Gene Raffensperger interview about journalism career, West Des Moines, Iowa, March 19, 2000

Section 1: Q: We are talking with Gene Raffensperger today, at his home at 804 39th Street in West Des Moines. Today is March 19, 2000. Gene, of course, was senior [out of range on tape]. Gene, I just want to talk to you a little bit about what you wrote in your biography, the letter that you sent to me. You joined the Register in 1955 and you mentioned that you were schooled with many months of police and reported duty. I wondered if you could just talk about the nitty gritty out there. Was that considered how you paid your dues? Were you with anybody else? A: I think, at that time, when I came aboard, I really was green. I had graduated from [the University of ] Iowa, of course, in journalism, but I had gone into the service for three years and when I came out, I really didn't know much. And the Register - it wouldn't have made any difference - the Register and the Tribune both had a policy in those days, that when a new reporter came on, after a period of a couple of weeks - I would have been twenty-six years old then, or almost twenty-six. They put me on the police beat, on what they called the police beat. Well, the police beat amounted to, in those days, we went to the police station and that's where our office was. In other words, I would go to work at about 5:00 or 5:30 in the evening and I worked until 2:00 in the morning. [interrupted by telephone]. Covering the police beat in those days meant literally covering the police beat. We had an office, the Register had an office at the police station. The police reporter worked out of that office. The theory that the Register had then, and it's a good one, and I'm sad to say I don't think they do it anymore, was that when a new reporter came aboard, he needed to know, number one, something about the town, something about Des Moines. So the way to get that was to put him on the police beat because every night he was looking at fire calls and police calls and one thing and another on the south side, the west side, the east side, etc. So you learned a little bit about the town. The second thing the Register was concerned about was accuracy. In those days - and maybe it's still true today - police were not the greatest spellers in the world. They frequently mis-spelled individual's names. They frequently got a wrong address, not because they were stupid, but they were busy. And it taught you - the Register police beat taught you, check, check, check. You checked names in the city directory, in the phone book. You checked addresses, cross-checked them. You learned how to use the cross-check phone book and when a fire alarm would come in, you could call the neighbor because we had a thing. You learned all the gritty things that reporters need and you just absolutely became a really strong reporter on the basics - spelling, accuracy, a general sense of checking. So that's how I broke in. The only thing that we ever got was one night or two, the police reporter ahead of you would precede you and take you down there, and introduce you to the shift captain and show you where the office was and show you how to phone work and show you how to - we had a police radio in there. You swam there by yourself. Some people didn't like it and didn't make it. I can't say that I loved it that beat, but I certainly look back on it with knowledge that I learned a lot. Q: Do you remember any particular stories that you were covering about that time? What was it, for a couple of years or so? A: It was probably over a year. It was spread over two different times around. I had big fires and things but I remember one in particular that really didn't have anything to do with any big crime wave or anything. One night there was an incident and police were chuckling about it when they came back in on shift change and they said there was a guy who got into an argument with a guy downtown. This man was a pedestrian and a young kid was driving his car and blocked the crosswalk. And this man, possibly affected somewhat by drink, but angry because of the frustrations of having cars block his path, instead of going around, he stomped up on this guy's fender and then stomped across the top of the hood and down the other side. I sensed that there was a really good story here and I said to the police officer who was chuckling about it, he said, "I don't know." He said, "We didn't get they guy's name because no charges were filed. We told the other guy to file against him if he wanted to." And he said, "But I tell you, I think that guy's name's out, down at . ." There was a little general store or tavern way down in the south east side of Des Moines. He said, "I think he hangs out down there." So though I went to bed at 2:00 in the morning, the previous night, this thing - I could just smell this being a good story. So I went down there the next morning about 9:00 o'clock and I waited around and looked around and asked questions. And sure enough, I found this guy and he was a great interview. He talked about the fact that he was tired of people blocking his path and he had done this because he was trying - he just snapped. Well, he wore big engineer boots with kind of like spikes on them, which made it all the worse, you know, for the guy in the car. So anyhow, I was able to get the guy up into the office and we took his picture and then we took a picture of his boots and then we took a picture of the young kid. We got his name and he posed for us with his hands down in the hood of the car where this guy's engineer boots had made these big indentations. I was really proud of myself because I had been able to dig this guy up. It wasn't any big deal, but we got a lot of mail on it. I think I kind of alerted my bosses that this guy was hustling me. I was hustling - you know, I was working. I wasn't just laying around down there. -- <br><br> Section 2: Q: Also, I wanted to ask you about the time that you came to the Register. How did that come about? Where were you working before? A: The reason I was able to come to the Register was because in 1950, when I started my last two years as an undergraduate student at the University of Iowa, I became the Register's - what they called the Campus Correspondent. Actually it was more than that. It was an Iowa City correspondent because we did things on the police beat. We reported police stories. I even covered a murder trial for them. But anyhow, I became their correspondent, so I was dealing with the Register people on the telephone or by wire, Western