Section 1:
Q: Okay, we are talking with John B.
Turnbull, "Buck" Turnbull on Saturday, June
17th, 2000, at the Iowa City Public Library.
Buck was a sports reporter with the Des
Moines Register.
A: Forty-one years.
Q: Buck, how did you end up at the
Register and who found who?
A: Well, of course, I went to the
University of Iowa. I was waiting to be
called. I got a ROTC commission and I was
waiting to be called into service, in the Air
Force. I took a job at Winona, Minnesota as
the sports editor, just as kind of an interim
situation. They knew that I would probably
be called in. So I was there for over a year
and I still didn't get called in. Actually,
they lost my papers in California which was,
in the long run I guess, fortunate for me
because I did go into the Reserves and wound
up being a Captain in the Air Force Reserves.
But while I was in Winona, I called down to
the Register with a college baseball game one
afternoon. It was Winona playing Wartburg,
from Iowa and a fellow named Bill Seward, who
had been the sports editor at the Press
Citizen here and had been the managing editor
of the Daily Iowan the year that I was the AP
correspondent. He answered the phone and he
told me that one of the fellows had moved
over to the news side and they were looking
for somebody in sports. He said I should
write to Layton Haush or give Layton Haush a
call, who was executive sports editor and
from there, I came to Des Moines in June of
'52.
Q: Had you wanted to go to the Register at
any time? I mean, at the time you were at
the DI or when you were in Minnesota?
A: I never really thought that much about
it. My main concern was going into the
service. That was during the Korean War.
Actually, when I got to Des Moines, they said
they located my papers at Hamilton Air Force
Base in California and there is no reason why
they should have been out there. By that
time, the war was over and they suggested
that if I wanted to remain in, if I wanted to
keep my commission, that I join the Reserves,
which I did. Within six months, I was
promoted to First Lieutenant and in another
couple years, I was promoted to Captain and I
still had never been in the service.
Finally, it was not to my advantage to stay
and in 1960 I dropped out of the Reserves.
Q: Was it Layton that hired you?
A: Right. Well, Layton and Frank Eyerly
was the managing editor. I started out at
$275 a month in Winona. These figures sound
kind of ridiculous now, I guess. So I was
making $300 a month when I came down to Des
Moines. Harley asked me how much I was
making and I said $300 a month and he said,
"We can only start you at $80 a week." And I
figured out right away that $80 a week was a
lot better than $300 a month. So I never
regretted it. Des Moines was a good place to
raise a family and the newspaper, of course,
we all took great pride in it, especially the
sports section which was, at the time I
started working there, was known as
"America's Finest Sport Section." And when I
became one of the writers, why of course, we
covered Nebraska and Notre Dame and all Big
10 football games and traveled extensively.
I got to cover the Kentucky Derby six or
eight times and the US Open and the NCAA
basketball tournaments and the Rose Bowl
three times, mainly thanks to Hayden Frey.
Q: Nothing that you would have been able
to do if you were still in Winona, Minnesota?
A: No, that's for sure. The day I started
working in Winona, it was 29 below zero. So
I figured it was really fun for a year, but
after that I was ready to move. Q: I just want to keep pursuing this a
little bit. Did you realize how
well-renowned the paper was when you were in
Winona? Were you looking?
A: No, I think that when I went to school
here, that the Register was certainly - I was
a Register stringer one summer and I knew the
guys here, from Des Moines who were the
stringers and of course, you read that the
Register was, at that time, a statewide paper
and for many, many years after that, too. It
was just in recent years that they pulled
back because they don't really feel that -
the paper costs so much to go out so far in
the state, that they're mainly an essentially
Iowa paper now. --
Section 2:
Q: I would like to pursue that a little
bit more later on, but I did want to ask you,
what do you think made the Des Moines
Register such a great paper back in its
heyday? In the thirties, forties and the
time that you were there in the fifties and
sixties, what were some of the qualities of
the paper that made it stand out from others?
A: Well, I suppose it was experienced news
people, a family-owned operation that wanted
to serve the community as well as put out a
good newspaper and they spent money to do
that. As I said, in sports I covered
countless Orange Bowls, too, probably five or
six Orange Bowls and the Washington Bureau,
which was five or six people living in
Washington, some just covering the Iowa news
and then others doing the national politics
and international. It was just a very
prestigious place to work because the
Register, at one time, I believe, had won
more Pulitzer Prizes than any other newspaper
except The New York Times. So everybody took
a great amount of pride in what we were
doing.
Q: And, of course, the Big Peach was a
major part of that.
A: Right, sure.
Q: What is the history of the Big Peach?
How did that come about? Why was it called
the Big Peach?
A: Because it was on peach-colored paper,
obviously, but it goes back before the war,
before World War II and I think people have
argued about just what the background of that
is. But the Tribune, the afternoon paper,
had a Pink Peach sports section and the
Register, of course, had the Peach. I can't
really give you the background on why it
started that way, but it became so
distinctive the Minneapolis Tribune also had
a Peach. The Register, for quite a while,
just had a Sunday they called the Big Peach.
Then it went to a daily Peach sports section.
