Section 1:
Q: This was the second time when they
tried to organize, wasn't it? I think, back
in the early sixties, they tried to get the
guild in, too.
A: I don't know about the early sixties.
I don't remember that. I think I would have,
but I think it might have been the late
sixties and early seventies. And there were
two votes. I would imagine, that one of them
- they were decided in the neighborhood of
four to eight votes or two to six votes. It
was pretty tight. I think that's when they
felt this was getting too close for comfort.
Slim MacDonald - I don't know whether
MacDonald has said much about this, but he
called Gartner and Gartner, at that time, was
the page one editor of the Wall Street
Journal. He was really in line for big
things there. He didn't really want to be
the managing editor of the Register. His
father had worked at the Register for years -
Mike grew up in our sports department. I
know him real well. But his father had been
the editor of the picture magazine, Carl
Gartner. So Mike wasn't interested in coming
back as managing editor, but I remember,
according to what he told me, was that Slim
MacDonald called him several weeks later and
said, "Well, how would it be if you came back
and took my job?" And Mike said, "Well, that
didn't make a big difference."
So Mike eventually took the job but they were
unfair to Hines in that whole situation
because the first day Mike came to work, he
went into see Hines, who was still the
managing editor, and Hines didn't quite see
the threat that Gartner was going to be,
although Gartner knew he was the honcho and
that he was coming in as the head honcho.
And Hines said, "If you think you're coming
back here to take my job, you've got another
think coming." Well, Gartner was coming back
as the head of the whole operation and that
kind of left Hines out there to dry there for
some time before they finally, I guess, gave
him some kind of a severance deal. He left
very unhappily.
Q: And the contention was that Hines had
stirred up the -
A: No, no - It was, I think, the general
feeling that he didn't keep the salary up
maybe where it should be or he didn't keep
the photographers happy. The photographers
were the main ones behind these guild fights.
And they would get the other reporters to go
along with them and I think they felt that he
could have done more to keep everybody happy
than he did. I know after Gartner got there,
within the first few months or year,
everybody got sizable raises. I suppose,
during that period we were underpaid, you
know. I mean, the raises had not been -
although I never really had much of a beef
with that. But others felt we should have
been making a lot more money than we did. So
that was really the reason behind the guild
fight.
Q: Was it all about pay? Or was there
working conditions?
A: I never thought the working conditions
were there. I think travel expenses. We
were still weren't getting much for mileage.
That's what the photographers wanted, I
think, we were getting seven cents on the
road and nine cents in town when others were
up to twenty cents by that time, for mileage.
So the photographers - that was one of their
gripes, the mileage and the pay. It doesn't
take much to get a newspaper guy to get
unhappy.
Q: There was a lot of traveling going on,
too.
A: Sure. It was a situation where they
felt that Hines could have done more, done a
better job of keeping everybody happy. I'm
sure that's what the main reason was and I
think he was probably trying to keep the
expenses down, thinking he was keeping the
bosses happy. But he wasn't. --
Section 2:
Q: To cite this Younkers concern that you
had when you called the managing editor,
Hines, on that Sunday night. Was there ever
another time where you were concerned about
something you had written that might have
offended advertisers?
A: No, not that I can recall. I mean,
nothing - in sports, you don't really write
that many stories that are offensive as such.
I mean, the news side might get involved
more in the political stuff. But this was
the only situation I can recall where - I've
had some dubious situations where my life has
been threatened, which was kind of unusual
for a sports writer, too. I covered a city
golf tournament in which a guy who had been a
former Des Moines city golf champion, Florian
Depagula. He was a big gambler. He gambled
too much and he was so deeply in debt that
through friends in the Mafia or the Mob or
whatever you want to call it, they set him up
to rob a house in New Jersey where they were
sure the people were gone and that he could
get - I don't know how much jewelry and
everything else to pay off his debts. So he
took some other guy with him and went out
there to rob this house. The lady,
unbeknownst to them, was inside talking on
the telephone when they broke the window to
get into the house. And she realized right
away what was happening and told the person
to call the police! "I'm getting
burglarized!" It was a matter of two minutes
the police were there. Florian, who had a
pistol on him, pointed the pistol at the
police officer and pulled the trigger and the
gun didn't go off. So he was in a world of
hurt. They captured him and put him in jail
and he went to trial and eventually he got
sentenced to the New Jersey State Pen for - I
don't really know - five or ten years. He
was out on appeal and he came back to Des
Moines and while he was on appeal, he was
going to play in the city gold tournament
again, which he just won four or five years
before.