Union, virtually every day. I was doing stories for them. I was sending them stuff and they were asking me to do things. So, my work came to the attention of people down there, primarily Frank Eyerly, who was the managing editor at that time, a legendary managing editor of the Register. Luckily, he had noticed some things I did and mentioned it to some of the people on the desk. So when I went into the service, Frank, after I was in there nearly ready to come out, I didn't know for sure what I was going to do. I thought I might have to start out at some small paper. Frank wrote me a letter and asked me if I would like to come back, to start on the Register. Of course, I did. So, with that tick - I mean, I had that background like that, as a correspondent. So when I came aboard, they knew who I was. That didn't make me anything other than a raw rookie, but I did have that coming for me here. Q: That connection. A: Yes, right. Q: So you had been working at the DI. A: Yes, I had worked at the DI [Daily Iowan], yes that's right, exactly. I think I had some title. I was probably the news editor or something, I don't know. But, I had some friends there that went on from there to do good things. Hoag Duncan was there then. I think Bucky Turnbull might have been there. Ozzie Jensen was around there in those days. The DI was a live-wire paper. We did a lot of things that we thought were pretty good. Q: We're talking about the Daily Iowan, with the University? A: The Daily Iowan, right. Q: My question was, were you working at the Daily Iowan with a title at the same time you were a correspondent for the Register? A: That's right, I was, yes. They didn't care about that, the Register didn't. -- <br><br> Section 3: Q: Then they started opening some news bureaus. I mean, that opportunity came up for you when you were at the Register in the early sixties? A: That's right, yea. Q: Talk about the idea - what was the need to open some bureaus? What were they doing before? A: I came to work for the paper in 1955 and I'd been there five years and I was kind of a general assignment reporter, plus police beat. I even had some time on the copy desk. I learned that the Register was about to embark on a new deal. They were going to open an Eastern Iowa bureau and they were going to locate it in Davenport. The reason that they were going to do this - plus, the Register had a Washington Bureau. They'd had one since the Roosevelt era. They'd never had any other bureau, no state bureaus. Somebody looked at a map one day and got the circulation figures out and they discovered that 60 or 70% of the state circulation lay east of Des Moines. Well, that was a simple thing to figure that out. They had Davenport, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Clinton, Dubuque, Burlington, and on and on. All those big, potentially big - and they were big - even without anything - circulation areas lay over there. So they said, "What we need to do is open up a news bureau over there and exploit that circulation that we've already got, plus try to build it and make it bigger." Well, they toyed with the idea of just hiring a correspondent that they had over there. So I went into see Frank Eyerly and I told Frank, I said, "Frank, I'm the man. I've got all this experience here. I've covered the police, I've covered the courthouse. I've been on the copy desk. I've written features." I said, "I'm the best guy you could put over there." And I think Frank was aghast! Maybe that's too strong, but I think he was surprised that anybody would come to him and say, "I want to go to Davenport." Well, I did. So, they sent me to Davenport. We opened that bureau down there in January of 1961, just about a week after John Kennedy was inaugurated as President. Do you want me to talk about that? Q: I do want to follow up on this, though. The Register still - I mean, they had been around for at least a hundred years, covering those towns. How were they doing that news? Every time something happened over there, would they fly somebody out there? A: No, the Register has always had - I shouldn't say always had, but in my time, the Register always had a string, a network is a better word, of correspondents, people who were not working for us full time, but who were paid as part-time reporters. Actually, we paid them in the main by the inch. How much inch of copy they got into the paper. Not always - some of them were so good that we had them on retainers. But we had good correspondents in Waterloo and Cedar Rapids and Davenport and so forth. What would happen is, if something big would happen in one of those towns, our first telephone call was to our correspondent. Many times, that correspondent alerted us that there was a fire or there was a killing or there was an upheaval coming in the school board. We were alerted to that fact by these correspondents and if it was the kind of thing that we thought we needed to cover, then we'd send a staffer in there. But until I opened that bureau, we did not have a steady, full-time presence in any of those areas. I made it. I made that presence by that eastern Iowa bureau. As I told you, we put in Davenport, but I spread it out. -- <br><br> Section 4: Q: Okay, can you give the nuts and bolts of what you were going to do then. What was your job description when you went over to Davenport? What were you supposed to do? A: Well, we didn't call it the Davenport Bureau. We called it the Eastern Iowa Bureau. So, what they said, without spelling it out, because I wrote the - nothing was ever written, but whatever was done, I broke trail on everything. We had never done this before, so they just let me go, so to speak, and as long as I was producing, they said, "Well, that's probably the way we should go." So what I did was, we rented an office in a downtown building in Davenport. Eventually I moved my family down there. I had three children then. That's all I've ever had, but I mean, I moved my family which included three children, down there. We opened this bureau and I set up and got on the mailing list for, I think, thirteen eastern Iowa dailies. I read those papers every single day of my life when I was down there. I mean, when I say "read them" I mean, I read them minutely. What I was looking for was not necessarily the big stuff, because I think I'd find that anywhere. I was looking for these little stories where they didn't recognize that what they had was a good story. I'll give you an example of that later. It has to do with the Amish. But, I read those papers every day and then I would