Then, I think, in some years after I was
there, and the expense of the peach-colored
paper, it was a little more expansive than
the regular paper, plus you couldn't print
color pictures. And I think that was one
reason they decided, in order to have color
pictures on page one of the sports section,
it would be better if they did away with the
peach, which they did. It caused quite a
reaction because people had been growing up
with the peach. They missed it. It was
always, you know, each day you pull that
thing out of the paper and you had the sports
section and it was a distinctive feature of
the paper. We were sorry to see it go. --
Section 3:
Q: You were on the sports copy desk for
eleven years, from '52 to '63?
A: Right.
Q: Were you doing reporting?
A: Yeah, I covered the Iowa colleges. I
didn't get up to go out much but I did a lot
of phone work. I covered the Iowa Conference
and in July, I put together the Iowa
Conference Story which was a book that was
published in - I think I said 1962, but it
was 1960 or '61 that it was published. And
it was mainly because the Register had all
the records going back to the formation of
the conference in 1922 or 1923. And I felt
if somebody like myself didn't put together a
record book of the all-conference teams and
things like that, that I had readily at my
disposal, some years after that it would be
lost. So, at least now the league has the
first forty years documented and now somebody
needs to do the next forty years, I guess.
So I did that while I was on the sports desk.
Then I went off the desk in '58. Brad
Wilson, the high school writer, had a heart
attack and so I covered the high schools in
the winter of 1958. I covered the state
tournaments: the girls tournament and the
state boys tournament. Then I went back on
the desk, but it was kind of with an
understanding that when Bert McGrain retired,
that I would go off the desk and that
happened in 1963.
Q: Did you enjoy covering the tournaments?
A: Oh, sure. That was always the big deal
in the state and it still is, really, for the
high school kids. The tournament, when I
started here, was in Iowa City, and they
built Veteran's Auditorium in Des Moines in
1955, it opened and the tourney moved to Des
Moines. So most of the boys and girls
[tournaments] had been held there almost
every year, with several exceptions.
Q: So at the same time you were covering
the tournament action, you were also on the
copy desk, is that right?
A: Well, not - that one particular year, I
was off the desk and I was writing high
school columns and traveling the state,
really, to write columns, just as Brad had
done. Then he recovered and came back, I
think, in the summertime and I went back on
the copy desk.
Q: Talk a little bit about that work, too.
What is that? When you are on the copy
desk, you're editing copy that other
reporters had written?
A: Well, mainly, yes. You're handling a
lot of copy. We had an early man that came
in at 2:30. That guy also was responsible
for putting out the preview of the Tribune,
which was the Tribune afternoon paper, also
had a pre-date and the guy would add the
afternoon baseball and update the thing. So
that paper would go to press about 6:00. The
other guys would come in about 4:30 to 5:00
o'clock. The slot man, who was the guy that
sits in the slot and the other people, the
editors running the rim, laid out the paper.
And he would come in about 4:00 or 5:00
o'clock and discuss some things with Haush
before Haush went home. Then he would pass
out the stories to the editors and that was
basically the way it went. Write the
headlines and go through the paper as it
comes up at 9:00 o'clock at night. See, we
had a second edition at that time which went
to press about 10:50 and that went to Iowa
City and Cedar Rapids and Waterloo and a good
portion of the state. That was a good paper
and it had most of the night baseball. Of
course, back then, they didn't play all that
much night baseball. But it had the
basketball in it and football season.
Football was really easier than, say
basketball. The spring seasons were not the
easiest either, because you had all the golf
and tennis and stuff like that being called
in. Football, I think, we enjoyed the most
because the big question was Friday and
Saturdays and the time during the week wasn't
really as busy as otherwise.
Q: Was there a time when you were squeezed
for people, where you had to have some people
here, some people over here, having spring
stuff going on?
A: Well, yes and actually, the news side,
they would contribute. We had a lot of
people on weekends. I mean, reporters or
desk people would come over to help on
sports. The photo operation was really
massive at that time and we had probably all
the artists, all the photographers, extra
people would spot for the photographers. It
was really a finely tuned operation. We had
machine gun camera pictures of the big plays
of the game and what we call Howitzer
pictures, from the press box, which would
cover the whole field. I mean, some of those
sections were just great, but this preceded
television. Once television came in, that
became a thing of the past. I mean, it was
one thing where television really began to
chip away at what the newspapers had done for
so long. --
Section 4:
Q: How was Haush to work for?
A: Oh, fine. He was a very easy-going
person and I don't think that maybe I ever
saw him lose his temper. He was the
executive sports editor. Zech Taylor was the
columnist and he'd been there for years. I
actually think Zech started prior to him in
1950 or 1960 and then Jack Norris was the
sports editor for the Tribune and started in
about 1920. Bert McGrain probably started in
1923 and the longevity of all those people -
I mean, they were all still working there
when I was there in the fifties. They didn't
really start retiring until in the 1960s.
Zech was still writing when he was 78 and
died of a heart attack in Florida at spring
training. But the longevity of all those
people, there were very few changes. Bill
Bryson was the baseball writer. He'd been
what we call the slot man. He'd gone off to
cover baseball and then to write an afternoon
column. But all those guys had been there
for years and years and years.