So I pointed this stuff out in the
story in advance of the city tournament. The
day the tournament started, one of the
competitors was a convicted felon and was out
of the New Jersey State Penitentiary on
appeal, and blah, blah, blah. So that night,
my phone rang at about ten o'clock at night
and my wife answered the phone downstairs and
I was upstairs and she says, "It's for you."
And I said, "Okay." So I picked it up and
this voice said, "Turnbull," He said, "What
do you have against Italians?" And I said,
"Well nothing. What do you mean?" "Well,"
he says, "That story you wrote about Florian
Depagula this morning." He said, "If that
was a Jew or a Protestant, you never would
have written what you did." And I said,
"Hey! I'm just telling the facts. This
happened to a guy that's back here on appeal
and he's playing in the city tournament. He
won the championship before." And this guy
says, "I just want to tell you, if I ever see
you downtown on the street at night, alone,
I'm going to break every bone in your body."
And he hangs up. My wife is still on the
phone downstairs and she gets petrified.
Well, anyway, nothing ever happened, but I
talked to Florian the next day and I was
convinced that he didn't do that. In fact,
we had a long talk that afternoon about what
life was like in the penitentiary and how he
was convinced if he went back that he would
not come home alive, because he said, "They
just kill everybody. They kill one person a
day in there." He was probably grossly
exaggerating, but anyway, eventually he did
get out. I think maybe some money changed
hands or something, but he got out. Now I
think he's moved to California. But he was
fairly well known in the Iowa golf circuit.
He won the State Masters Tournament. He was
a good player. I always admired the fact
that he didn't take up golf until he was 28
years old and yet he became good. Guys that
take up golf at that age usually don't get
any good.
Q: That must have put a world of hurt - I
mean, scaring you.
A: Yes, I suppose it did. Actually, after
the tournament, I never really thought much
more about it. But I covered the state
amateur tournament later on - I can't
remember - that might have been before this
all happened, though, where bullets began
flying across one the fairways and just
happened to be a group that Florian was
playing with. Nobody ever did explain
adequately, what happened but they tried to
say later some kids were playing with target
pistols or something in a cornfield. I mean,
but it was always suspicious of why that
happened to a group that Depagula happened to
be playing in. --
Section 3:
A: I got one other story about where your
life might be threatened, although I didn't
even know this at the time. But when I was
covering the hockey team - do we have time
for this?
Q: Yes, please.
A: I was covering the hockey team and
after the game, I'd write one story for the
Register and one story for the afternoon
Tribune, then a story for the afternoon paper
of the team that Des Moines played, like in
Fort Wayne or Columbus or Toledo. And take
it to Western Union about 2 - 2:30 in the
morning and drop it off and then go on home.
I got to know the night guy at Western Union
fairly well. His name was Jim. He was a
farmer out east of Des Moines and about
fifteen miles or so. But he worked nights to
supplement his income, so Jim and I sometimes
would stand there for 15-20 minutes, a half
hour, just chewing the fat and then I would
go on home. This one particular night, I was
tired and I knew if I stopped to talk to Jim,
I wouldn't get out of there for a half -hour.
So I told myself I was just going to drop
the story off and leave. So I pulled up in
front of Western Union and I went inside and
I said, "Okay, Jim, here's the story. I'm in
a hurry." And he's going like this
[gesturing], almost like he's got
[inaudible]. And he's trying to tell me to
get out of there and I didn't really
understand what he was doing. And I said,
"Okay, Jim. Here's the story. I'll see you
later on." And I went out, got in my car and
went home. Well, the next morning, I turn on
the radio and the news comes on and says that
the holdup was interrupted by Buck Turnbull
of the Des Moines Register, who came in the
office. Well, it turns out that a guy was
robbing the Western Union office. He was
behind the pole, the pillar. Jim was afraid
and rightfully so. I guess a lot had gone on
when I started to him. This guy was so
nervous - it might have been his first hold
up or something - but he was afraid he would
have shot us both. That was a story I didn't
even know at the time, but anyway, that's
what happened.
Q: That's quite a capper. [laughter]
After the press that you got, were you ever
concerned to the point where you might change
the way you write a story? You know, if you
were dealing with somebody like that? In
this case, you were just doing background, I
guess.
A: No. I never felt that way. One of the
hockey players threatened to assault me on
the road one night for something that I had
done. I forget what that story was about,
too. But nothing ever came of it. I don't
think I was ever in too many situations other
than that one, where Bud Cooler has
prevailed. But when you get with the
high-strung athletics and so on, I mean,
they're liable to - especially the hockey
players. Some of those guys are really great
to deal with and hockey is a great sport.
But by the very nature of the game, those
guys can be cruel, too. But I greatly
enjoyed covering that sport.
Q: Was there ever a time you might steer
yourself away from one hockey player because
of his reputation and go to somebody else for
the interview?