decide, okay, here's something coming up in Dubuque, a school fight or something. I would drive to Dubuque on Tuesday and write a story about it and file it on Western Union or I'd file a story - I'd work on a story in Waterloo for Sunday. I'd see a feature story up there that I wanted to do. I built up my own cadre of correspondents in those towns. I would deal with these people. They would call me. I think what I did was, I looked upon myself kind of like what I thought that the Time Magazine correspondents would do in Los Angeles. I kind of felt, if it's a story that is more than local, that is, if it's a local story, but people in Des Moines would like to read it or should read it, I would do it. And I would do it wherever it was - Burlington, wherever. And gradually, as my confidence grew and as my contacts grew and as I realized how to do it, it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. I was filing stories two or three times a week and doing Sunday stories. I always did Sunday stories. I mean, I'd plan ahead, as the week came up and I'd say, "Now this week, I'm going to try to do a Sunday story out of Burlington." Or, "This week I'm going to do a Sunday story out of Waterloo," or, "This is the week that that trial starts in Waterloo." That's the way I planned my time. Q: Were they expecting a certain amount of stories coming from you? A: I don't think they were expected anything when I went over there. But I turned the thing into such a monster that it was kind of a joke. It was not a joke for me, but it got to the place where somebody told me that the city editor, a fellow, a good friend of my mine who is dead now, named John Goog. They said, "Well, if Goog says if it happens east of Grinnell, don't worry about it, Ralph will get it." And literally, that was true, because I would. I would drive all over and come home in the middle of the night and get up the next morning and go out and do it again. I ended up working on an ulcer and I ended up almost a nervous wreck, but I really did a big job for them for six years. Q: I was going to say, that was quite an ambitious task. You said that you had correspondents out there to help you out. A: Yes. Q: How did you cover all those cities with one person? A: You have to break it down. In other words, you took the position that you can't cover every school board meeting in Davenport. Or you can't cover every city council meeting in Cedar Rapids, but you would lay back and watch for them. If you thought there was an issue coming up in Cedar Rapids at their city council meeting, that was of enough interest, that the news angle on it would work for us, and mind you, the Cedar Rapids Gazette didn't have a morning paper. So if I could get into Cedar Rapids for a council meeting at say, 11:00 o'clock in the morning and they would decide to buy something for a shopping center or there would be some kind of a controversy involving the police, the Gazette couldn't do it. I mean, the Gazette's next shot would be the next afternoon. So I had this jump on them. I had a jump on all of those. The only eastern Iowa paper that was in the morning was in Davenport, the Democrat and the Daily Iowan. Otherwise, the whole morning field was open to us. So, even though it was hard work, if it happened after 12:30, 1:00 in the afternoon, it was ours. And I capitalized on that. I can remember running up to Cedar Rapids - I monitored every radio I could get my hands on, but I remember that a kid shot a kid in the shower room of a Cedar Rapids high school during the noon hour. I jumped in my car and I went up there and I got that story all wrapped. Talked to the father of the victim, talked to the police, talked to the mayor and whoever I talked to. The Gazette couldn't touch that story. Not that's they are not a good paper, not that they didn't have good reporters, the time was wrong for them. So I drove the eighty miles from Davenport. I rented cars from a guy downtown. I went down there to get a car and the guy said, "This is a brand new car. It's only got twelve miles on it." And I said, "Well, let me tell you something. I'm going up to Cedar Rapids." And I said, "I'm going to lay that thing flat out, out on the interstate. He said, "Don't worry about it." So, I'd go like 75-80 miles an hour with a car that had twelve miles on it! -- <br><br> Section 5: Q: Like with the story that you're talking about there, the kid that shot another kid in the shower - how would you get a photographer out? Did you have a photographer? A: We didn't always. Depending on the situation, if I knew in advance that we were going to do something either for Sunday or if we had time, or if it was big enough, I would talk to the desk in Des Moines and they would arrange for a photographer. I did much of my own photography, almost all of it, as a matter of fact. I carried a camera. If we go back to the Amish school controversy, which was one of the big stories that I covered, which had to do with the struggle between Amish fathers who wanted their kids to go to their own schools, being taught by 8th grade educated people, versus the state, who wanted these kids into a regular school. If we go back to that story, the Amish did not want their pictures taken. It was a religious thing with them and I didn't argue with them, except that we wanted these pictures of these little kids. They were just beautiful kids. They had straw hats and the little girls had bonnets. What I did was, one of the first stories that I wrote on them, and I broke that story. That was one of those ones where I found a tiny story like this in the Waterloo Courier that said, 'Officials in Buchanan County were going to have to decide what to do about these Amish kids.' That's all it was. And I made that into a major story. The kids came home from school a long a gravel road. I had my camera sitting up on the dashboard of the car and I practiced it a few times. To trigger it, I had it set for 50 feet or whatever it was. So I practiced it a couple of times on fence posts, driving with the car and triggering it. I came down the road and here comes these Amish kids, a beautiful shot, the little girls with the bonnets and the guys, and they're carrying a lunch bucket. There might have even been a pony in there - I can't remember. All I did, was driving very slowly on this gravel road, I just swerved over slightly - not to endanger the kids and got where I thought I was 50 feet away and banged one off. It was great picture! It was shot through the windshield of the car. It wasn't a Pulitzer prize winner, but it was a good