The Merry-Go-Round (As told to Dr. Freud)

Doc, you probably don't remember when Euclid Beach closed in the fall of '69. It was an amusement park loved by kids and grown-ups alike. Something like that marvelous park you had in Grinzing, with that great ferris wheel. Remember that movie "The Third Man"? It was filmed there.

One of my favorite rides at Euclid Beach was called the American Racing

Derby, a very fast merry-go-round. The horses really raced each other.

We loved it, but as I recall, when it stopped we all came out a little dizzy.

Which takes me to my story.

Leading the Public Affairs team at Tri-C was like that merry-go-round.

You have great fun, Doc, going round and round, but it also had its ups and

downs. Looking back I would say there were more ups than downs. But when the music stopped, it was a real downer.

Some of the most inspiring moments for me were our Monday staff

meetings. The team loved them. Each member had an opportunity to describe their project; be it a celebration, a fund raising campaign, the catalog, television advertising, what have you.

It was an amazing group, including Sandy and Leslie, who I found deep in the bowels of the Tri-C Metro Campus. I had known Sandy from her winning reputation as journalism instructor. Leslie was like her unindentical twin. We found Marcia, of all places, at Mt. Sinai Hospital. I knew she was right for the team when she withstood a withering cross-examination by Ellison in his office.
"We got a gem!" I told Sandy.

Joyce was already on board as fundraiser and levy expert, and her expertise was invaluable. Audrey was rock solid as our administrative assistant, bringing order out of chaos, and Dolores and Joanne were assigned to cover our outposts at the Western and Eastern campuses.

It may sound corny, but we, and others not mentioned, almost instinctively made beautiful music together, and I saw myself as sort of a concert master. Our work brought us great rewards, even at the top, where President Ellison loved parties, making speeches, and raising money touting tax levies. We did that all with great creativity and teamwork. 

We won fifty-two national awards for excellence in nine years, including the national award for best education marketing and public relations project of the year from CASE. (The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) With the help of the $500 prize, I took members of the team to San Diego to be on hand for the awards ceremony.

Teamwork. Here's one for the books. When the U.S Maritime Academy approached the college for a partnership, Ellison asked us to get the word out. It was a creative challenge. Somehow we thought of one of those huge ore ships that docked on the Cuyahoga. Why not, we asked one another.

“I know the PR guy at the Mather Steamship,” sandy said. And we

were off and running.

At the next staff meeting we mentioned this far out idea. Leslie immediately said, “I'll do the party on the dock.”

“I'll get the NCJW to manage the hosting and the food,” said Joyce. Audrey, bless her heart reminded us that this might cost considerable money. “We'll get it from Ellison,” I promised.

And so the bizarre encounter with the flats, a huge ore carrier, police boats, and balking labor unions, fell into place. It wasn't easy but it worked. Except it turned out to be a freezing day with snow coming in off the lake. A highlight was the dedication of the tech center, where ground was broken by a robot.

I must tip my hat to that team, who still gather annually for a reunion these last 26 years. Love those folks. Geniuses all.

But the downside was grim. The boss had a giant electric temper that belied his sweet smile and gentleness. He would fire people on the spot for being late to a meeting, and the hire them back. He literally got into a fist fight in his office with the superintendent of the Cleveland schools, which we managed to cover up. When someone tipped off the Plain Dealer, they sent a reporter. The operative answer was "what fight"? (today they would say what collusion?) And not a word saw the light of day in the paper.

When Ellison and the president of CSU, had a disagreement in a meeting at CSU, he stripped off his suit coat and his glasses and went after President Waetjen, a one time college football player, he responded in kind. It took the entire group at the meeting to pull them apart. Again, the word was "what fight?" and nobody leaked. Nobody. I thought myself, "A hell of a story.”

I must say, Ellison was a master at playing the good guy. And he truly believed believed that I was doing my job of polishing his image and the image of the college.

That was, until an unpleasant young reporter from the Plain Dealer, don't recall her name, Doctor, started asking some hard questions in a meeting I attended. I could see Ellison’s his face turning red.

“Are you investigating me?” he snarled. “Get out of my office. I don't ever want to see you again!”

He lunged at her as she left. I was stunned. I knew this woman. She was the kind who would do anything for a story; anything to destroy someone's image.

I met with her the next day and got the gist of her story. Ellison had hired the former President of the University of the District of Columbia to come to work at Tri-C full time with a lofty salary, for a special urban studies project. What had been leaked to the PD was that the new hire had been fired in DC, and then charged by a grand jury for stealing valuable property from the president's house. (Also and he came without a job description or a signed application.)