A: No, not really, I guess. There are
certain guys on teams and not just in hockey,
that are really good quotes and you know it.
That's why a lot of guys become quoted more
often than others, because they're outgoing,
they're loquacious, they just say stuff that
make good quotes. I guess in that way, you
might have favorites because you know you're
going to get a better story from one than
another. --
Section 4:
Q: Tell me about your participation on the
Register's Ethics Committee when you were
setting policy with that?
A: That was the outgrowth of Watergate and
Nixon. I think newspapers all over the
country were doing some soul-searching back
in the middle seventies about are we doing
things that are unethical ourselves and yet
we're pointing fingers at these people for
doing things that we think are wrong and yet
maybe we're doing the same sorts of things.
I think that in some cases that was true.
But these things grew over a period of time.
The perks that the guys get, the sports
writers, for example. The press box lunches
and the press parties and things like that,
free tickets. More so in sports than
anywhere else. So I was one of six members
of the staff; one photographer and several
reporters and several editors and myself and
we were charged with writing ethics code that
the paper and people could live with. I felt
it was in some ways too strict because it
almost invited violations. In other words,
if went to cover an Iowa football game and
you had a sandwich in the press box before
the game, you were supposed to keep track of
what you ate and what you drank and send them
a check the next week for that. I told them
that I thought that was really carrying
things too far.
What we finally settled on was
sending Iowa and Iowa State and Drake a
check for $1,000 at the beginning of each
football season, at the beginning of the
school year, and then if we went to a press
party or if we had lunch in the press box. A
lot of those things are mainly a service for
the people. If you have to get lunch in Iowa
City on a football Saturday, it's maybe going
to be kind of tough, whereas if its there in
the press box, it's a service for the media
that's covering the games. So anyway, that's
what they did and I think they are still
doing that. It may be too much or it may not
be enough. But it prevents you from going to
a press party which they don't have as much
anymore on football Friday nights. But you
didn't have to keep counting your drinks or
somebody saying, "Hey, this reporter only had
one drink last week and you're having three,"
or something. It just removed all that, you
know, because you don't really need that.
Some of the stuff in the code like even as
far as taking a free cup of coffee at a
school board meeting. They thought you
should leave money for the coffee. My point
was if you felt that that was going to
influence what you were doing, then you
shouldn't take the cup of coffee, but don't
insult somebody by leaving money. One time
the sports information director at Nebraska,
one of the guys had been in the press booth
and when it first started, the policy that
was later rescinded, but one of our guys
signed a check for $25.00 because he had been
to the press party and so on. And he said,
"I don't know what to do with the check."
Anyway, I guess you might say it was an
over-reaction to our situation, but the
policy, I think, really has never been
changed. Back in the old days, sports
casters might get the - I remember the Kansas
City Star was the Chiefs to the Royals game
on the TV set for Christmas. That was not
uncommon. Or the auto race promoter, when I
first started working there, would give
everybody a bottle of booze for Christmas.
One guy gave me a set of steak knives and
free tickets. Whenever you wanted tickets to
whatever event it was. And Iowa had a policy
here - I mean, I got two football tickets.
Ron Maly did. Morrie White did and Gus
Schrader did. In fact, the legislators -
they had probably had a list of 300-400
people or more that got free football
tickets. And as an outgrowth of that, we had
to not accept them anymore. They began
buying and paying for the tickets, which is
fine. They all went into the department and
whoever wanted to go could use the tickets.
Anyway, a lot of that was the outgrowth of
the Watergate years when they had cause for
self soul-searching.
Q: Prior to the formation of that
committee, was it ever an issue where
somebody was alleging difference when they
were taking a bottle of champagne or
something?
A: No, I just kind of think it was a way
of doing business, you know. It never really
involved much. It wasn't like a thousand
dollars changing hands to influence a story
or anything like that. As I said, in the
early years before I hardly even got into it,
the newspaper guys were not paid that much.
So they would supplement their income by
being maybe a publicity guy for the auto
races. Or back when I started covering the
hockey team, I was also the official scorer,
which eventually became outlawed, too. The
official scorer for the baseball game, Bill
Bryson, did that for years. In fact,
newspaper people all over the country, the
sports writers, were the official scorers
being paid by the baseball teams. It was a
side income, but I guess you could say it was
a conflict of interest. There aren't many
papers any more that allow that situation to
happen. --
Section 5:
Q: Switching gears here a little bit, take
me back to what the newsroom looked like, the
newsroom configuration back at the time fifty
years ago when you joined. Where were
things, in terms of the rim, copy desk?
