We
couldn't believe it.
Linotypes were fascinating. We had three
linotype operators. One was totally
wonderful. He was sober and did a good job
and was very smart and ran everything for us.
The next machine operator was very reliable,
but he made a lot of mistakes and caused a
lot of problems. The third machine was the
one we always had the trouble with.
Linotypes, if you didn't drink, they would
make you drink. It drove you to drink and it
drove you there very quickly. I learned to
hate rainy Fridays. We paid people on Friday,
and if it was raining, you could make a good
bet on it that the third machine guy would
just disappear and we'd never see him again.
Highway 6 ran right straight through town,
and there must have been some sort of a
system with jungle drums because in a couple
of days, a guy would stop in and say, "I am a
linotype operator and I am looking for work."
You could tell by the pallor. There was a
certain look that they had. "You don't have
any problems?" They'd say, "No, I don't
drink that stuff anymore." And all I wanted
to do was say, "Not until a rainy Friday."
It was really ridiculous. The linotype was a
monster. The guy that invented the damn thing
I think went a little ape, didn't he? It is
easy to see why. The linotype, I think,
probably was the major reason in driving
inventive minds into offset because you
couldn't just take somebody off the street
and put them on a linotype and make them run.
You just couldn't do it. There was a school
in Charles City and people had to go to that
linotype school to learn how to run the
thing. When they got real good, they could,
we call it, "hang the machine." They could
set the type faster than the machine could
put it out. It would come out one line of
type at a time. The illustrations were casts.
I should have brought a mat along. Every
month we would get a big box full of mats
with every illustration you might want to
use. They would come in different sizes for
different size ads. You would put those in
the casting box and they would pour hot lead
into it and then take it out, and then saw it
to size. It was not easy. The guy that did
that was called the "printer's devil." He was
always the first one in and the last person
hired and usually not very smart, for a
while. They made the castings, it was called.
It was a completely different language. They
had a stone, which was where you made up the
ads. You didn't talk in inches. You spoke in
ems and ens. You spoke in picas. There were
seventy-two points to an inch. You had to
learn that, and that six points was
one-twelfth of an inch. Six points was six
over seventy-two, whatever that is. We also
had job work, too. We would set the type for
that.
There were all kinds of problems with hot
metal. Going to the elevator, each new devil
would do it just once. Going across, there
was a little space about this far, and if
they didn't hit that thing, it would turn and
drop the completed page two floors down into
the well. We would have to send somebody down
there with a shovel. It was always the last
page, the classified page, with all of those
ads. You could not believe the swearing that
went on.
There were all sorts of characters and I was
explaining it to Brian. My first day in the
office, fresh out of Chicago, white shirt,
feeling very good. I went to the back shop.
They proofed the pages, and the way they
proofed the pages when it was all set, they
inked it and then they put a very thin sheet
of paper on it and they tried to smooth it
out. The way they smoothed it out was by
blowing on it and it would stick to the ink.
I went back in the back shop and a man was
across the way, the tobacco juice was about
down to here, and he looked across at me and
said, "Blow on that paper, boy." I thought,
"Jesus, what am I into?" That was my first
job in the newspaper business. I would blow
on it to make the paper stay. I learned to
appreciate the fact that, had he blown on the
paper, which he normally did, I would have
been covered with tobacco juice. I even
learned how to tell the time from where the
drippings were on the corner of his mouth.
About a quarter of twelve, it was down to
here and his head was tilted back.