There was no way I could stop the publishing of the story the next morning. Ellison raged.

I did all I could to diminish the flames. The personnel office produced an after-the-fact signed job application and job description, not really kosher, to soften the blow. I arranged a meeting between Ellision and Tom Vail, the publisher and editor of the Plain Dealer. We went to Vail's office. I tried to calm Ellison down by talking about my experiences in WW II with General Patton, telling him how scared I was, but how I pulled myself together and survived. (At that moment I wished I was back in Germany instead of in this hot seat in Cleveland.) But my guy calmed down and walked into Vail's office, sweet as a pussy cat. After a number of exchanges, Vail attempted to assure him that the Plain Dealer has been leading the fight for racial equality. Vail promised to look into the matter of this young reporter. Ellison seemed satisfied and thought he had seen the last of the reporter, but of course he was wrong.

I saw danger down the road.

The next morning at the top of the editorial page was a sizeable editorial: "Seeing Red About Green.” (Green was the DC guy's name.) The boss went into a rage again. It was a fairly mild editorial in my mind, but there was no way of calming the boss.

“Racist bastards!,” he howled.

Dr. Green was a reasonable guy and things settled down when the Grand Jury in Washington found him not guilty on all six counts. This soft spoken academic had gotten himself embroiled in ugly DC politics, and had paid the price. But he survived.

But the PD wasn't through. One more scandal brought us very close to a parting of the ways. It involved the president of the Eastern Campus. She was a bit arrogant and not liked by much the faculty. One day word came downtown that she was in a brawl with the faculty over her thoughtless and stupid habit of parking her Mercedes in a garage built for ambulances and vans dropping off handicapped students. As news guy I saw this as a potential disaster, and I told Ellison at a meeting in his office on a Saturday, that it would probably appear on page one the next morning.

“What should we do? What should we say?”

“Don't do anything,” Ellison said, as we walked out.

"It will give her some humility".

“Yes sir,” I said, and left.

“This is it,” I said to myself.

I called the Eastern Campus pres. at her Gold Coast home in Lakewood, and told her not to say anything to reporters. I learned later that she had spilled the beans herself, calling the Tri-C faculty "a bunch of children."

The next morning, there it was across the bottom of page one: A photo of her and the Mercedes in the handicapped garage. And a side story about a disabled young student in a wheel chair, describing how they had to push him through the snow to get into the building from his parent's van.

It was awful. But I did nothing.

What she did was indefensible. I knew that after nine mostly rewarding years my time was about up. And I was the fall guy.

Or was I?

Tell you next time.

My Life As a Muckracker As told to Dr. Freud (part six)

I want to talk about life in the 60’s, Doc. 

It was a very tough time for the country. It was a kind of hell for many Americans, and yet life went on. For me it was a mixed bag. There must be a part of our brain that helps survive times like this.

The good doctor nodded but said nothing.

The very real threat of a nuclear war over Cuba with Russia. (Or “Cuber” as President Kennedy pronounced it.) We came very close. And a few months later he was dead. Some say because of how he dealt with Cuba. Several years later his brother Robert, a candidate for president hoping to continue his brother’s legacy, was murdered in a California hotel. Killed allegedly because of his support of Israel.

The racial uprising in the South, the March on Washington, the assassination in Nashville of Martin Luther King after his great speech in Washington. The riots in the core many of our cities, including Cleveland, that many of us really didn’t really understand. Why would anybody want to burn down their own neighborhoods, Doc? Never quite figured that out.

All punctuated, as the decade closed, with the National Guard killing four protestors on the Kent State campus, marking the end of the riots that flared on campuses across the country.

We lived it, Doc. We lived history, each in our own way. A love affair in New York City, and then three years later, the arrival of our wonderful daughter. For me the 60’s was the best of times, and the worst of times. Yes I was a still a newlywed at the turn of the decade. 

You don’t mind, Doctor, if a go back a couple of years to 1957?
You might find it interesting.

Grace and I were married in a small hotel on Park Ave. We had a wonderful quartet for dancing. Grace’s parents did all the right things, although it must have cost them an arm and a leg. Her mom was a school teacher, her dad, a pharmacist. It was important to them to impress my friends and relatives, and I believe they succeeded, although they may have spent their life savings on the betrothal of their only daughter.