A: We had three copy desks, one for the
sports department, one for the Tribune, which
was in the middle of the newsroom, which was
the afternoon paper. And then at the north
end, a big copy desk for the Register.
Beyond that were the artists. We had about
nine or ten artists that did the pictures.
They worked on the pictures and the photo
department was back in that area, too.
Q: The offices winded the wall, is that
it?
A: The managing editor and the editors
were on the wall behind the copy desk over
here and the reporters were all down there.
The sports department was back here and the
library was back at the south end of the
[division]. All the stories were clipped in
those days and the photo files were
extensive. They still are, but the paper is
no longer clipped as it used to be. That
quit in about 1983. Now, everything goes on
microfiche and microfilm. It's much more of
a chore to go through the microfiche trying
to find something, than just going back and
looking up somebody's name in an envelope.
The old storage - at least I found it to be
much easier when they clipped the paper than
now, where everything is on microfiche.
Q: They had a person full-time, back
there, clipping out the stories?
A: They still have people in the library
there, that are full time. They're doing
those tasks and identifying the pictures and
making sure that they get in the proper
envelopes and things like that. But the
clipping of the paper, if a guy really wants
to do that, you got to do it yourself because
between modern technology, that's the deal.
Clipping the paper is no longer used. But it
is so much easier to take out a few
clippings. A lot of guys kept their own
little clip file because it was so much
faster to have that right in front of you
when you're maybe re-doing something that you
need some background information on.
Q: Okay, we're talking a little bit about
the research of the story itself. As for the
Evashevski stories, was it you that was
gathering all this information or did you
have other people verifying sources?
A: It was mainly my story. That was
really the way it went. If you had a story,
especially something like that. That
involved so much inside information and
really, the other papers in Cedar Rapids and
Iowa City - nobody really wanted to handle it
much. It was kind of a delicate situation.
I got so far ahead on that story that it was
basically my baby all the way through. Other
than Morrie White writing a column or two
about the situation, almost all the news
stories were mine.
Q: Then with the other papers, how were
they picking it up? Were they reading what
would write?
A: Well, yes, and the AP would re-do it in
Des Moines and it would come out that way.
There won't be many stories like that
developed, really, that were sensitive and
involving very highly publicized individuals.
Winding up with the state auditor and the
state attorney general and the attorney
general's statement at the end of that whole
deal, castigated Evashevski for what he had
done. The jury would not believe what he had
said. I don't believe what he said and I'm
convinced a jury would not. He did a
terrible disservice to the people of Iowa,
many of whom have worshipped him. It was
really a stinging indictment of what had gone
on. This is in my book, From the Press Box,
Chapter 9, and the Evashevski-Nagle deal is
interesting, very enlightening. It's the
best chapter in the book, by far.
Q: Again, back to the old newsroom. There
was also this pneumatic tube that sent the
stories down. What was the process there?
That went from the reporter to the copy desk?
A: Yes, a guy would hand in his story and
the slot man would look at it first and pass
it up, put it on the hook, for one guy. He
might say he wants the 2-24, which is
2-column, 24 point type headline, or a
4-head, which is one-column headline. He'd
mark on it what he wanted and the editor
would go through it for content and maybe
shorten it, maybe add some explanation,
whatever, and write the headline. Then it
goes back in the basket and the slot man
would look at it for final approval, wrap it
up, and send it down the pneumatic tube.
That's when it would go to the copy cutter
and from there to the linotype operators and
from there to the printers and the
proofreaders, then into the page. But it's
amazing in my time what the technological
changes to where the hot-type and line-a-type
operators just became extinct and how a shop
compendium was so noisy with the machines
cluttering and so on and so forth and how
sound became, when the cold type came in - it
was just night and day, almost. Then the
printers had to learn their new skills of
pasting the stories into a page as opposed to
putting the type in there. There were some
disadvantages to a high-speed operation
because it used to be you could just sort of
- one line of type in there, or put a
paragraph in there. Well, this involved
dealing with the cold type, just in putting
the strips in there. It was much different.
Q: Then again, you could hear the machines
running - I mean, how many floors up were
you?
A: I don't know, but when you're down
there - you might go down at 10:30 to make up
the page. It was just clatter, clatter,
clatter, and just the noise of the whole
composing room and how it changed when the
line of top typewriters went out. It was
just machines just cranking out the stories
out of a basically silent machine, almost.
Q: Forgive my ignorance here, but I got
the impression that when you were on the copy
desk, now why was it that you would end up
going downstairs - you'd be laying out the
page downstairs, didn't you?
A: Yes, but what I'm talking about, the
slot man. Sometimes I would be in the slot,
too. So the slot man basically would be - in
fact, the pre-date guy, the earlier man would
come in and go down there to re-do the
Tribune pages for a paper that would go out
to different sections of the state and you'd
have to make up the page down there and put
in some of the afternoon baseball.