We had our own press and with an offset paper
our size, it is economically not feasible to
get a press. To take care of [install] it,
just to put the press in, would be somewhere
around a quarter of a million dollars. And
those things run at eighteen thousand five
hundred papers an hour. So, for two and a
half hours a week, I am going to spend a
quarter million dollars I don't have. Plus
getting the people to run it. What offset did
was keep a whole lot of papers in business by
what they call "central plants," or buying
the printing. We buy our printing from the
Newton Daily News. That's a daily paper and
they have a big press. We make up the whole
paper. The pictures are ours, the engravings
are ours, everything is ours. The pages are
ready. We leave at nine-thirty and we are
back at eleven-thirty with our paper. It is a
very quick process. It's an expensive
process, too. When we were in hot metal, we
did our own. We had our own press and it
printed twenty-four hundred an hour and made
enough noise that it rattled the whole
building. It was part of that romance of
printing that they talk about. In '72, we
made our first switch. The switch from hot
metal to offset. The switch started sometime
in the mid-to-late '60s. We were on the early
part, going up with the curve. They call it
the "Bell Curve," or something like that. We
were in the early part, going up. We
converted in 1972. We're now in our third
generation of computers. My son tells me
we're behind already, so we're looking to see
what we can do for the next one. It is moving
much too rapidly for me to comprehend. My
wife uses a computer, all my six kids use
computers, I use something that you guys may
not have heard of. It is called a typewriter.
You push little buttons and numbers come up
and letters come up. It is very, very clever.
Never crashes. You don't lose anything. I
have taken two computer courses and I know
how to start the damn thing and that's about
it. I'm bound and determined to learn because
I have a daughter in Spain and a son in
Washington and a daughter in New York and
they're all talking about e-mail. I have got
an e-mail name, but I don't know what to do
with it. I'll stop now and see if you have
any questions. --
Section 3:
Q: What was your motivation for going
from a well-paid accountant to being a
newspaperman?
A: Have you ever heard of women? That was my
motivation, purely and simply. There was a
girl I wanted to live with. You didn't do it
the way you do today. I had to go put a ring
on and all that stuff, get married, and
that's what I did. I got married in late
February and went to work in early March.
That was my motivation. It was stupid, of
course, but I have gotten a little smarter.
It turns out that it was a very smart thing
to do. There is no earthly way that I know of
that I could have educated six children in
Chicago the way I did in Grinnell. They have
all graduated from college and there is one
lawyer and one newspaperperson and one was a
press aide for a Congressman and is now on a
banking committee and one lives in Spain. No
way I could have done it. Living in a college
town, we took our kids to lots of college
events and it became not, "If I ever go to
college" - they made up their own minds.
"When I go to college, where am I going to
go?" "When," not "if." I think that was a
major advantage. The initial motivation, I
know, was damn foolish. There is a good
friend of mine, I was best man at his
wedding, and every time I see him, he says,
"Do you ever stop to think what you could
have made if you had stayed doing what you
were doing?" I had a very nice job and I
enjoyed it. But I don't regret it. Someone
said something about a front row seat. In the
newspaper business, at least, I have had a
front row seat. I have done almost anything I
wanted to do. I have been to Europe six
times. I have been to Taiwan once. Been to
fifteen All-Star games. Down on the field
during batting practice. I've been to
countless World Series games. I saw the
Holmes-Cooney fight out in Las Vegas. I have
been to the North Pole. I landed on the ice
cap in Greenland, two hundred miles inland.
Anything I wanted to do. In that, it's given
me a front row seat.
Class member: Did all of your children end up
going to Grinnell College?
A: I explained to Brian, that almost caused
our marriage eruption. My wife said they have
to go "away" to college. Three of them wanted
to go to Grinnell and they went "away" to
college. They moved out of my house five
blocks away. It taxed my solvency very much
and my practical common sense. I suspect that
as long as we remained solvent, she was
right. It didn't make much sense to me. The
other three would have gone to Grinnell
except for sibling rivalries. "I don't want
to go where she is going." The three of them
that went enjoyed Grinnell and they were
number three, number five and number six. The
others went to Cornell, Luther, and Boston
University.
Q: You said that there is no place better to
bring up children than in a small town.
A: That's what I say. You have to understand,
at seventy-eight, I'm entitled to be
opinionated. That's one of my entitlements
now. I think that there are many advantages
in a small town. Especially with the location
of Grinnell with the access of five hours
driving to every major city in the Midwest.
Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City,
Milwaukee, and a good college right there.
Big Ten football, which I enjoy. Big Twelve
or Big Eight or whatever it is at Iowa State.