Q: Was that unusual for people to stay
that long at a paper?
A: I don't think so. It would be now. I
don't think that those days will ever really
come back. But at that time. Now, whether
jobs were hard to come by in the thirties and
the forties and everybody appreciated the
fact that they had a job probably was part of
it. But the Register always treated their
people fairly. It was, like I said, a
family-owned operation of the Cowles family.
It was never really the greatest paying job
in the world but there was a lot of
satisfaction at work.
Q: What was the satisfaction for you?
A: Oh, I suppose the fact that I was doing
something that I always wanted to do, that I
enjoyed doing. I guess I had a little bit of
talent in that direction. I'm glad I did,
because that's what I wanted to do since I
was a kid. There was a certain amount of joy
in just hearing those presses rumbling, you
know. Like you're really getting out a
product, a good product.
Q: Was there ever a time where you wanted
to leave the Register, when you pursued
another job and decided against it?
A: No, not really. I mean, I was offered
several jobs. One was the Cedar Rapids
Gazette, where I might have moved up maybe to
the sports editor's job, although Gus
Schrader was there for years after that. It
would have been maybe for a little less money
and I had been a Gazette correspondent when I
was in school, so I knew all the guys. And I
worked up there in the summertime. But no, I
really don't think that I ever seriously
considered moving.
Q: If you had, would you have considered
that a step down? I mean, the Register
was...
A: Well, you know, I grew up in the east,
outside of New York City. And I had no
desire to go back there. My dad had commuted
to New York City for seventeen years and
really, in order to live out there, you'd
have to live out and commute. And I just
never, I couldn't imagine myself working for
the Herald Tribune, New York Times and living
out, with the schedule that I had at the
Register. You're talking about two or three
hours out of your day just to get to the
office and I had no desire to do that. It's
kind of funny though, some of my friends who
grew up in Des Moines wound up working for
the Herald Tribune in New York, which is the
paper I grew up on. And I came out here and
I go to Des Moines and work on the paper that
they grew up with. So, it's a funny world.
Q: The commute would have been one thing,
but the compared to the difference of the
quality of the Herald Tribune and the
Register -what were the differences?
A: Certainly, the Herald Tribune and the
New York Times are much bigger newspapers,
but I don't think that they, in their area,
did a better job than the Des Moines Register
did in most of my years there. The Register
was unique. The Minneapolis Tribune might
have come closest to it, but there are very
few newspapers that cover the whole state the
way the Register did. I mean, basically it
was a home-town paper for the whole state of
Iowa. I can't think of too many that covered
- I don't know what the household penetration
would be, but you know, when I started there,
the circulation on Sunday was 540,000. That
admittedly was the heyday of newspapers.
Radio was still king of the airways, but
television didn't really start until about
the early fifties. When I came to Des
Moines, WOI had just gone on the air as the
Ames TV station, the state university TV
station. But channel 8 and channel 13 were
still two or three years away. So television
was not much of a factor, but it certainly
became one.
Q: Of course, there was economic
competition for TV, but what about
competition for news integrity? Would you
consider TV a competition for news?
A: Yes, I suppose in the early years
because we used to, just like the radio
stations, they would steal our stories and
they still do. But I think, because we used
to hide stories because our paper that went
out at 9:00 o'clock at night was on the
streets, so that the radio stations and TV
stations could pick up the paper and see what
we had. So if we had a particularly good
story, we would not put it in that. We would
just hold it out, put in a dummy story and
then as soon as the presses ran off the
street editions, they stopped the presses and
put in the real story. So there was
competition there. I think though, over time
television became much more of a competitor
just because it forced the newspapers to do
their job differently. I mean, no longer
could you cover the game as you did before
because basically everybody knew the score
and, in many cases, they had seen the game on
TV. So it began to force the newspapers to
go behind the scenes for the quote or the
quotes from the coaches and of course, from
the players. And you see much more of that
now. The game stories just are so much
different than they were originally.
Q: I haven't heard the term dummy stories
when you hid the stories by putting in a
dummy story. A dummy story about that story?
A: No, a dummy story about something that
might be almost any story.
Q: A filler?
A: Yes, right. Basically, it was probably
somewhat of a decent story, but it wasn't as
good. It might be a staff story, something
that the staff had developed, maybe I had
developed something that nobody else had.
You know, the radio stations over time, well,
they just didn't have the news staff that the
paper had. And TV staffs - well, still, you
would see a lot of the stories that were in
the morning paper that wind up on the TV news
at night. It's just, I guess, the nature of
the business. But they also now have stories
that we don't have, too. In a lot of
communities, that's the only competition
anymore. There are very few two-newspaper
cities.
Q: Who made the determination that you
would hide a story?
A: It could be maybe Haush or Bob Price or
Ron Thom, who was a slot man.
Q: Based on what? How would they decide
that?