Q: This is where the presses were?
A: The presses would be another level or
two down. This was just mainly a composing
room. On the news side, they would have a
regular - not the news editor, but a man who
would go down and basically put almost all
the pages together. He'd be going back and
forth. And the sports department, basically
the slot man would go about oh, maybe with
twenty minutes to go, just to make sure and
wait for last-minute things. But the hour
between 9:30 and 10:30 was so critical in
sports. That's why the second edition
really, by the time it was 11:00 we would
have a pretty good edition to go out into the
state room.
Q: What kind of work was that? Did you
enjoy it going down there and laying out the
page under that pressure?
A: Yes. Sometimes it could get stressful,
especially on basketball nights when so much
was happening all at once. But I always felt
by the time we were done at a quarter till
11:00 or ten minutes to 11:00, four fifths of
the basketball scores in the state would be
in the paper. As I said, there was a certain
amount of satisfaction to know that you were
giving the people a pretty good product. --
Section 6:
Q: And also in those early days in the
newsroom were there many women and
minorities?
A: No. When I first started it was odd
for the women to be a reporter or even on the
copy desk other than in the women's
department. You know, like where Mary Bryson
would be and the society, those people mainly
on the women's page. The food column and the
weddings and all that kind of stuff.
Q: Okay, there was Mary Bryson on the
society page, you said.
A: Well, there were probably only two or
three reporters who I can recall. Florence
Flyhart, Louie Mako and maybe Julie Delanta,
but they were out of a staff of several
hundred people or something like that. The
women were greatly a minority. It just
wasn't a field that too many - well, there
weren't too many women going into journalism
at that time, it didn't seem to me, anyway.
Q: How about African Americans or
Hispanics?
A: No, I would say probably in the fifties
or sixties there would be almost zero. The
opportunities for African Americans were just
not there and there was no work - not just in
the newspaper business, but in athletics.
Probably one of the biggest changes in my
years, outside of television which really
changed the whole landscape of the world of
sports, the black athletics did not really
come into being very common until probably
the middle sixties and even into the 1960s,
there were some colleges that would refuse to
play against teams that had black players. I
know one stretch in there where Mississippi
State refused to go to the NCAA tournament in
the early 1960s because there were teams that
had black players. It's almost unthinkable
now, but that's not that far back. The
University of Kentucky didn't have any black
athletics until well into the 1960s. So
that's why a lot of the good black athletics
would come up from the south. Iowa State
became pretty good in football because they
were recruiting a lot of black players out of
Florida and now, all the schools across the
south are just loaded with a calendar of
black athletics. So it wasn't just in the
newsrooms. The opportunities were just not
there for the blacks. Now, a black talented
person can almost write his own ticket,
really. I mean, just got to find them to get
diversity. It will all come in time.
Education, that's a start there, with
education. --
Section 7:
Q: You were also right there in the thick
of things when women's athletics was
developing.
A: That would probably be, outside of TV,
which as I say changed so many things not
just in sports. And then, the emergence of
the black athletic in the fifties and
sixties. Women's athletics really began to
take off, a lot due to Title IX. I always
thought it was strange in Iowa that girls'
high school programs were so strong, in
basketball originally, but then softball and
volleyball. Yet, once a girl got to college,
I mean, there was little emphasis on women's
sports and certainly they didn't have much
revenue at all. So through Title IX, at
least it opened the doors. I think most of
the colleges still are in violation of the
Title IX guidelines because football has so
many starship players that it's hard to
balance that up with the women's sports.
But, women's basketball has just mushroomed
now. In some cases, it's just as popular or
more popular on a lot of campuses as the
men's team is. Iowa State had a good women's
team last year and I think it began to take
away a little bit from the ticket sales at
the men's games because the tickets were less
expensive. A guy and his wife could take the
kids and not spend a fortune, so their
attendance really grew last year and then the
men's - it probably cost the men's some
ticket sales. But the growth has just been
explosive in the last ten years.
Q: There has also been feelings, I guess
in the culture - I don't know when and where
- but women's athletics have not been, of
course, what they say, up to par with men's
athletics. Was there ever any resistance
from people on the sports desk, to covering
women's athletics as it grew and became more
and more popular?