picture. It was a good picture that they could use and I felt - I suppose I violated some - the Amish didn't want their pictures taken. I felt like - I didn't identify the children and you couldn't have picked their faces out in this picture. But what it did do, is it showed you that these little kids were the object of this fight between, they were the center of this fight between the state and these Amish fathers. That's what they looked like. They were real kids. So I felt pretty good about that. But I did that all the time. I took pictures all the time. Every week I took pictures. Q: As for the story itself, was it just a one-time story or was it a series? A: That story ran for three years. I started that story in 1962, with what I told you. I went out and interviewed the Amish elders and then I interviewed the school people. It was a classic confrontation where they wouldn't give. It finally deteriorated into weekly arrests of these Amish fathers. And they would bring these men or these men would show up at the court house. They would go through - they had kind of a rope. I can't say one of the Amish names, now, but "You're charged with not sending your child to school. How do you plead?" "Not guilty." The guy was guilty and off they'd go to jail. They'd stay in there for three or four hours. They were jailing these fathers all the time. It just went on and on. Finally, it got to the place where Governor Hughes stepped in and they figured out some way to end it. I suppose I shouldn't say this, but if you'll turn around and look up there, do you see that picture up there? Q: Sure. A: That's the picture that finally brought the thing to a head. The photo shows, what, about six Amish little boys, running across a field toward a barb-wire fence to a cornfield. What led to that picture - that picture was taken by Tom Defayo and a lot of people thought that should have been a Pulitzer picture because of what it is. But what led to that was, the Independents or the Buchanan County people brought a yellow school bus out and parked it front of the Amish school with an agreement they thought they had from the Amish fathers, that they were going to put these kids, these boys and girls, on this bus and take them into either Hazelton or Independence or Fairbanks or wherever their school was. And they were going to go to school with the other kids. So they came out. They were in their Amish school and they came outside. Tommy Defayo, who took that picture for us, was standing with me. We were actually right up next to the bus, waiting for the kids to come out because he was going to take their picture. The kids stood there in kind of like a football huddle with some mothers and some fathers, and all of the sudden - you know, I don't speak German but it must have been a German word. Somebody used the word, "run." Somebody said, "Run!" And those kids took off. That's the result - and they ran away from these school people and into those fields. That triggered Governor Hughes, who basically said, "Okay, that's it! That's enough of that. We're going to get this settled." So they had one more confrontation in which they actually went into the school and tried to get them out. The Amish mothers cried and sang "Jesus Loves Me." The county attorney was trying to settle it. It was just an unbelievable scene, but after those two incidents, Governor Hughes called a truce and they worked out a deal. The kids go to their own schools up there now. Q: All this time, what was going on with the other papers? A: They jumped in, finally, when they started putting these guys in jail. They started showing up. The Waterloo Carrier was there, Cedar Rapids was there. The television stations from Cedar Rapids were showing up. Yes, they came in but the first day, the first Sunday - we broke that story on a Sunday, that they were actually in this fight. You know, you could work all that good stuff in about the clash of cultures and these bearded men who were the elders and they would talk to you. But you just couldn't photograph them. We finally photographed all the fathers when they started taking them to jail because they were bringing them right into where we could get at them and there was nothing they could do about it. I remember one guy snapped off a shot one time and one of these army spotters turned and looked at him and said, "Brother! Have thee no shame?" Q: Did you ever get any negatives, letters? A: No, no I don't recall that at all. -- <br><br> Section 6: Q: As for the Bureau work itself, did you have anybody helping you out? Did you have an office clerk? A: No. They sent a guy down there with me for a while, but that didn't work out. They took him back to Des Moines and they just left me alone. I think they said, "Well, you're working too hard so we'll give you some help." It just didn't work out. The guy went back to Des Moines and had a real good career back there. But no, I didn't get any help. I never asked for any, really, after that guy was down there and went back. It didn't make any difference. It was during that period that I covered, I did features. There was a guy in Burlington by the name of Catfish Kelly that I did a story on, that guy right there. See that guy? That was an old river rat. That's my picture, too. I took that picture. I covered - this will age me - I covered one of the last hangings in Iowa, at Fort Madison Penitentiary in 1962. Harold Hughes became governor that year but he didn't take office until '63. Of course, he stopped all that. The legislature, finally, under Hugh's direction, abolished capitol punishment, I believe, in '63. But in 1962, there were still two men on death row and I covered one of those hangings. So there are not many reporters around, I don't suppose now. There is still George Mills, he would be one for sure, that have ever covered an execution, but I can say that I did cover an execution. Q: I don't mean to get gruesome, but tell me a little bit about this story. The fact was, you were going to go out and witness the execution and write about it? A: Well, that's right. I was there as a reporter. I was not there as a witness. But yes, that's right. We went down there. The hanging was in the summer time and they hanged people in Iowa at dawn, so the hanging occurred at whenever sunrise was and it was inside. They had a body shop where prisoners - inmates learned how to work on auto body work. And there was a wall there that was moveable, anyhow, they could slide this wall back, curtain. Curtain. Behind that curtain was a gallows. So, on the day of the