A: Well, it was something that you didn't
want to see on the air at night. Maybe a guy
spent a week or something developing some
story or maybe we knew that we were the only
outfit that had it. So why give it away to
the 10:00 o'clock news when with just a
little extra effort could keep the story out
of the street edition of the paper? That
went on for quite some time, really. Then
they got to copywriting stories. I don't
know how effective that was, by putting a
copyright on it they almost hopefully forced
somebody else's hand to copyright a story in
the Des Moines Register as opposed to just
doing a story as if it was their own.
Q: They would go ahead and use the story
but they just cite the Register?
A: Yes, right. --
Section 5:
Q: How about some of the first stories you
worked on, in the early and mid-fifties? Can
you think back and remember any of those that
stand out?
A: Well, as I say, they were mostly
probably all the college stories. There were
no blockbusters that I recall in that era,
because I was more of an inside person
handling the other guys' stories. So nothing
exceptional, really, in those years.
Q: Any anecdotes you can remember about
working with those guys, the people who were
out in the field and they would call in?
They would call in their stories, is that
right?
A: Back in those days, we used a
Dictaphone. If Zech was in Florida, for
example, and calling in a column from the
major league baseball camps, he'd put it on
the Dictaphone and then we'd have to
transcribe it. I remember, it was hard
sometimes, to interpret what he was saying.
The Dictaphones were not the best. A lot of
the stuff was done that way. A lot of the
stuff came in Western Union. Western Union
was a very important part of what we were
doing in the fifties and really, on into the
sixties, until the computer. The portable
computers, first the electric typewriters,
then the portable computers really changed
that operation completely. I mean, I can
remember covering a golf tournament one time
and I figured that by the time we got the
Texas Instruments machine that it basically
had saved six or seven steps of what I had
normally done. I mean, I no longer needed to
put down the scores in a notebook because I
could put them right into the machine and the
machine would tabulate the scores. That was
one step. I could put the phone in the back
of the machine and call the office, so that
did away with the Western Union guy because
we didn't need Western Union any more. When
it got to the office, there was no need for -
in fact, it was right on the computer system.
There was no need for the editor to handle
it because it went into the computer. There
was no more reason for what we called a copy
cutter down in the composing room, that would
take the scores or take the stories and cut
them into pieces to give the various line
type operators. If you were in a hurry,
that's how they would do it. They would cut
up the story and give it to this guy so that
in a matter of a couple minutes - if you were
in a hurry - put together a story that way.
There was no longer a need for the printer to
put the hot type together. And there was no
longer a need for a proof-reader, because the
editors would do the proofreading on the
screen. So really, I think there is about -
I don't know - five or six steps right there
that were changed. You might have added more
computer jobs but you've done away with a lot
of other things that you had been doing for
years, Western Union being one of them.
Q: These days we don't have proofreaders,
pretty much the copy editors do it.
A: Right, yes. It's pretty much the
writer himself and the editors editing the
copy because, no - the old proofreaders would
catch a lot of things. It was not
necessarily a big improvement, but there are
no proofreaders as such any more. When an
editor releases a story after he's read it,
that's pretty much the way it's going to be.
Q: This goes back a ways, but talk a
little bit about the difference what a
proofreader would do and a copy editor would
do. It seems to me that would be two doing
the same thing.
A: The proofreader was mainly just reading
for - he's not reading really, for content.
He's reading for typographical errors and
mistakes and of course, the sharp
proofreaders would catch the content, too,
but that wasn't really their job. Now the
copy editor, he's going to remove words,
excess verbiage. He's going to insert maybe
what he thinks needs to be done. He might
move this paragraph up a little higher so
that the story that you see, that the writer
wrote, may not be quite the way he wrote it
because the editor has jimmied with it and
sometimes not the writer's complete
satisfaction, either. That's always a point
of contention sometimes between the writers
and the editor. The writer never really
likes his stuff monkeyed with too much. The
editors make sure that you know that they are
the boss and not you.
Q: Can you think of specific instances
where that really teed you off, when an
editor was moving stuff around within your
story and actually changing it?
A: Oh, yeah, one night a guy did so much
fooling around with my story and I forget now
exactly what kind of a story it was, but it
seems to me it had something to do with
wrestling. He finally did so much monkeying
with it that it began to make no sense to him
and then pretty soon, somehow it was lost in
the computer system and they finally had to
call me at home to re-send the story, which I
think I had my machine with me. But
especially in my later years, I mean my last
ten years at the Register there became a lot
more fooling around with stories and cutting
them and sometimes I would say needlessly or
even removing a lot of the adjectives and
just destroying the content of the story, in
my view. But I guess the guys felt that they
were going to earn their pay or something so
they did a little bit too much editing. --
Section 6:
Q: And as for the Eddie Anderson story,
when you suggested the play for a football
game.
A: I guess, the background there. Eddie
Anderson was the Iowa football coach, Dr.
Eddie Anderson, who was a urologist. Back in
those days, that was really not that
uncommon. In fact, I think Iowa has had
three football coaches who have been doctors
there. Alvin Nike was a doctor who was a
coach in the early 1900s. Eddie Anderson and
there was somebody else in there but I can't
think of. But Dr. Eddie Anderson was a
doctor. He worked at the hospitals. I don't
really know how extensively that would have
been during football season. Dr. Eddie - I
was the sports editor at the Daily Iowan in
1947 and '48 and they thought they were going
to have a much better football team than they
did. A fellow named Chad Brookes was the
sports columnist. He really lit into the
football team several times and it became
quite a bit of animosity between the coaches
and the players and the writers. One guy
threatened to punch me in the nose up at
Wisconsin. I remember after Wisconsin - and
Wisconsin being bad -
Q: Are you talking about the football
staff?