A: I suppose. A guy would rather cover an
Iowa football game or an Iowa basketball game
as opposed to being the guy that covers the
Iowa women's basketball game, I suppose. In
my years there - in fact, I was criticized in
my book, From the Press Box, was reviewed by
a guy in Maryland on the Internet. I don't
know how he got it. It was a very favorable
review, except he said I should have pointed
out, since I won four First Place AP Writing
Awards which stories might have been included
in the book. He would have liked to have
known that. And also, that I did not have
anything on women's athletics other than a
story that I had on Patty Berg. But the
answer was that I had not ever covered
women's athletics. I covered some girls high
school basketball in the late fifties and
early sixties. But other than some state
women's golf tournaments maybe, but they
weren't promising stories or anything like
that. It was just not something that I
covered. In looking back in the Register's
Hall of Fame, several years ago, they were
going back ten years ago and there were not
many women who were in the Hall of Fame. But
it was difficult to find women who would
belong in the Hall of Fame that met the
guidelines of earning their fame not only in
Iowa, but outside of Iowa. They made some
inroads and there are more women in there
now, but it's still a short list.
Q: I think Don Cawley helped to call
attention to high school girls basketball.
A: That's become part of his schtick now.
Once he finds out that he can touch a few
nerves there, why he'll keep on doing it.
Q: What was your impression when you were
covering girls basketball back then? Because
it was unique to Iowa.
A: Oh, I enjoyed it. And I enjoyed the
six-player games. I think really, the
general reason for doing away with that was
that the six-player game restricted the girls
to either offense or defense and didn't let
them develop their game that would then lead
to college scholarships. And there was a
resistance to going to five-player games but
I think they've done the right thing. It's
just a matter of time, again. But there are
a lot of people in small towns who just love
the six-player game. It was the unique game
and the tournament would sell out. There
were some years that I'd draw the boys and
the girls, Sweet Sixteen. Now they've gone
to classes and it's not nearly as much of a
spectator spectacle as they used to be. --
Section 8:
Q: Getting on to another subject here, a
real personality that has come up in a lot of
my interviews is Frank Eyerly. Talk a little
bit about Frank Eyerly, your impressions of
him and your relationship with him and how it
was to work with him.
A: Well, he was a hard-nosed guy. But he
was certainly a good newspaperman. He did
not suffer a fool's mistake- you know, he was
very strict in the way he thought a paper
ought to be run and the stories that should
be developed and he was, as I say, a
hard-nosed newsman. But the one thing that
was kind of fortunate in a way about the guys
in the sports department, Frank didn't care
much about sports. He knew its value to
selling a newspaper. Yet he was much more
interested in the art center or the opera or
putting out a good newspaper and not so much
with what the Cubs did the day before. His
wife was a Notre Dame fan though, so Frank
kind of paid attention to that. So
consequently, he never really meddled around
much in the sports department. I can't
really think of many situations where I or
any of the other guys came to too much
criticism. Riley Haush would have to meet
with him a time or two every week, and if
there was any tuning up to be done, why Haush
was the whipping boy. The thing I liked
about Frank, though, is that he knew the
value of the sports page: that the guy on the
street, in the coffee shops, a lot of them,
that was the one section that they read. So
Frank had certainly a great appreciation for
what the sports department did for the paper.
But he, himself, didn't enter into much
direct contact with the writers or the
editors. And yet, a lot of editors who don't
like sports would not have been as
supportive. But he did nothing to certainly
hinder the sports department. He knew the
value of the sports page.
Q: Any other personalities that you can
think of, that stand out in your mind? Were
there a lot of notable people there? Great
writers? Great reporters?
A: It seemed like there were a lot of
them. Frank Miller, the cartoonist, was
certainly exceptional.
Q: Did you know him well?
A: Sure. Yes. Lefty Millison is still
alive. He has an amazing retention and
amazing knowledge and he's still writing and
he's in his nineties. Of course, Carl
Gardner is 95 or 97. Oh, Tony Ferdaro and
Bert LaGrain and Jack. All those guys were,
in their own way, colorful characters. As I
say, the sports department section went back
to the 19-teens and he was a member of the
board of directors of the paper when I got
there.
Q: Did you know him well?
A: Yes, sure. There was much more of a
closeness maybe back then than there is now.
The department was like 13 or 15 people and
now it's bigger but it's not, I don't think,
as much of a personal touch as there was
then. Other characters. --
Section 9:
Q: Maybe some of the ones that you
socialized with, outside work, that you were
close to.
A: I don't know whether they are
characters as such, but they were such very
busy men. I don't know who had the
restaurant in Des Moines, was the character -
we always ate lunch there. I could tell a
thousand stories about him.
Q: Was he ever a source for you?
A: Yes. Right off hand, I can't think of
anything, but I know he was just a fun guy
for us to be around. He always thought the
sports writers were real cheap, you know. He
enjoyed entertaining us guys at lunch and he
was a pretty big ham. A guy like Pinkie
George, who was a promoter, fight promoter,
when he was an auto racing promoter and that
kind of stuff. When you're bantering back
and forth with those guys who would come up
and enjoy hanging around the newsroom.