Des Moines is one hour flat from my house.
People say, "What in the hell do you do in a
small town?" My problem is to get out of
doing things. There's just too much to do. If
it interrupts, or interferes with, my golf
game, I get very upset. My golf game needs
interference, I want you to understand that,
too.
Q: You said you were determined to go back to
Chicago after one year. Was your decision to
stay more your love for journalism or was it
still because of your family?
A: These friends of my boss used to call me
and offer me double and triple what I was
making. Money is not the only thing. It is
what you feel. If you feel you are doing some
good. One of the things about accounting is
that you don't feel like you're doing a damn
bit of good for society. At least, I didn't
feel like that. I felt like I was doing damn
good for me. I had a comfortable living and I
enjoyed it and I enjoyed what it did for me
in the Army, because it kept me away from all
the bad stuff that happened. As a newspaper
person, if you are into it and if you do what
you should be doing, you suddenly become part
of everything that goes on in the town.
Economic development. We have a Greater
Grinnell Development. I was president for
seventeen years. We had two beautiful
industrial parks. I was president when we
bought one and filled it and while we bought
the second one and started it. I'm still on
the board since 1966. We had two hospitals, a
Catholic hospital and a community hospital.
Neither one could be accredited. They both
worked very hard. I was on the board of the
Catholic hospital. They had two Catholics, I
am an Episcopalian, and two Protestants, and
we had the best board. The Community had a
bigger board, but our board was smarter. We
kept trying to get the community to put the
two together. We would call meetings with the
proper newspaper publicity and everything
would go along fine and all of a sudden
somebody would say some emotive thing and you
could just feel it dissolve. Finally, the two
boards said, "We will take two from this
board and two from this board. They will go
talk to the Mother Superior at Clinton or at
St. Francis." They talked to them and settled
the thing and came back and we imposed it on
the community. The community just loves it.
It is one of the finest hospitals in Iowa
right now. As a matter of fact, the
University of Iowa hospitals have a dialysis
center up there in our hospital. It is a very
good hospital. So, we had economic
development, hospital, education. You are a
part of everything and you are just literally
thrown into it.
Class member: How much money did you make
when you started?
A: Sixty-five dollars a week, which is what I
made also in 1943 before I went into the
Army. Six years later, I made sixty-five
dollars a week again. Even if I had gone back
to Westinghouse, my old job, I would have
gotten all those accrued raises while I was
away in the service and I would have made a
hell of a lot more. Sixty-five a week. --
Section 4:
Q: What did you do?
A: I did everything. When I came there, I
walked in and they told me to go and cover a
story. I didn't know that the hell they
meant. I went and I wrote a four paragraph
story about a little fender-bender someplace
that nobody had heard of. The publisher, my
father-in-law, was putting the paper together
and he had it all set, except the story that
I wrote was a little too long. So, he looked
at it and he looked at it, and he picked out
the last paragraph and threw it away into
what we call the "hell box." I couldn't
believe it. I sweated blood to write the damn
thing. But, I did everything. I took
pictures. You guys today with your lovely
thirty-five millimeters. I used a three and a
quarter, four and a quarter, Speed Graphic.
There was a little notch for your finger and
you held it. You carried that thing through a
football game and your finger was creased for
three days afterwards. Not only did I take
the pictures, I had to go downstairs to our
darkroom and develop them. The darkroom was
underneath a stairwell. You know how wide a
stairwell is? That was my darkroom. I could
develop these plates, you take a plate out
and there are only two films on it. You take
a picture and you reverse the plate and then
you turn it over. I developed those
negatives. After I developed the negatives, I
would make the prints. In those days, to get
something to print in the paper, you had to
have an engraving, it was called. Most papers
did not have an engraving unit. We had to
send them to Pella. If we took a picture
today, we wouldn't get it back until three
days later. It was very interesting trying to
plan your paper around the mail and that sort
of stuff. They came along eventually with
something called a Fairchild Engraver. This
was plastic. You put the picture on one drum
and put this plastic on another drum. Then
you looked through a microscope and picked
the blackest black on the picture and made a
setting and then the whitest white and made a
setting. Then you just turned it on and it
engraved the dot structure on this plastic.