We spent our first night at the Plaza Hotel, a big deal for a working news guy from Cleveland. Didn’t know quite what to expect, particularly when a bellboy burst into our den of love at one in the morning, without knocking. He was carrying a bottle of champagne and a bouquet of flowers. As you might imagine, the room was in disarray, and we were in the process of getting to know one other a little better.

You of all people should understand how “it” was in those days, in the 1950’s, most people waiting until they got married before they did ‘it,"  right, Doc? 

As I recall, we may still have been in the process of figuring “it” all out when the bellboy burst in. May have been a foreshadowing of things to come…that can affect a marriage, right Doc? It was a really a big deal in those first days right?

Of course that it all changed. Now “it” has a different meaning to the kids. They don’t wait get married to do “it”.

In the morning we boarded a flight from LaGuardia to Ft. Lauderdale for our honeymoon, which I had planned, but not as carefully as I should have.

The winter before, I had stayed at little one story motel right on the ocean beach between Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood, in place called Dania. It was recommended to me by one of my colleagues at the Press. Granted, it was no Hilton, not even a Holiday Inn, but it was less expensive and owned by a lovely Greek family. They had offered to let me use their car for most of the two weeks of our stay. They called it something like Knishes by the Sea. Not the kind of knishes we of the Hebrew persuasion understand, but a Greek word that I didn’t understand. 

We drove there from the airport, and the moment Grace laid eyes on the place I could tell she would trade one night a Hilton, for two weeks at Knishes by the Sea.

What did I know about the tastes of New York girls? As I recall she swallowed hard as we got out the car with our luggage and checked in.  

“Welcome to Kinishish by the Sea,” our hostess said, as she took us to our room.

Two single beds! We were stunned. She quickly pushed the beds together and put a spread over them making look like a double.

”I will give some money back,” said our Greek hostess.

“Mrs. Kinish, don’t you know that we are on our honeymoon? “

“I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”  

It got worse. A storm had been brewing out in the Atlantic, off Dania beach, as we were getting ready for bed. It was windy. Brilliant lightning lit up the room.

 “Don’t worry Grace, it will pass,” I muttered, as I saw water seeping in under the front door. She had already curled up in bed with the blanket over her head.

I cleared my throat and watched the weather report on the TV. The forecast looked ominous. By the end of the night, nine inches of rain had fallen in Dania, and I had seriously considered evacuating the place.

Needless to say, it was a setback in the adventure into holy matrimony for the Weidenthals, but as promised, Mrs. Kineshes showed up bright and early the next day with a smile on her face.

“I found a bigger room for you. It has a real double bed and a couch to sit on."

The rest of Florida adventure into matrimony went relatively well. Do you think, Doc that our dicey encounters would be meaningful to our future relationship, Doc? Done any research?

By the way, in preparation for this document, I did a Google search trying to find my favorite love palace. There was no Kinishes by the Sea. 

Not in Dania, Ft Lauderdale, not in Hollywood, not anywhere.

Good riddance.

See ya next week Doc. There’s a lot to discuss.               

My Life As a Muckracker As told to Dr. Freud (part five)

Here's something strange Doctor: To this day I've not been able to figure out how Yugoslavia’s Communist dictator, Marshall Tito, knew I was coming to Zagreb.

Did Russian spies tip him off, or was it that Jewish Rumanian girl with the unshaven legs I met in Zurich? She was nice, and I thought it was a pleasant encounter. She didn't strike me as a commie agent. More on that in a moment.

I was still in distress, when I headed to Zurich on my journalistic adventure into government sponsored social and welfare services, but I managed to put Bette Daneman far back in my mind.

Zurich is, as you know, a magnificent, civilized town. At least it was in those days. The first night in town, I decided it was a good place to relax and stretch, take a shower and wash some clothes.

I wasn't in the room two hours, when I got an urgent call from the front desk.

“The police want to talk to you Mr. Veidenthal. Yes? They say you have clothing hanging on the railing of your balcony. It is against the law, sir! You have a half an hour to remove them, or we will have to evict you.

“Yes sir!”  I said, and promptly obeyed.

Is this Nazi Germany?, I thought. I went out to the balcony, which overlooked the town square, and removed every bit of clothing from the railing, feeling like someone was tracking me from below.

My visit to an enormous Swiss hospital the next day was very impressive. I could not help noticing that the Red Cross was hanging all over. Then I reminded myself that is the Swiss flag. It hangs everywhere. The government hospital was very much what you might expect in a small, homogenous country. The care was superb, and the facility had sustained no damage from the war. They had remained neutral, as the Nazis ravaged Europe.