execution, they moved that curtain back and the gallows was up on there and they brought the guy into this. We were all inside. We didn't need to be. They used to conduct executions outdoors, but this was an indoor execution. There were a number of reporters. I wasn't the only one. And there were a number of witnesses. There hadn't been an execution in Iowa for about twelve years, I believe, is how long it had been. Anyhow, they brought this guy in and marched him up to the top of those gallows and tied him up and put a hood on him and the next thing you know, there was this huge crash when the trap opened and down he went. Of course, you could see that it was open, the front the scaffold was open, and you could see him when he dropped and they declared him dead in just a few minutes, although there have been cases, I guess, where it didn't go quite that smooth. But that one went, if you can say anything like that went smoothly, that one did go smoothly. Q: It's kind of hard to think now, what's the story there. Just seeing in deeper detail of what's happening. A: You just write a story about what I just said, that it's in the prison body shop. You could go into the detail. Actually, that day, the Tribune, of course, was still alive then and the Tribune had the news story, because they had an afternoon paper, so they - so did any other news story. You just report all the details. But that particular day, they had some protests, pickets outside the prison wall. I think I used that as my lead because the afternoon papers would have had - but then you put in all the details that you can put in on something like that if you're a witness to it. It's like anything else. Q: Well, you're an objective reporter, but on the other hand, you're human, too. You must have feelings about, have an aversion to seeing something like that. What were your feelings about that? A: I didn't know what to expect. Frankly, I did not know how I would react to it. I was somewhat - I think afterwards, I was depressed. I don't think I was at the moment of death, but I think after I was driving home or back to Davenport or wherever I was going, I think there was a feeling of depression that went over me having seen this man come in and then die right in front of my eyes. I suspect it finally got to me. I hadn't had any pre-set - I didn't know anything about the guy. I didn't know anything about the crime. I've been in that prison many other times in which I remember one case. I was in there when a little boy, and I mean a little boy - he was fifteen years old - he was sentenced to life in prison because he killed his grandfather with a shotgun. And I don't know the details on that because it was a western Iowa story, which I had no part in. But, he apparently pleaded. His lawyer - this boy was fifteen and small for fifteen. I mean, he looked like he was about twelve. Anyhow, he apparently came in and pleaded guilty to first degree murder, which left the judge no leeway. He sentenced this little boy to life in prison. So they sent this little boy, if you can believe this, to Fort Madison, where all these hard cons were. They didn't know what to do with him down there because they were afraid for his safety, so they put him in the hospital. Well, Governor Hughes came down there and visited. Nobody had ever done this before. He visited a bunch of lifers and let them talk to him in terms of they wanted to have their sentences commuted. And Governor Hughes gave each one of these guys fifteen minutes or whatever, which that was interesting, too. But I wasn't in on that, because they wouldn't let us in, but when they said, "Well, Governor, would you like to see this young boy?" And he said, "Well, yes, I guess I would." So they let me go with him, with the governor and we went over to the hospital. It was just an incredible scene. I mean, here is this little boy who doesn't have any idea what he's doing. I mean, believe it or not, when the Governor came in, he showed him - the boy had made some kind of a thing out of Popsicle sticks by pasting them together like a tinker toy set and he had made something and he was showing it to the Governor like any twelve-year old kid might show something to his dad. Then the kid said, "Hey," I don't think he called him Governor. I don't think he knew who he was. But he knew that he was some authority figure and he said, "Hey! Can I go out in the yard?" Meaning out in the general population. And you know, it stunned Hughes. And Hughes said something like, "Well, we'll have to leave that up to the folks here. You better stay here." Well, what had happened was, the hard cons that were out in the yard had sent candy to this kid. They had gone to the commissary. They wanted this kid out there, obviously, for the reasons that you can imagine. And Hughes recognized that and the prison people recognized that. But it was a stunning situation. This little boy and the governor. And it made a good story. I thought it was a really good story, really solid story. To follow that up for you, the little boy was finally sent to El Dora, where he belonged, but tragically, he killed himself up there. The little boy was just terribly screwed up. As I say, I don't know the background on it, but I just know that everybody was shaken up by the fact that - I don't think they do that anymore. I don't think they'd ever send a boy like that into Fort Madison. They didn't keep him there. But they didn't know what to do with him. And I was just lucky enough to be there that day. Q: And as a reporter, you saw this and you knew you had to write about it. A: Oh, yes. It was a touching, a very touching situation. Q: In your letter, you said it brought tears to Governor Hughes' eyes. A: It did. And probably to mine. I don't remember now. Q: I don't know. In those cases, you're watching them carry out an execution and watching this encounter between the young boy. Obviously, you're thinking about how you are going to write this story. What else are you thinking about? What is a good reporter thinking about in how to get this story across? A: Well, you know, this sounds kind of silly to answer that question, but the first thing that comes to your mind is, what are you going to do with it? I mean, you are looking at a situation here, not the hanging, but you're looking at the situation with this little boy and you want to get in it the paper and you're saying to yourself, "I'm inside the prison in Fort Madison and it's going on, what? Two o'clock or whatever. Now, I got to get out of here, I got to get to my typewriter and I got to