It still wasn't very good. The pictures were
never very good. After you finished engraving
it, then you had to mount it and it had to be
type high. Everything had to be the same
height to print properly. I think it was
.918, not quite an inch. You had to make sure
that it would fit a proper kiss, and if it
didn't do it...the levels gave you trouble
with the castings. When they cooled, they
didn't all cool the same way. There would be
little dips in it and we had a round thing
that you put the casting on and checked it.
It gave you a reading. If there were holes,
you had to tape tape on the bottom until the
thing kissed perfectly. We were replete with
problems. Excuse me, I am getting away from
the question.
I took the pictures. I sold advertising. I
wrote news stories. I wrote editorials. After
I had been there five years, in 1954, we had
a centennial celebration. I was one of the
three chairmen of this centennial. We had a
book and I sold all the advertising for the
book. You did everything. You couldn't excuse
yourself. If somebody didn't come in to stuff
papers, you had to go down and stuff one
section into the other. Our press printed
eight pages maximum, so if we had a twelve
page paper, we had to print four pages and
then eight and then stuff one into the other.
Then the carriers would come in and pick up
the papers and take them out. Newton has, I
think, a twenty-four page capacity. We have
no problems with that.
We took the easy way in many things. A
Polaroid camera was one of the early things
we had. It gave us instant pictures, but we
still had the three day wait. Then when the
Fairchild Engraver came along, we got the
instant picture and we could engrave it right
away. But, you couldn't raise [increase] the
size. You could only do the same size, which
was wrong. Now, you have a small picture and
you want it enlarged, you just blow it up.
Then you couldn't do that with the Fairchild.
The people in the backshop would compose the
ads and they would just push them on the
stone. The stones were filled with ads, and
you would have to go and get a tray and push
the ad up unto the tray and then move it over
where you wanted it. Once we got all the ads
settled, then we would put a chase around it,
a big [metal] form, and then start rolling
the type in. If that was romance, believe me,
I don't know. --
Section 5:
Q: Would you talk about the potential kinds
of conflict that you had as editor and
publisher of the paper while you were serving
on the development commission and boards?
A: There were conflicts. You sort of had to
play games with yourself. You had to ask
yourself which was the greater value to the
greater number? We desperately needed jobs in
Grinnell. We needed economic development.
Each time we met with someone, that was a
potential news story. But, if you ran the
news story, you were out of the picture
because these people were so cautious, they
would come and give us assumed names. They
didn't want people pounding on their door.
Everybody in Iowa and every other state
around was looking for industry, so we had to
keep it in and it was a conflict. It
absolutely was. But, I was the first one to
know when we finally got the thing OK'd. At
that moment, we let free. We had the story in
our own paper first.
There were other conflicts. All sorts of
ethical things that would occur. I can't tell
you how many calls I have gotten where
somebody is weeping on the other end and
their son or grandson or somebody had gotten
picked up for DUI [driving under the
influence] or theft or something like that.
There was never any drugs. They would say,
"That's going to kill my grandmother and my
grandmother's death will be on your hands if
you write it." What do you do? We wrote it. I
can't tell you how many times that happened.
Within the first three years, we didn't have
a liquor store in Grinnell. We had to drive
to Newton to buy it. I still hadn't chucked
my Chicago ways. I needed some grain to help
me through a weekend. I was over there
picking up some supplies and two blocks from
the liquor store, I had a little wreck. Stone
cold sober, fortunately. I put it on the
front page. It was not worth the front page
and it would have been very easy for me to
just say nothing about it, but I put it on
the front page so that when other people came
to me and said, "Look, I had this fender
bender and don't use it," all I could say is,
"Remember when I had mine? It was one the
front page."
We had school fights in Grinnell. In the
early '50s, there was something about
communities that had been sleeping. A lot of
them in Iowa, and I guess all over the
country. They had not done anything
progressive, really progressive. We
desperately needed schools. We had five votes
and for each of them, the fights were bitter.