A: No, football team. One of the players.
Q: A member of the team!
A: He was mainly mad at Chad, but the
following year Eddie tried to make amends.
He thought he better do a little better job
with the media than had been done the year
before so he had a Tuesday night get-together
with the writers and the broadcasters. There
were six or eight of us. Bob Brooks is still
around in Cedar Rapids. Milo Hamilton, who
became a Hall of Fame broadcaster in
baseball. Milo enjoys telling the story. I
had almost forgot about it.
Q: Milo was here?
A: He had lived in Rambos (?) on WSUI when
I was in school. In fact, Milo wasn't even a
sports broadcaster as such. Brooks was the
main sports man and then Milo went to
Davenport, I think, and got into sports. He
went round about, but was in Chicago with
Harry Carey for a while, but they never
really got along very well. In fact, Milo
thought he was going to get the baseball job,
I think, and then told that. I think maybe
Carey was bought off and the White Sox -
anyway, it was a situation where Milo quit
and he went down to Houston and he's been in
Houston a long time.
Q: That was quite a gathering, wasn't it?
A: All those guys were there. This went
on for four or five weeks into the football
season and we'd just sit around. I got to
know Anderson pretty well. So one evening, I
said, "Dr. Eddie, have you ever thought about
having a half back dash rather than having,"
I think Al DiMarco was the quarterback in '48
"and rather than have DiMarco throw all the
passes, have you ever thought about pitching
out to the half back and surprising - and
have the guy throw a pass?" And Eddie looked
me at and he said, 'Turnbull," he says, "Does
anybody but Lujack throw a pass for the
Bears?" And John Lujack, of course, had been
a great quarterback at Notre Dame who was
then a Bears quarterback. And I said, 'No, I
guess not." So the following Saturday, they
played Minnesota and I wish I could say Iowa
won the game because of this play, but they
lost the game. But they had a left-handed
passer who wasn't a passer he was a running
back, named Jerry Fath, who was a left-hander
and they threw a pitch out to him and he
stopped and threw a left-handed pass into the
end zone to Jack Dittmer for a touchdown.
And I jumped up in the press box and said,
"That's my play!" "That's my play!" I had
almost forgotten about that. Milo told that
to the sports editor. Milo went into the
Hall of Fame and I think he told the sports
editor of the Register at the time. I forget
now what that conversation was back and
forth, why they were talking, but anyway, he
told that and Hall had never forgotten that.
It is kind of an amusing story because not
too many writers, I guess, can say they told
the coach a play and by gosh, the next week,
he used it! --
Section 7:
Q: Later then, you developed a story about
the feud between Forest Evashevski and Ray
Nagle, the coach. Can you talk a little bit
about that? In fact, the process of
developing a story, how you got there.
A: There is a lot of background to that
story. Evashevski was a great football
coach. I mean, when he came to Iowa, Iowa
was really in the pits in the early fifties.
And Eva had been great back at Michigan. He
had been the blocking back for Tommy Harmon.
He'd had success at Washington State. So he
was hired at Iowa in the fall of '62, was his
first season. They had a monumental upset
that year. They beat Ohio State 8 to
nothing, that was only one of two games they
won that year, but it was really - it was
when you brought out the big wood guy,
because it was a shock for everybody.
And next year, the 52 team was much, much better.
Notre Dame was number one in the country
that year and Iowa tied them 14-14 late in
the season and it cost Notre Dame the
national championship. That was the year
when Notre Dame faked the injuries to stop
the clock. I don't know whether you remember
the game, but at the end of each half they
faked an injury to stop the clock. And at
the end of each half they scored a touchdown
because of that. They scored a touchdown
with six or seven seconds left in the game.
There was a lot of criticism about what Notre
Dame had done, I mean, whether they were
violating the spirit of the rules to fake the
injuries to stop the clock and give them the
time. And there was so much criticism over
that that Frank Leahy finally resigned the
following spring and he was a legendary coach
at Notre Dame. Then, of course, in '56, Eva
took Iowa in the Rose Bowl and in '58 they
did it again. And in 1960, which is kind of
forgotten in the chain of events of
Evashevski's years, because they played
Minnesota and Minnesota won the game because
Iowa had a couple fumbles late in the game
and Minnesota won. And Minnesota went to the
Rose Bowl and they lost the Rose Bowl game,
but they were number one in the country
because they had beaten Iowa and it was
Iowa's only loss of the year. Iowa wound up
second or third that year. But Minnesota won
the National Championship because the polls
were not taken after the bowl games as they
are now. Evashevski retired after that year,
but he had gotten into a ruckus with Paul
Brechler, not a ruckus but a feud back and
forth. Evy basically wanted the Paul
Brechler's job.