That's just non-existent, I think, anymore.
Q: I wonder why that is.
A: I don't know. The whole nature of the
game has changed, I guess. One reason the
whole nature of the game has changed between
coaches and writers is money. The coaches
are making a million dollars a year now and
there's not the same camaraderie as there was
when I started out. There is much more of an
adversarial situation between writers and the
coaches and the athletes. It's almost "us"
against "them" where when I started out, it
would not be unusual the night before a
football game, certainly a football game, for
the coaches to meet with the writers at a
press party. Those gradually diminished over
time, too. But it wasn't unusual to play
cards with some of the basketball coaches on
the road the night before a game. There just
isn't the same friendship and trust, I guess,
as there was, which a lot of times led to
good stories. Now, a lot of times, the
writer will have trouble getting a coach to
return his phone calls.
Q: There were still the times, though,
that you would write as a journalist. I
mean, you wrote the truth and you still would
maintain these relationships with these
sources. What has changed?
A: I think it's the adversarial approach
that the coaches are not too trusting of a
writer, to really take him into his
confidence and not feel that he might be
betrayed. So, I'm not saying that that's
bad. You probably should not get too close
with your sources. But it was almost a
matter of fact that the coaches and writers
were quite friendly. Not with every coach
because some of them were difficult to deal
with, but with many coaches. I mean, I felt
that most of the football coaches that I've
known at Iowa State and Iowa both, I became
reasonably good friends with at least to the
point that they would return my phone calls
and not be mad at me. There were a few
times. I didn't get along with Ralph Miller
too well, who was the Iowa basketball coach.
A guy really has to be careful about what
coaches tell you, because they're not above
misleading you or telling you something that
they didn't want you to know, if they don't
want you to know, they can lie to you and you
really have to be careful. I was going to an
Iowa basketball game back in about '67 or '68
when Ralph was the Iowa basketball coach and
he had a player named Houston Greedlove, who
was kind of a fragile personality and Ralph
had to be careful in dealing with him and
certainly he didn't want any bad publicity
about him. And Greedlove apparently had
broken up with his girlfriend the day before
Iowa played at Northwestern, or the night
before. And he got so infuriated that he
began punching his dormitory windows and
breaking the windows and just flashing his
hand. He was the starting center on the
basketball team. We heard about it through
our campus correspondent, who called the
office and I was already in Evanston. So
Ralph didn't really want anything said about
it. Because I confronted him at the hotel, I
said, "We've got a report that Greedlove hurt
his hand." "Oh!" Ralph said, "He's just got
a little cut on one knuckle." He said,
"There's no problems. He's going to play."
So, I thought that that was about all there
was to it. And the story was that he had
fallen through his dormitory window. So, I
reported that. Ralph said, "Don't make any
big deal out of that." Well, the guy being
the starting center and the fact that he was
hurt was our banner story on Saturday
morning. "Breedlove hurt; will play." So
when they came out to warm up before the
game, he had both hands bandaged. He had 46
stitches in his hands. So I became a little
upset about the fact that the guy had not
only mislead me, hell, he lied to me. So on
Sunday, it was always a matter of calling the
coach and getting some [spolup] stuff. So I
was talking to Ralph on the phone and finally
he says, "Well, you had to do it, didn't
you?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said,
"Well, you had to make big headlines out of
Greedlove." I said, "Ralph, he had forty-six
stitches in his hand." "I didn't tell you he
had forty-six stitches." "I know you didn't
tell me, but he did. He had both hands
bandaged and he is your starting center."
"Well," he said, "I'm not going to deal with
you anymore." So, the next week, I had to
cover another Iowa basketball game and I
called the morning, the day before the game,
and he came on the phone as though nothing
had ever happened and nothing was ever
mentioned again.