get to a Western Union office or (I wouldn't necessarily have to do that.) I could get to a telephone and I'd dictate it." But you have to think about those nitty gritty things because you just simply, you've got your hands on what you know is a very powerful story. And you've got to get it out. You can't sit around and wait until Sunday to write that story. You've got to get that story out right now. So I called the office and I say, "Hey! This is a huge story. I mean, this is big, much bigger." Because I went down there just thinking that this was going to be Governor Hughes interviewing a bunch of old lifers. Ah, big deal. It would make fifteen inches or whatever. I didn't know they were going to put him next to this kid. And I don't think he knew that either. But when I told them that, I said, "You know, this kid is in for murder," and I gave them the color, you know, what he did. So everybody was fired up about it and I got to get it done, you know, and they're looking for it. That maybe doesn't sound like you're weighing all the psychological edge - you're really worried about the nitty gritty, about trying to get this baby, because you got your hands on a big one. And you really want to get it done and you know you haven't got much time. You're not going to sit around and toss leads back and forth in your mind. I wonder if it would be better if I wrote this or this? You got to do it. You got to do it right now. And sometimes, you're writing on the hood of your car. I mean, I've set my typewriter up, portable, on the hood of my car, rolled in some paper and knocked it out. Or I've done it in the back room of the Western Union office. Or I've done it - you know, I've done it a lot of places. But you got to do it. I couldn't dictate that story off the top of my head. I'd have to dictate that - if I didn't send it Western Union, and I could have. I can't remember what I did. I would want to get it off of a paper because I had it. It was a story that I felt I had captured, and I just wanted to get it out. -- <br><br> Section 7: Q: You brought up something that other people that I've talked to from the Register have said. They write the story in their head and then dictate it that way. Tell me how that works. Because I think more in terms of writing the thing out in long hand or typing it out and then reading it over the phone. A: It depends on what your situation is. A guy like George Mills, for example, could, I think, dictate twenty-five inches without even clearing his throat. I mean, he just had that ability. I didn't dictate very many stories because I was worried that I would lose my place. If I started out dictating, I didn't know if I, after I had gone about four graphs, I didn't know where I was. So, what you have to do, if you're dictating, I think, and I've done this a few times, is you take your regular small notebook that your notes are in and you just rough out maybe four words in the first paragraph and maybe another three words in the second paragraph and once you get rolling, it's fairly easy. You only dictate under the gun. You don't dictate a Sunday feature story or you don't dictate a story that you've got time to work on. You dictate when you're looking at your watch and it's - like Fort Madison, for example, was what we called a First Edition Town. They had the earliest deadline of any of our editions. Well, I knew that if those guys didn't get that by six o'clock, they'd just be chomping at the bit. And like I said, here it is 2:30 and I'm still inside the prison. So, I did have time to type that one up, but if you were faced with a deadline, you just had to do it. You'd dictate the verdict on a trial, for example. Guilty. Innocent. You can do that. Although smart reporters, and I consider myself to be one, would make what we called A Matter and that would be if a jury went out at 9:00 o'clock in the morning - that would be an unlikely time - say the jury went out at noon. I would sit down and write what we called A Matter, which meant that I would say, "Okay, the guy is going to be found guilty or he's going to be found innocent." But at some point in your story, you needed about eight inches of background, that this crime occurred and this guy was arrested and the state witnesses testified. You put all that in there, so that's ready to go. They got it in type. Now you're set. Now the verdict comes in at 6:30, right on your deadline. Now, all you got to do is give them the top on it, because they got the A Matter. That's the way smart reporters did it. And I consider myself to be smart. I remember one time, telling a guy, he was talking to his office and it was a television guy and they weren't getting what he was saying, whether it was guilty or not guilty. And I was typing and I said, "Tell them ACQUITTED!" Quit using guilty or not guilty, because some guy is going to drop that up there on you and you're going to say guilty, but he's going to come in the other way. I said, "If he's been freed, ACQUITTED!" [chuckles]. Q: That guy is going to drop the "not" and give the wrong verdict. A: That's right! He's going to say he's not guilty and some guy is going to say, "I guess he's guilty." If you use acquitted, you're not going to make any mistakes. -- <br><br> Section 8: Q: In a larger scheme of things, and I brought this up in my letter when I wrote it to you, some of the questions that we would be talking about, what made the Register such a great paper? Why was it so well renounced among both journalists and among the general public, the people, the readership? A: I think it was because - I think I got a lucky break there. I came aboard at about, I would say, the high-water mark for that time. The Register, I think, was riding high with winning Pulitzers like Clark Mollenhoff won a Pulitzer for labor racketeering and Dick Wilson had won a Pulitzer in there and Nick Kotz won a Pulitzer for dirty grain or dirty meat, and Lauren Soath won a Pulitzer for the Russian visit. I think it was because the Register was edited by strong editors. Frank Eyerly was a very strong editor, a very aggressive editor. Ken MacDonald was actually the editor. Frank was the managing editor. But Frank was the guy you dealt with in the newsroom. A: But those fellows, they wouldn't go for anything that wasn't right down the middle. But I think it was because of the aggressive editors. I mean aggressive in the sense that not that they overran people, but they would go after good stories. That's what I mean by aggressive. I think it was good people. They had strong, hard, driving people in