That night, my encounter with the Rumanian girl came on a trolley as I was riding back from the hospital. I noticed her sitting opposite me, attractive and young, with unshaven legs. Somehow I remember that vividly, after all these years. So Eastern European, I thought. I smiled and she smiled back. I got up and walked toward her, she made room for me, and we talked. I noticed a small Star of David hanging around her neck. Aha, she's one of us, I declared to myself. 

I said “Shalom”. 

She replied, “Shalom”. 

Turned out she was a Holocaust survivor whose family had escaped Rumania during the war. l wanted to know more. It was the germ of a very interesting conversation. When we got to the stop at her hotel she invited me to get off and have a cup of tea. Nothing sinister I assure you, but I did mention my planned visit to Zagreb. Innocent, totally innocent, at the time.

I left Zurich none the worse for wear and headed for Vienna, which was still occupied by troops from the US, England, France and Russia. The Victors, so to speak. Somehow, using my Press credentials, I managed to gain entry to the world meeting of the International Association of Legislators. Lawmakers from everywhere attended, including a senator and several congressmen from Ohio, and notably, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, who I believe had run for president. (Unsuccessfully.)

I jumped on a bus with the lawmakers and their wives for a fun evening at a tavern up in the Vienna Woods. Kefauver as I recall, was really drunk before we got there, and led our bus mates in singing a round of Auld Lang Syne. I thought to myself, if these guys were sober we could declare peace around the world. I was idealistic in those days.

It was a frenzied drunken evening, where absolutely nothing would be solved.

So much for world peace.

From Vienna, a battered prewar plane managed somehow to get me to a small airfield in Zagreb. It was another tiny airport with mostly government military warplanes. This was the heart of the new communist Balkans where Dictator Marshal Tito had assumed control. He ruled with an iron hand, and was not loved by the free world, as he was a puppet of Stalin.

I had come to cover the World Conference for the Welfare of Children. Key participants were, the Dean of the School of Social Work at Case Western Reserve University, and Bell Greve, Director of Health & Welfare for the City of Cleveland. This was to be the first post war conference. Both Bell Greve and the CWRU dean were widely known, Arriving at the airport, I looked around. The horse drawn vehicles, ready to carry us into town, struck me as so primitive.

THE TOSO DABAC ARCHIVES

This was 1955. There were only a few motorized cabs. I was told there was only one gas station in town. I somehow found a “real cab” and headed for my hotel which had been booked for me by an agent back in Cleveland. We pulled up, and before I could gather my things and pay the driver, an attractive woman opened the back door.

"On behalf of Marshal Tito, I welcome you to Zagreb. I have a better place for you," she announced in perfect English, then she hopped into the front seat and instructed the driver in Slovenian. I shouted to the driver to let me out, but it was too late.

I was petrified.

Next: My indoctrination into Communism, Tito and Stalin-style.

My Life As a Muckracker As told to Dr. Freud (part three)

Doc, welcome back. Hope you had a nice Vacation in Miami Beach. You look good. Healthy. Better than Vienna right?! Had a little bout with something. Last week but I'm fine now...

To bring you up to date: I spent about two years chasing cops on the police beat. Auto accidents, fires, and the like, before my time came to move ahead. On the beat I learned a lot about the human condition in Cleveland; the plight of blacks and whites struggling to maintain a decent lives. It wasn't easy in the city, even in those relatively benign days of the 50's. Of course, the raucous 60's were just around the corner. We should have seen that coming, but we didn't. It wasn't a soft touch for the cops either. The police beat experience made me wonder what happens to a good, decent human being when he or she puts on a uniform.

Doc, you probably understand this better than I. Human nature, right? The uniformed guys lose their humanness. Can't change that, Doc. The uniform brings out the feeling of power. Every time I encountered a cop in later years, I tried to deal with them like human beings. It simply didn't and doesn't work. The law is the law. I invariably ended up saying yes "Sir, yes Sir," and they mostly ended up telling me to tell it to a judge.

One night when I first went down to Texas, I was driving in a relatively dark busy road on the way to a religious service in Sun City about ten miles away. After I had made a turn onto a main road, there was the sight of flashing lights the sound of a siren.

“What have I done?,” I thought to myself.

The cop pulled me over, and walked toward the car. Oh good, it was a woman! A young blonde. Not bad looking. I breathed a sigh of relief. I can handle this. But I had sighed too soon. From those beautiful lips she barked,  

“You got a license? You a citizen?! What are you doing down here? Do you know where you are going?”