I would get calls at six o'clock in the
morning telling me to get the hell out of
town. I almost wanted to take advantage of
leaving. We desperately needed schools and we
just had to keep reporting it. When we wrote
stories, the only way we knew that we were
doing the right thing is if the pro-schoolers
gave us hell and the anti-schoolers gave us
hell. Then we knew we had written the thing
right. Editorially, we supported schools all
the time, but we tried our level best not to
put it in any news business at all. We kept
our news clean. We wanted to do that and we
did. There were times that we have taken
letters to the editor that just absolutely
revulse me. It was submitted to us and we
said OK. No slander, no libel - go ahead. We
just lost the school bond election yesterday
by fifteen votes or something. There is one
guy, he is a nice, nice guy. We greet each
other very warmly all the time. But, he puts
ads in our paper that are very difficult for
us to agree to run. But we run them.
Q: How so?
A: They are emotively charged and they make
statements that "We don't need this and
nobody else is doing it." We want to go to
kindergarten full days. Seventy-six percent
of the schools in Iowa right now are full-day
kindergarten. We were going to raise some fee
from seven percent to nine percent. This guy,
I think, has a lot of elderly clients and
there were some elderly's who seem to forget
that somebody paid for their education and
they're not going to pay for anybody else's.
It's not just the elderly people. It is easy
to drum up "aginners." I'm always a little
bit alarmed by that. In the early '50s, if
there was anything that would have driven me
out of Grinnell, it was the anti-school. When
we finally settled it and we got our fifth
election, we passed it by eighty percent. The
next thing we voted on was a swimming pool by
eighty percent. A library addition by eighty
percent. Everybody finally said, "Well, maybe
we ought to get into the twentieth century."
I don't understand it. We supported all of
them. Again, it is easy to be against
something and it is easy to get other people
against them. I can remember some of my good
friends would raise hell with me for our
editorial positions. I said, "Just don't
bother me. I have got six kids and I want
them educated properly. I think you should
take the same line." But, it seems like the
ones that could most afford are the ones who
complained the loudest. That never made sense
to me.
Q: Have you lost advertising
because of your editorial stand?
A: I don't think so. They say, "Yes." We had
somebody call up and say, "No way will I put
another ad in your paper." But they get over
it. I can't recall a single major thing that
we have lost. We have lost minor ones along
the way, but nothing major. --
Section 6:
Q: How do you feel about the status of
journalism today and how it has changed
through the years?
A: Jesus. Excuse me. I mean, Good Heavens.
If you are talking on the national level, I
object violently to this feeding frenzy that
occurs. The latest, the Clinton thing,
everybody has got to jump in it and they keep
hounding and beating and you read the same
thing over and over again. I think there was
more principle in other days, and maybe
that's because I was writing it. I don't
know. I think people cared more in other
days. A classic example I use. The president,
when I was thirteen years old, was Franklin
Roosevelt. I went in the Army, I was in
Chicago in Soldiers' Field when Roosevelt was
running in 1944. There were 120,000 people in
Soldiers' Field. [I saw Roosevelt standing in
a car, waving at the crowd. But I did not
know that he had had polio and wore a full
leg brace. The press knew this, but it was
not reported.]
A: Because the newspaper guys then didn't
write that stuff. If they are concerned about
Clinton's playing games, Roosevelt pulled a
train off a siding to pick up Lucy Mercer. Is
that her name? Pulled a train off of the
siding. That is real class. The news guys
apparently knew it but didn't write it. I
don't know that there's a personal life that
can stand the test of running for office. You
know that they're going to find something.
When you were eight years old, you kicked
somebody in the shins. That sort of thing. It
becomes a frenzy. They all go after it. I
like baseball and it fascinates me when I go
down on the field to watch these metropolitan
journalists, to watch them just hound these
managers and ball players. They just rag at
them and I think, "What in the hell are they
after?" I don't know. I think it is much more
fun to pursue your job and act towards people
as you would want them to act toward you. --
Section 7:
Q: You have been talking a lot about
change in the small towns through both
economic development, as well as political
issues, and especially in recent years, I
think, there have been a lot of changes. What
do you think the biggest changes, both
developmentally and politically, in the small
towns are now, and how do you go about
dealing with those issues through the paper?