Q: Who was Paul Brechler?
A: Paul Brechler was the athletic director
at the time who had hired Evashevski. He was
the AD throughout the 1950s. In fact, Paul
was aware that he may have trouble with
Evashevski because he called Chris Crisler
before he hired him. Crisler was the
long-time Michigan football coach, where Evy
had played, and asked him about Evashevski.
Paul just said, "Well, he'll win for you but
he'll also cause you a lot of problems." And
Brechler figured that well, whatever the
problems might be, he could handle him.
Well, as it turned out, the more Evashevski
won, the more pressure he put on to take
Brechler's job and Evashevski was going to
resign at the end of his contract, that the
working conditions were intolerable and
nobody really quite knew what the intolerable
working conditions were. But the [eyeclub]
shows up and they wanted to fire Brechler and
keep Evashevski happy. Brechler finally
bowed to the pressure and then left to become
the Commission of the Skyline Conference,
which later led to the formation of the
Western Athletic Conference. So at that
time, the Athletic Board told Evashevski that
he could not have both jobs. He could either
have the Athletic Director job or remain as
the football coach. And Evy took the
Athletic Director's job, so he won the battle
but he really lost the war because he was
never happy as the athletic director and he
was only 43 years old when he retired as a
football coach and that certainly was his
strength. He was a great motivator of people
but he was unhappy without coaching. So, he
hired Jerry Burns off of his staff but he
really didn't do much to help Burns and Burns
said later it was his biggest dissolution on
how the rules had changed when Evy got out of
coaching and Burns got into the things that
they had done to recruit good players when
Evy was there no longer or they were against
the rules then. So, Burns eventually got
fired after a bad season in '65. And they
hired - and Iowa had trouble really, having
candidates interested in the job because of
the fact that Evashevski was there and the
guys who might have been good candidates
didn't want to work for somebody that was
going to cause them trouble that way. But
Ray Nagle took the job. He had been at Utah.
And said that he knew the problems and he
came in with his eyes open but he thought
that he could handle Evashevski, too.
So, in the fall of '69 - Evy, by that time, was
doing color commentary on WHO radio with Jim
Zabel. And it gave him the perfect forum for
second-guessing the football coach, which was
really not the best situation. He used to
frustrate the football coach, mainly, and he
really thought he could do a better job than
the coaches were doing. So, one of his
former players was an assistant with Nagle
and through - Gary Growinkle was the name -
through Growinkle, they began to cause some
unrest on the football team with Growinkle
after the season telling the players that if
they would rise up and rebel they could get
rid of Nagle and Evy would come back to
coaching them the next year. There was
several meetings of the players - this was
unbeknownst to just about anybody - but Nagle
found out what was going on, that he was
basically undermining Nagle's position.
Q: Had the players been unhappy with him?
A: Well, I suppose there might have been
some of that. They had a black boycott in
the spring of 1969 and that was part of the
civil right unrest and so on. A lot of those
black players were not allowed back on the
team the following year. They took a vote of
the squad and I think maybe out of 16
players, they took three of them back or
something like that. A lot of them were
pretty good players. I mean, Iowa might have
had a real good team in '69 had that not
happened. But that led to part of the
problems, so there was considerable unrest.
Q: How did you find out about all this?
A: I went out to dinner one night in Des
Moines and ran into a guy that was a good
friend of mine, who also was a good friend of
Nagle's. And he said, "You know, you really
got to dig into that situation, because I
heard they just fired Gary Growinkle for
disloyalty." And he said, "You can't believe
the mess that is going on down there with the
coaches and the players and Evashevski." So
I wrote the story. In fact, that was on a
Saturday night and on Sunday, I got a hold of
Nagle and he would not confirm that Growinkle
had been let go, but I pretty much knew it
was true. I couldn't get a hold of
Evashevski because he was gone to the NCAA
Convention. I couldn't get a hold of
Growinkle either, but I wrote the story that
there had been unrest throughout the fall and
this was kind of a rekindling of what had
been going on and I said that there was a new
undercurrent of problems at Iowa and that
Nagle is going to fire Growinkle from the
football staff but it won't be announced for
another week or two. And I forget what all
the story said, but that was basically it.
Q: How could you confirm that though, with
just the conversations that you had?
A: I think that Nagle probably more or
less told me it was true. I know I didn't go
out on a limb alone without knowing that it
was basically true. But a lot of times, a
guy like that might tell you, well, you can't
quote me on this, but I knew that it was
going to happen. So about a week or ten days
later, the athletic board had a meeting in
which they announced that Growinkle had been
terminated. See, and Nagle's contract was
not extended. His contract was originally
five years and they usually extend a coach's
contract before he goes into the last year
and they didn't do that. So Ray felt his job
was really on the line and Evy was doing
nothing to help him. There was a lot of
reason to believe that Evy would like to get
the job back for that next year. It became
quite complicated because it turned out that
Evy had been talking with Larry Lawrence who
was the football quarterback, a senior. His
father had been on the football staff, but he
quit after the '69 season. Apparently
unhappily, too. It turned out that Growinkle
had a meeting with the players and nobody
knew this at the time, see. And Evy had been
talking with Lawrence about the movement of
mostly the senior players, to go to the
president and tell him how unhappy you are
and that Nagle's got to go and then I'll come
back and coach you in 1970.