their Washington Bureau and we had a great desk. We had a strong city desk and a copy desk that caught these. You couldn't get anything through our copy desk that was even faintly questionable, whether it was a correct thing. These guys were good. They were older fellows and they had been through. They knew exactly. You couldn't fool them on anything, not that you would try to, but I mean, a lazy reporter would be just nailed by these guys, because they knew too much about facts about the state. So I think it was good editing, I think it was strong desk work. I think it was good people. I think that's what made them that way. And I got to add that other factor - in the state of Iowa at least, it was because, in my opinion, because we had license. People expected us to do what we did, but we were able to do it, primarily, because there was no opposition for us out there, except in Davenport. Sioux City had a morning paper, and of course, the Daily Iowan. But you could go out there and do things in the morning, for the morning publication, and look pretty good and they were pretty good, whereas today, you'd come in second best, because the Gazette would have a better story. Or Dubuque. Or Waterloo - not Waterloo - they're still afternoon. Cedar Rapids would. It's just a lot tougher now and I think in those days, not that anybody was lazy, but I think we capitalized on that. And I think people began to realize, our readership realized, that if there was a big story, they expected something kind of special out of the Register. And most of the time they got it. Because the Register displayed it right. They were not afraid to go after it: they used an airplane to take pictures, to get people out. We would go out and we always illustrated. I remember being sent out of town on a story and the city editor telling me - this is a way to knock down your ego - "Don't worry about the story, Gene. Just get us some head shots of those two kids." Like there would be four kids killed in graduation night. Get us the pictures of those kids! That's what we want. We would aggressively seek out those pictures. Go into town, try to find somebody who had a yearbook. Can we borrow the yearbook? Here, we'll photograph it. We'll have our photographer take a picture. We always came back with that kind of thing. I think that's what people expected. And I think that has gone away from us. I don't think the Register does that. I don't think they are as aggressive out there now as they used to be. -- <br><br> Section 9: Q: Some of the reporters I've talked to also talk about the thrill of being out there reporting, just the real thought of it and beating the competition. I wonder if you could expand on that? Did you have that feeling? A: Oh yes, sure. The Amish story that I've already mentioned was an example. But, there are all kinds of cases where you go out and you do something and you know that you got it. You got it and they didn't get it or they weren't there. That's the most important thing. A lot of times we'd do something and they weren't there. They either were fooled - they didn't know about it, or they were lazy - they didn't cover it - or they just didn't know it, they didn't recognize it. And I'm trying to think of an example. I guess I'm not coming up with one right now, but I mentioned - Q: Greg brought up a story that you two worked on, where he was working on anti... A: Oh, that's right, yea. Q: ...and there was this guy who was coming over from Des Moines and they met out in a cornfield or something like that? A: Well, that part of it I didn't have. But what we got into there, that was in Davenport and Drake was an expert on that part of the government coverage. It was a poverty program and there was a big flap about it in Davenport and I can't remember the details on it. In those days, much more so than now, Davenport was very conservative, very much a Republican, stand-offish. I wouldn't necessarily call them right wing, but they were conservative Republicans. They didn't dig the poverty program, so there was a big flap about this particular program. You're right, Drake said that they brought this guy in - well, a state guy came in for that - I don't know that part of it. I can't remember. But I know that Drake and I together, got something major on that Davenport situation and put it in the paper the next morning. It was a Sunday paper and the town [laughs], they just went wild! I mean, they just went nuts trying to figure out. Not only did the paper get upset, but the whole town was screwed up. I remember now another one that we did down there in Davenport. I did it. I did this one. There was a guy who left his entire estate to two little girls. And this guy wasn't anything big, but he was a guy who didn't have any family and these two little girls lived next door to him and always came over and brought him things and so forth, and he died. He had a modest estate. That wasn't the point. The size of the estate was not the point. The point was that he left it to these two little girls. Somebody in Des Moines, believe it or not, said to me, "Why don't you check that?" So I went over to the Scott County Courthouse in Davenport, and there it was, just bigger than anything, right there on the thing. I remember leaving that day, I think it was on a Friday - whatever day it was - I remember when I got out of there that their courthouse guy was gone for the day. And I knew I had that baby! So, there was this huge rush of adrenalin that goes through you when you know you've got your hands on one that nobody else has got. Well, that little boy in the prison. Same thing. It's a huge rush, not ego - it's just one of those things, where you say, "That's what I'm here for!" "That's my job!" And I've gotten it and nobody else has got this story. It's a thrill you can't describe unless you've done it. Fortunately, I did it a few times. -- <br><br> Section 10: Q: Didn't you say you were digging up stories yourself when you had subscriptions to the paper and you had all your sources and stuff. Did you ever get any assignments from Des Moines? Were they saying you need to cover this story? A: Yes. Not as often as anybody might think. After they realized what I was doing and after they saw the success that we were having, by allowing me to do just what I wanted to do, they basically turned it around and said, "What do you got for us this week?" The city editor would frequently say, "What have you got for Sunday?" And I'd tell him. I always had something. But yes, occasionally, they would do that. I remember an incident