A: What are the biggest changes?
Q: Yeah, the biggest issues of change
in a small town as you see it and how do
you go about dealing with that in the
paper?
A: Well, there are two big problems in Iowa
right now. Economic development is one and
the other one is housing. It seems to me that
if you didn't economic develop, you wouldn't
have a housing problem. We in Grinnell have a
definite housing problem because of our
economic development. I would say that any
town runs into the same thing. Harlan has
that problem. Housing is very short in
Harlan. That's because they have got some
pretty big industries there. [comments on
industry in Harlan]
We get hell from some of our people saying,
"Why didn't we get some really high paying
jobs like Silicon Valley?" I thought, "Well,
that's great. Let's tell the leaders why."
Bob Noyce, the guy who is co-inventor of the
microchip with Intel, a graduate of Grinnell
High School, graduated from Grinnell College.
He was just barely out of Grinnell. His
senior year, he and some guys stole a hog and
butchered him and were going to have a luau.
Anything over twenty dollars, in those days,
was a felony. The farmer wanted them
punished. Fortunately, they came to some sort
of arrangement. They reimbursed the farmer
and all that. Noyce was suspended for a
semester, then he came back and finished and
then went to MIT and then to Silicon Valley
and made a pot full of money. When he was on
Grinnell College's board of directors, he had
them buy Intel. The stock went sky high.
That's where a lot of Grinnell's endowment
came from. I called him and said, "Look, next
time you are at a board meeting, come out to
a chamber [of commerce] meeting and tell us
how we can go about getting some electronics
manufacturers in Grinnell." He came out and
he said there is no way. They stick together.
They stick in the beltways. "There is no way
that I know that anyone would come out here."
We still try. You have this Gateway. I guess
Sioux City is a much bigger city than
Grinnell. We have tried for it. In our
economic development, one of the things we
did ask was, "Are you a polluter? What do you
do? Do you have any waste products? You have
got to do this and this." We set down
certain rules for them. We don't have any of
these really big electronic jobs. We can't
get any. We have a door manufacturer. We have
a window manufacturer. We have PVC,
Polyvinylchloride siding. We have ducts for
heating and cooling. All of these jobs are
good and we have full employment in Grinnell.
But no electronic stuff.
Q: In what ways do you cater your
paper to the college there? Is that a big
part?
A: Let me take a step back. I was telling
Brian earlier, I had to take a daughter home
from Prague to take over the paper. She
graduated from Grinnell College. She was
trying something. We print the college paper,
they bring it to us and we take care of
getting it printed. She is adding one sheet,
a broadsheet, both sides, of news and
advertising of Grinnell. It is part of the
college paper. It is just printed with the
college paper as a fly sheet, something you
pull out. We're doing it as an experiment.
I'll be better able to tell you next year.
She's telling me that they like it. It's her
idea, so she would tell me that. --
Section 8:
Q: Could you talk to us about one or two of
the stories that you are proudest of? The
stories that you think made a difference in
your career? The stories that really were, in
their own ways, explosive and important.
A: Oh, God.
Q: Let me help. I asked the same question of
Carolyn Gage last week and she said, without
any hesitation, the story she is happiest
with, was a story she did about three boys
who dug a huge hole. It's an interesting
story because, in may ways, that's her
favorite story. It had no great impact, I
suppose. We're interested in finding out your
version of the hole story.
A: Did Carolyn tell you about her contest
when they remodeled her bathroom? They had
riddles on the thing. I submitted some. I
think one or two of them got on.
Q: I am not sure Carolyn was facetious or
not. But, what are some of the stories that
you really look back upon your career with
the most pride?