One of the blockbuster stories that developed
out of that, was that Lawrence's roommate, Cary
Ruden, went to the football staff. He was on
the football team and he knew this guy, Randy
Wineguard, who was Larry Lawrence's roommate
and Randy Wineguard knew all this stuff had
been going on behind the scenes in December
and January, that Evy had been talking to
Lawrence about leading the revolt, more or
less, or conspiracy, whatever you want to
call it, to have Nagle fired. And he went to
one of the assistant football coaches and the
assistant coach asked him to please write
this out in a statement, which Randy
Wineguard did, spelling out what Evy had done
to try and remove Nagle as the football
coach. And the same friend originally tipped
me off about this story, called me and said,
"You've got to get a hold of that statement!"
He said, "You won't believe what's in
there!" So, it was a hot potato. This had
gone before the athletic board and they knew
what it was, but they didn't want -
Tape One Side Two
Q: Not good PR for the U, huh?
A: So I called around. I called some
pretty good friends that were on the athletic
board and they wouldn't even acknowledge the
fact that anything like this existed. So I
called my friend back and I said, "I can't
get it. This must be an awful good statement
because nobody wants to even talk about it
and how it didn't exist." He said, "Well,
you find a way to get it, because it's out
there and you won't believe - it's dynamite!"
So I called another friend who lived here in
Iowa City and was well-connected with the
football staff and a lot of the coaches. I
knew that he could probably get it where I
couldn't, because they wouldn't - but they
might give it to him, which is what happened.
Q: Can you give me his name?
A: Well, no, I don't think I want to.
I've never told anybody that, but he was a
good friend of all the coaches. And I got a
pretty good idea of how he got it, but anyway
he called me on Sunday morning and said, "I
got it! Boy!" He says, "You're right. That
thing is a blockbuster." And I said, "Well,
start reading." So he started reading and I
said, "Wait a minute! I want to take this
down verbatim." It was the roommate spelling
out just what had been going on between
Evashevski and the football players. To
think that an athletic director was
conspiring with the athletes to have his own
coach fired was - well, it made a great
Monday morning story! It was "Evy conspires
with players to firing his coach" or
something like that.
Everything hit the fan the next day because
Evy denied that this had happened. But I had
quotes in there from other players, Larry Eli
being one, who was a senior from Des Moines
whose eligibility was over, who was also
Larry Lawrence's roommate and more or less
said that this is what happened. He was
confirming the whole story. So the athletic
board really tried to smooth the whole thing
over because they had had this thing for two
or three weeks and done nothing about it.
But they finally called a meeting and they
formed a policy review committee of the
athletic board and they met with both
Evashevski and Nagle and both of them agreed
at the exam that they would settle their
differences and so on and so forth. So
nothing was going to happen.
Toward the beginning of spring football, and
also Nagle was suspended for three months from
recruiting for a violation that had happened
when they let an Illinois high school kid on
the sideline. Everybody was led to believe
that Illinois had turned him in. Well, it
turned out that Illinois had not turned him
in and that apparently it was the Iowa
Athletic Department and Evashevski that had
suspended Nagle for three months in the heart
of his recruiting season. He didn't design
to hurt him but anyway, the cap on the whole
thing was when Evashevski turned in the
football coaches for cheating on their
expense accounts. That went to the State
Auditor and then to the State Attorney
General. Well, it turns out that what they
were doing what he had told them to do in
order for them to get meal money back, or
they bought drinks for other coaches, high
school coaches, when they were out recruiting
so they couldn't put those on the expense
accounts. In order for them to get that kind
of money back they had to pony up the
receipts and so on. They were using a Xerox
copy of the same receipts and Evy had told
them that this is the way you do it, several
years before that. Then, when it became
opportunist, from his standpoint, to get
those guys in trouble he turned them in. He
first went to the president of the university
and he said, "I don't want any part of this,"
and then he turned it over to the state
auditor's office.
Well, that was another
story that really, I think, caused Iowa
people to wonder how far is this thing going
to go, really, before we do something? So,
on a Tuesday afternoon - Monday night the
athletic board met at the president's house
and they agreed to terminate both of them.
They allowed Evashevski to resign and they
were going to fire Nagle. It was delayed
until late Tuesday afternoon because they
couldn't get a hold of Nagle. He was up in
Waterloo recruiting the state's top player at
that time, Jerry Moses, who wound up going to
Iowa State because, I think, of all the
turmoil that was going on in Iowa City. I
remember calling Shirley Nagle at home to see
if Ray was there, and she said, "No, he's in
Waterloo." But she said, "What's going on?"
She said, "He's coming back for an emergency
meeting." And I said, "Well, apparently
something big is going to happen." She said,
"Well, Ray's assistant coach is going to get
fired." She was thinking of the expense
account situation. I said, "No, I think it's
bigger than that. I think both Ray and Evy
are going to get fired." "Oh!" she said,
"Well, if that's true," she said, "Then Ray
and the coaches are going to just tell some
things because that's so unfair! Ray has
never done anything to deserve what is
happening to him!" But that's what they did.