that had nothing to do with them assigning - well, they did assign this one. There was a tragedy in Keokuk. This goes back to 1965. There was a square dance club that had a square dance on Thanksgiving eve in a National Guard Amory in Keokuk. And there was an explosion, a gas leak in the basement somehow ignited and it blew up this armory and eventually, I think, seventeen people died as a result. But many of them died that very night. Well, it happened on Thanksgiving eve, which is the worst possible thing from a news standpoint because on the night before the holiday the Register closes early. So I don't think the Register even got the story - I didn't even hear about it. I was in Davenport, of course. But the next morning, I knew about it because Davenport got something in their paper, so I immediately called the paper. I said, "Okay!" They said, "Well, look. Don't worry about it." This was right after the Amish crash and I had been working for about twenty days in a row on that story. They said, "Don't worry about it, Gene. Cool it. You don't have to go. It's Thanksgiving Day." They said, "We got somebody going down there. You just take it easy. You've been working." I said, "Okay." So my wife fixed Thanksgiving dinner and we had the kids all there and we were just sitting down when the phone rang. It was probably about 12:30. "Gene?" "Yea?" "Gene, we can't go." They were going to fly somebody down from Des Moines. "The weather has closed in. We can't go." I said, "Okay. I'm on my way." So I got up from my Thanksgiving dinner and drove down to Keokuk and we were there for about three days. It was a huge, huge tragedy. As I said, I think about 17 or 18 people died in this thing. It was because the nature of it, it was a square dance party and there were children there and men and women. There were children who were orphaned because both of their parents had been killed in that blast. There were any number of follow-up stories on that that led us to more stories later. And of course, a year later, we had the anniversary story. It was a big, big story. And I got into it, because - they said, "No, you don't have to go because you've been working hard." Well, I did have to go, because they couldn't fly. If I didn't go, they wouldn't have covered it. They could have covered it, but they wouldn't have had anybody down there. And of course, that's the thing. -- <br><br> Section 11: Q: Readers or lay people look at your job and think, "That's got to be tough." I mean when you are going out and covering tragedies like that. But then, of course, talking to the survivors, the family. Did you ever have any well, obviously, reluctance about going to the family and asking questions. What kind of questions do you ask and how difficult is that? A: It's certainly not one of the pleasant parts of this job. Going back to what I said about the police beat, that's one place you learn that. You learn on the police beat to deal with people who maybe a child has been run over by a car and maybe a child drowns or something of that nature, you learn that you need to go to the house and do something with it. Well, the excuse that you would use in a case like the two I just described, would be, "We know of your tragic loss and we'd like to get this thing in the paper. I know you would like to have a good story about Billy. Do you have a good picture of him? And do you have your school picture?" They're always anxious to do that. And then you'd like to know, who are his mother and dad? And who are his brothers and so forth, and what school was he in. And gradually, after you are into that, my feeling or my reaction was - I didn't do it a lot, but I've done it enough times that I've found this to be true - if you can get to the parents, if that's the one you are seeking, and not the warding off nephews and aunt, if you can get to the mother or if you can get to the father, they want to talk to you. It's hard to believe that, but they do. They really want to tell you something. What I finally hit on was, when I would approach a house like that and I would go up on the porch and knock on the door - believe it or not, this is the way I'd handle it - when I went up the steps and on to the porch, I said, "Okay, Gene. Now you're just going to leave yourself back there. What's coming here is just a working reporter. You're up here to do your job. Now, you're not going to let anything get in your way. You're not going to be crude, you're not going to be rude. You're not going to be anything, but you're going to leave your thinking self out there because this is a tough situation." And gradually, when you get in there and you talk to those people, they just want to tell you something. It's hard to believe, but it's true. I've found it to be true. I wouldn't want to put that off on anybody. It's not the best job in the world. Q: I imagine you were turned away plenty of times, too. A: I've been turned away and I've been threatened. I never was attacked, but I have certainly been threatened. And you never argue with that. I mean, fine. Okay, okay. You need to sometimes use a little reaction against being turned away if it's a matter of talking to a public official, like a county attorney or a sheriff, and you're asking questions about a crime or something and he is rejecting you. Now, that's his job. That's a little different. You don't approach that with kid gloves. You go after that as hard as you can. Sometimes I've run into situations where you get people who are involved in a tragedy but they are not family people. They are neighbors or they are whatever, and they're protective of these people. A lot of times what you can do in a case like that is you ask a question about how far is it from here to that creek where that boy? And the guy will say, "I don't know. It's 100 yards." Well, you just kind of casually reach into your pocket and pull out your notebook. Now, he sees what you're doing but all you're doing, you see, is writing down 100 yards. Now, you've got the notebook in your hand. You got your pencil in your hand. Now, he's not so nervous. Now, you keep talking and you're still writing and he doesn't think too much about it. That's worked for me on a number of occasions. If that first move you make to get your notebook out, sometimes that triggers panic in somebody and they'll either slam the door in your face or they'll threaten you or they'll whatever. But they are used to seeing you pull the thing out if it's a matter of a figure that you want to make sure you've got that right. So I've used that a few times.