But that's why I say, I guess I
told you earlier, that when Eddie
Anderson was the football coach, I learned
early on that coaches are not above lying to
you, even when you think that you know them
pretty well, and are a pretty good friendly
basis with them. But Iowa's DeKemp was
correspondent for the AP in 1949. It was
after the football season and the AP sports
editor had called me from Des Moines to say
there was a report from Wooster,
Massachusetts, that Ed Anderson was going to
become the football coach at Holy Cross,
which is where he had coached previously
before he came to Iowa in '39. So he said,
"Get a hold of him and find out what's going
on." This was a Saturday afternoon and I had
a prom date that night and I called Eddie's
house and there was no answer. And I
thought, "Oh, brother!" I mean, this was
about five o'clock in the afternoon and I got
to try and get this story done and pick up my
date at seven o'clock. So, I walked over
toward Racine's Cigar Store, which is not
there anymore but it was on the corner of
Dubuque and Washington Street. That was kind
of a hangout in those days. They had a big
board in there with all the college football
scores from Saturday afternoon. And just as
I'm going in the back door, out comes Eddie
with one of his friends. And I thought,
"Boy, how lucky I am here." So I told that
AP had just called and there is a report that
he's going to take the Holy Cross football
job. "Oh, those are rumors!" he said. "I
wouldn't believe those. You hear all kinds
of rumors this time of year." And, "I'm the
Iowa football coach." Blah, blah, blah. So
I went back to the [inaudible] office where
the AP was and put out the story that Eddie
had said there was nothing to it. Its just
rumors. And I remember, the next morning,
the Register ran the two stories side by
side, one saying he is going to Holy Cross
and Eddie, from my story, saying "It's all
rumors. I'm the Iowa football coach. You'll
hear all kinds of rumors this time of the
year, but don't believe them, blah, blah."
And on Monday, he takes the Holy Cross job.
Ike Skelly was the AP sports editor and he
never forgave Eddie for that because he just
felt betrayed. And I did, too. I mean, he
could have said something other than almost
outright denying what had already been done.
That always made me think twice about - and
it's amazing - you still get sucked in by
something like what Ralph Miller did. And
it's amazing how often you were lied to and
yet, whoever was doing the lying knows its
going to come out within 24 hours. I mean,
why don't they - I've read several situations
like that. It's just to be an outright lie
and then another instance happened when Drake
had a basketball coach named Howard Stacy.
He was not too popular. He replaced Morey
John, who was a very popular basketball
coach, took Drake to the final four in 1969
and left to go to Iowa State several years
later. Stacy had been interim coach at
Louisville and when the Drake head job became
open, he took the Drake job. But he was
never very popular in Des Moines. In about 3
or 4 years, the boosters didn't really like
him. So one of my friends called me on a
Sunday morning to say that Stacy's out. I
said, "Really!" Because that was a surprise.
Nobody really thought that he was going to
be let go. So I called Bob Carnes, who was
the Drake athletic director and there was no
answer. And I tried calling Stacy and got no
answer. And I called Nick Deetle, Drake SID,
Sports Information Director. And Deetle said,
"Boy, I don't know where you got that from.
That's strange to me." I said, "Well, I'm
going to keep pursuing it." So I called
Carnes, who was the athletic director. And
Carnes says, "Why, that's news to me. I just
gave him a new contract two weeks ago." And
I thought, "Wow!" Something doesn't add up
here. "But, Bob," I said, "If you tell me
that, then I guess I'll have to accept it. I
just don't know what to believe." Because
what had happened was that Carnes' wife at
church that morning had told real good
friends of mine and boosters of Drake that
Stacy was being fired. So, one of the
friends called me right away so it really
came from Carnes' wife and here Carnes is
denying the whole deal. So I stewed about -
I mean, something's wrong here. And I didn't
know quite what I was going to do, but Carnes
didn't know what I was going to do, either.
Because it was true. Stacy had been fired.
So they, in the next couple hours, invented a
job for Stacy to go to work as an investment
man with RG Dickenson Company in Des Moines
and then at 4:00, Dick Deetle called me, the
SID. And he said, "Well, come on over and
get the release. Your source is better than
mine, Stacy has been fired." So, I went over
and got the release, I wrote the story, and I
don't think I ever could get a hold of Stacy.
I just had to take Stacy's quotes out of the
statement that was released that he was going
to go to work - you know, one of those deals
where it was too good of an offer to pass up,
blah, blah, blah, which was another lie,
because that never really was true, either.
But it always puzzled him why Carnes had said
that to me, when he knew that what he was
saying wasn't true, and yet, I couldn't
believe that he would just outright lie.
About a year, maybe within a year, we were at
a Drake related cocktail party, I think, and
I got Carnes off in the corner and I said,
"Bob, what you did to me on the Stacy story
has always puzzled me. Why did you just
outright lie to me that he wasn't going to be
fired?" And he said, "Well, I'll tell you."
He said, "It's because you guys ask questions
before we're ready to answer them. And I
didn't know what to say." So that's why he
did it, but yet in a matter of two or three
hours the whole thing came out. So why
bother to lie about it? But that's - there
has been two or three instances like that,
where - Ralph Miller was another one. That's
why I think young journalists always have to
be fearful of people that aren't telling the
truth and there are reasons why they don't
tell the truth and you've got to be on your
guard to make sure that you aren't taken in,
although sometimes it's easy to be taken in.