“I’m going to a religious service at Sun city, and I'm a bit lost Ma’am. Maybe you can help me? By the way I really like your town, the library, the theater...”

“Any drugs in the car? Do you know you were doing 25 in a 40 mile zone?! That's a violation of state law. And you made a wide turn into Williams Drive,” she barked as she poked her flashlight into my face.

“I’ll let it go this time, with a warning. Better not happen again.”

So much for good looking blondes in uniform.

My opportunity to move up from the police beat arrived when Alex Groner, a fine reporter and writer, accepted a job with Time magazine. He had covered the Health and Welfare beat for the Press. Louis Seltzer asked me take over the assignment, a prime job. He was strongly involved in the health and well being of the town's citizens, particularly for the powerless and the disadvantaged. I was told that Health and Welfare was important. The editors weren't socialists, but good journalists. We became the champions of the weak and the powerless, and we were interested in the rapid growth of health care in the city. 

Dr. Crile

Dr. George Crile led the way. He came to the east side where he founded the Cleveland Clinic, initially known as the Crile Clinic. The Press was on top of the story. The paper was also concerned for the care of the elderly and the poor. They were convinced we could do better, and our readers wanted it that way. It was a huge public issue in those days, too.

After I established myself on the beat, the editors agreed to send me on an ambitious five week trip to Europe to take a look at the advanced social systems that were emerging in the West. If they could meet the social needs of their folks why can't we? The question of course, is unanswered to this day. For me it became, with the boss’s permission, much more than a simple journalistic venture.

It was my sentimental return to Europe, only a few years after the war. This time I took the Queen Mary, the stately ocean liner of its time. I had my own bunk, but not much more. I holed up in the lowest class. It must have been fifth class. Four of us shared a so-called room. There was me, another fellow my age from Chicago, who I hung out with, a priest, and a middle aged guy. A group of us from steerage hung together, found a secret passage to First Class and had a ball. There were a number of young single guys and some very lovely British young ladies.

But there was a hooker to this, Doc. These girls were all Brits who had married American soldiers during the war, and were now returning home to visit their families. I, of course, was very careful, not wanting to create an international incident, but not careful enough. To this day I blame it on the guy from Chicago. (And of course the priest, who should have prayed for me.)

I was controlling myself as best I could, because my Cleveland girlfriend, Bette Daneman, was to meet me in London. I forgot to tell you about her, Doc. Bette was a very bright young lady, and head of the Cleveland Junior council on World Affairs, who was studying in Oxford for the summer. We’d planned to travel together on a five week adventure. Innocents abroad, so to speak. I would stay in a hotel on Sloane Square, do my reporting in the London area and then drive up to Oxford and pick her up.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Doc. You know, raging hormones.

By pure coincidence Doc, honest, I happened to be innocently walking hand in hand down the gangplank with one of the British gals, and would you believe, standing there among the greeting crowd to surprise me was Bette, with a pained look on her face. Boy, was I surprised. She saw me “walking the plank,” so to speak. I ducked away from the British girl, but it was too late.

Bette never really smiled that day or the next. You understand, don't you Doc? Girls are funny. They're sensitive. It seemed like a wonderful friendship begun in Cleveland, but it was destined for disaster in London.

Can you help me with this one? Can you, Doctor?

Next: Crying in my beer in Asmunhausen, and a dicey encounter with Yugoslavia's Dictator, Tito.

My Life As a Muckraker (part two) As Told To Dr. Freud (Sending a boy to do a man's job.)

I'm sorry I missed my session last week, Doctor, but I had a bad cold and I didn't want to give it to you. Your wife said it was your policy that I had to pay for missed sessions. I gave her my card. (He nodded at me looking not at all embarrassed. I was annoyed, but I didn't say anything.)

Just to sum up from last time Doc, you recall that I was hired by the Press right out of college, spent a few days in Toledo, then hopped the Mercury Streamliner to begin my career as a journalist.

You might expect that at my moment of triumph, I would have jumped off the train at the terminal, grabbed a bus, and headed to Ninth St. and the Press to report for work. Instead took a deep breath, and took the Cedar Hill trolley up to the Heights for home. I had to find a white shirt, a narrow tie, and get a haircut and shave.