A: I did a lot of Army stuff. I missed out on
the war. I was thankful for that. In the
'60s, the Cold War was still on and I found I
could get the Air Force to take me places. In
the '60s, I went to Cape Canaveral. I saw the
first Minuteman Missile. I went to the North
Pole. I landed on an ice cap in Greenland. I
was weightless in the same plane that the
[early] astronauts were. I sent an article
about that. I wrote about all of this stuff
in the paper and it explained what we were
doing in the Cold War. Reforger One was in
1969. We were pulling troops out of Europe
and Europeans were very upset, saying that we
were leaving them unprotected against the
hordes from the East. The Americans said,
"Look, it is costing us a lot of money. We'll
show you how quick we can get over there." We
sent five thousand troops from the United
States to Nuremberg in thirty-four hours. I
was in the second plane that landed in
Nuremberg. Each plane had ninety-eight
soldiers and two newsmen. I wrote about that.
I thought it was important because the Cold
War was on everybody's mind. You guys are
much too young to remember, but they used to
talk about the clock that was set at five
minutes of twelve. At twelve o'clock, poof,
there was no world. If you didn't give a
thought to that, you were out of your mind. I
must admit, I was wanting some adventure,
too. So, it was a dual purpose. I couldn't
walk down the street without somebody talking
to me about those articles. I talked to every
service club in Grinnell about them. --
Section 9:
A: The other thing that I think was of import,
although there was not much writing about it,
were my guests from the USIA, the United
States Information Agency. That started in
1962. The college had a guest, he was Wang Ti
Wuh, the publisher of the largest paper in
Taipei. The college didn't know what the hell
to do with him. They had him for several
days. Since he was a newspaperman, they
rationalized that he should meet other
newspapermen. His paper had a circulation of
about three to four million. We are at three
to four thousand. He came down and I
suggested to my wife that maybe it would be a
good idea to entertain this guy at home.
Normal Iowa entertainment is to offer them
liquid grain. If they don't want it, fine,
but I still have mine. He drank one bottle of
beer, so he was not on anything. My kids were
ages one to eleven at that time. I was a
little afraid that at the dinner table they
would pick up a handful of mashed potatoes
and whap it at the guy. They were fascinated
by the interpreter. They brought their toys
to the guy and he seemed very interested.
But, sitting at our dinner table, he was
sitting at my right and all this went through
the interpreter. Those days, they brought
people in for three months. He said, "I've
been in this country for two months. I love
everything about Americans. Wonderful cities
and everything. But, tonight is special." I
said, "That is very interesting. Why is it
special?" He said, "This is the first
American home I have been inside of." I
wanted to weep. What in the hell kind of
friendship can you show if you're unwilling
to open your front door? So I wrote to the
agencies that sent the people out. I wrote to
the USIA. I wrote to my senator and
congressmen. Pretty soon, I started to get
guests. We've had them since 1962 from every
part of the world. No guest comes to Grinnell
that doesn't eat in a college professor's
home. That's dinner. And in a town person's
home and lunch out on the farm. They have a
continental breakfast with high school kids.
They have lunch with professors and students
at the college. They go through a factory.
They go through a retirement home and have an
exchange of points of view there. That's how
they find out what the hell the country is
all about. I was trying to add up the other
day how many guests. I figure it is well over
four hundred that we have entertained. Just
last week we had three from Moldova. I didn't
even know where Moldova was. A week before
that had a lady from Germany. Earlier we had
a lady from Spain. We have had three
Georgians. We had a Chinese guy from mainland
China. It took me twenty minutes to drive him
three blocks. One street has some lovely
Victorian homes and he made me stop at about
every home and took pictures of the wonderful
homes. That, to me, has contributed as a
newspaper person, but not in the newspaper.
We write a news story saying that they're
here, but I think in seeing so many of those
people in town, I can pick up a telephone and
call almost anybody in town and say, "Look, I
have this guest. Could you entertain them for
dinner on such-and-such a night?" They don't
say, "Is he black, white, green or pink."
They say, "Let me check my calendar." To me,
that's amazing. It takes me about three hours
to line up the schedule and then another
three hours to type it up. Then I spend time
with the guests, too. We always have them at
our house because it is fun.