They fired Nagle and Evashevski resigned.
The public outcry was so much in Nagle's
favor that it was almost incredible what,
happened that Nagle, about three days later,
gets his job back. Then Evy had a press
conference within several days after that and
then he left. [Bump Elliott] was hired. In
fact, one of Evy's suggestions was that Bump
Elliott would be the kind of a guy that could
really resolve the differences that developed
between the athletic department and the bands
and the coaches and so on. So, as it turned
out, Bump was really a perfect choice for the
job. What happened was, I hardly saw Evy in
recent years after that, except he was - WHO
brought him back to do the color broadcasts
for Zabel for four years in the late
seventies and eighties. But other than that,
Evy has really been retired in Trotsky,
Michigan and goes to Florida in the
wintertime. He's in his eighties now. He's
just been elected to the College Football
Hall of Fame, which is probably long overdue
but somebody, somewhere, kept him out for a
long time.
Q: Are you and he still -
A: Well, we never were on very good terms.
But we would speak together in the press box
when Iowa played and just acknowledge each
other's presence. I'm sure he felt that I
probably cost him his job and basically, I
think, all I was going to do was report the
facts. The whole set of circumstances there,
of star quarterback being involved, his
father had been on the football staff. The
way the whole set of circumstances developed,
it was hard to imagine a situation like that
and it was very embarrassing for the
University.
Q: Just to clear up a little part of the
story, now when you were on the phone to
Shirley Nagle she was saying that there are
some things that they could say about the
athletic director.
A: Yes, and I think the expense accounts.
I think that argument spelled out, but
anyway, she said that they're not going to
take this sitting down. I just think that
she felt that her husband had been horribly
mistreated and in a way, he was. I mean, one
time I was in his office and he said, "You
know, there is a lot of ways to destroy an
Iowa football team." And he threw me over
this memo and the memo was to all the
football players saying that they could no
longer park next to Kinnick Stadium for their
practice facilities and that parking places
were being provided over by the south quad,
which might be Reno Hall, which was way over
by the quad. But anyway, that was a good
distance away from the football stadium where
those guys would be dressing. Then a memo
came down that the assistant football coaches
could no longer eat at the training table.
Ray said, "You know, I mean these guys - they
enjoy the camaraderie with the players and
eating at the training table. That's when I
remember him specifically saying there are
many ways to destroy the moral of a football
team and here's a couple of them. So anyway,
it was those kind of things that were
undercurrent that were going on. It's one
reason that Iowa had seventeen or nineteen
consecutive non-winning seasons. The program
was in shambles and by the following year,
Nagle's team did not do very well. And by
1973, when Lauderbird came in, they didn't
win a game, their whole eleven. I mean, just
the whole thing had unraveled from where it
was in the fifties.
Q: Then talk about the connection to Joe
Rosenfield?
A: Well, he was a good friend of
Evashevski. That was one of my concerns.
Evy did not really have many close friends
but he had very well-placed friends in high
positions. There was Howard Hall in Cedar
Rapids was a very wealthy individual, Iowa
Manufacturing, I think. George Margoles in
Davenport. George Forrester in Amana. And
Joe Rosenfield - they played bridge together
and they were very close as young associates
of Evashevski, very close friends. So when I
got this story on Sunday, it was going to
spell out just exactly what a turncoat
situation was involved in, that I could see
somebody like Rosenfield, who just died
within the last several weeks - he was 95,
but I could just see where he might say to
his friendship with Evashevski, well,
Younkers will just pull out ads. I didn't
know.
Q: What was his position at Younkers?
A: He was the president. He was the head
of the company. And they were the biggest
advertiser, by far. I mean, they ran page
after page of ads. So I called the managing
editor and told him the story that I had. I
just wanted to make sure I was going to be
backed up on the story, because it would be a
possibility that some big advertiser - and I
mentioned Younkers - might pull their ads in
support of Evashevski. And he said, "Well, I
wouldn't worry about that." He said,
"Because Younkers tried that several years
ago and they lost so much business that they
were back in the paper within two or three
weeks." So that gave me the reassurance
anyway that the paper would be behind me.
You never know. I just questioned whether
something like that would happen today, if a
reporter had something that the biggest
advertiser might pull all their ads - I don't
know how the management would go along with
that anymore.
Q: But all you can do is speculate.
A: Right. The bottom line is so important
for not just newspapers, but all these
gigantic corporations and then newspapers
would become pretty much in that category
too, because they all want to gross to their
shareholders and more money and the paper
becomes more of a shopper than journalism as
we know it, so I think money has a lot to say
anymore. --
Section 8:
Q: Who was that managing editor you talked
to?
A: Ed Hines, who later lost his job not
necessarily, I guess, because of a guild
fight. They were trying to form the
newspaper guild and there were two close
votes and I think the executive at the
Register blamed Hines for the unrest among
the staff people who thought they should be
getting more money. So that was when Michael
Gartner came in to become the executive
editor and Hines was done within about nine
months of that.