The Cedar Hill trolley

Maurice Weidenthal, my grandfather

A few days later, with dreams of becoming some kind of hot shot editor, I walked into Norman Shaw's office and presented myself for the coronation, so to speak. After all, he did call my home asking about me, right Doc?!

Shaw was a fine looking, cool type with graying hair and a straight serious face. He was an Oberlin man, the son of a Plain Dealer editor. He was much the antithesis of Press editor Louis B.Seltzer, who left school after junior high to find his way in journalism. Kind of a balance at the top, which as it turned out, worked very well.

It wasn't long into our conversation when Shaw noted that his father, Archer Shaw, and my grandfather, Maurice, had worked together at the Plain Dealer at the turn of the century. He as associate editor, my grandad as politics writer and theater critic. I said to myself, it’s my name he wants, not me or my great talents. My ego sank. I was hurt inside. Yes, Doc, it hurt.

It sank even deeper when I was told that there weren't any real reporter or editing jobs open at the moment; that I would have to start as a copy boy. Oh my God, I thought to myself, how much can my fragile manhood take?

Enough of this “boy” stuff!

But I sucked it up, Doctor, and took the job, still at $35 a week. I forgot to tell you that part of the job was to clean and fill paste pots. Each writer had a coffee cup filled with paste, necessary to clip and paste copy after proof reading or edits. It was a messy job, especially when you consider how easy it is to cut and paste on the computer these days.

My plan was to do a first class job, even with the paste pots. (Which I became very good at, by the way.) I’d get to know the territory and become friendly with some of the big guys that I admired. One of them was Dick Peters, a genuine Yalie, who looked the part. Like Shaw, he was tall, with silvering, thinning, graying hair, in his early 40's and straight as an arrow. I learned that he’d been General Douglas MacArthur’s PR guy during the war in the Pacific. I fantasized that he was there when MacArthur made his famous return to the Philippines. Maybe he even wrote the line.

Peters lived on Princeton Rd. in Cleveland Heights with his father, who was the headmaster at University School. For some reason, Peters and I hit it off. After a few months of "boy" work, Peters approached me one day saying,

"We’re going to try an experiment in our department. We need young blood and we want you to join us.”

 I was stunned. Flattered.

“You start on Monday.”

I didn't quite know how to act. I had to buy more shirts and ties for my transition from filling paste pots, to being an editorial writer. It was a real coup. There were four men in the department. I would become the fifth. My job was to deal with letters to the editor, pick out the best, and confirm their authenticity.

I would also help in the back room laying out the page, proofreading, and making the morning deadline. It was cool. And I tried to act normal among my comrades who worked in the chaotic City Room.

After awhile I was given the latitude to crank out editorials on fairly non controversial subjects. One of my first ventures into the world of editorial writing, was a full page editorial I wrote for the Saturday page, calling for a rebuilding of the Cleveland Airport, which was, at that time, nothing more than a backwater pre war facility with no concourses or jet ways. We ran three rather large aerial photos of the three area regional airports; Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit. The other two were already in the construction stage. As usual, Cleveland was slow to catch up. We were entering a new era of jet travel, and Cleveland was falling behind, being dragged down by the small mindedness at City Hall, while Detroit and Pittsburgh were taking a regional approach.

Cleveland Hopkins Airport 1956

We did get some action, when the city announced it was tacking on two concourses to the existing building, but the basic small mindedness continues to this very day.

I learned a lot about the inside of the big city paper while working “up front”, as they called it. There was always this behind-the-scene tension between the local editors and the Scripps Howard owners. Scripps was conservative, and owned a chain of papers across the country. It also owned Cleveland's first television station, WEWS. (Remember Dorothy Fuldheim?)

Dorothy Fuldheim

The Press was populist liberal. Scripps didn't worry about the local stuff. It sold papers. But on major national matters, we were being watched.

Roy Cohn and Jospeh McCarthy

Those were the days of that evil man, Joe McCarthy. The editorial writers wanted to tee off on this man and the witch hunt. He was no Trump, but in those days, many felt he was a threat to the nation. He had destroyed the lives of many good people in his so-called Communist Crusade. His side kick was nasty New York lawyer, Roy Cohn, who in later years turned up advising Trump. 

Finally, aggressive lawyer Jack Welch, from Massachusetts stood up, as he defended members of the Armed services. 

He looked McCarthy in the eyes and declared,

“You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

McCarthy eventually faded into obscurity, done in by growing opposition, good journalism, his own nastiness and alcoholism.

A lesson from history. 

The truth does matter.

Next: (My Life as a Cop Watcher )