By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO–I think it is only fair to warn student journalists that anything they write for their publications–anything–may follow them around for the rest of their lives. Now, this can be a good thing, as in two tales I will soon relate, or it can be a very bad thing, if the young journalists are under the mistaken impression that news is perishable and they therefore write awful things never meaning it to be taken seriously.
I write this column on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. On the day of the awful event, I was a college sophomore as well as the editorial editor of the UCLA Daily Bruin. Along with the rest of the world, I was utterly stunned by the news. I wrote a column for a subsequent edition of the DB which was filled with questions about what it all meant, and what were we, as a nation, to do now that our leader had been struck down.
That story was preserved in archives. Somehow a member of the current-day staff of the UCLA Daily Bruin tracked me down, and asked me to recall the day of the assassination for a roundup story that ran in the DB on the anniversary.
The DB story prompted in me some very mixed responses: recalling the sadness, fear and other emotions of the day brought back some of those very same feelings. Re-reading the column I wrote at the age of 18, I cringed at some of the wording that I employed in an attempt to suggest that we couldn’t really mourn the President if at the same time we practiced discrimination and bigotry.
On the other hand, I couldn’t help but feel a touch of pride that even after five decades representatives of my alma mater thought anything I might say would be of interest to present-day faculty, students and staff on the UCLA campus.
Thinking about the column also brought back memories of the Daily Bruin staff members who were such important persons in my life. There were the editors-in-chief in the years I worked there: Al Rothstein, Les Ostrov, Phil Yaffe, Joel Boxer, and there were other staff members like Rees Clark and Howard Bronstein who lived at the same on-campus dorm that I did. One of our number, Harry Shearer, went on to become for several years part of the cast of Saturday Night Live, and also to lend his voice to The Simpsons animated television show. I can never forget Jim Howard, a former UPI man, who as our technical advisor encouraged many of us to become more professional in our approach to reporting and writing and to consider making journalism our careers. In that latter regard, I can point not only to myself but to Lori Weisberg, the very talented writer who focuses on business for U-T San Diego.
In my freshman year at UCLA, I read an advertisement calling on people to consider becoming cub reporters for the 5-days-a-week student newspaper. As an inducement, the advertisement offered free coffee and donuts. I hadn’t worked on my high school newspaper, so I didn’t have any experience at all. I had no idea if I could be any good at journalism, but I told myself that it was a no-lose proposition. Even if I didn’t make the grade, I’d still get the free coffee and donuts.
At the meeting of prospective reporters, we were told that the only way it could be decided if we were suited for a position on the staff would be for us to accept a feature story assignment, do whatever interviewing might be required, and then to submit a written account to the editors. I was assigned a story about two members of the Bruin Mountaineer Club who that summer had hiked around the country, climbed Mount Edith Cavell in Canada, and had even met Sir Edmund Hillary.
I interviewed the two climbers, submitted the story, and not long afterwards it was printed. My disappointed mother later commented that when I got my first byline, “the world lost a doctor.” Personally, I’ve always thought it turned out better for the world because who needs a doctor who gets squeamish at the sight of blood?
Many years later, circa 2005, I had lunch at the Westgate Hotel in downtown San Diego with Diana Lindsay, co-publisher with her husband Lowell of Sunbelt Publications, a regional book publisher that was kind enough to publish my biography, Louis Rose: San Diego’s First Jewish Settler and Entrepreneur.
In one of those getting to know you discussions between author and publisher, Diana asked me how I happened to get into journalism. I told her about the coffee and donuts, and the story about the two Bruin mountaineers.
“Yes,” she said excitedly. “I read that story. I have a copy of it!”
“What? Why?” I asked, astonished.
Her husband and co-publisher Lowell Lindsay was one of those mountaineers, she explained.
What a coincidence. More than 40 years after the story was published, one of subjects of the story–along with his wife–published my book, although none of us had remembered our previous connection.
Our memories fade, but the printed word endures for a very long time afterward.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
May I indeed be known by the company I kept. RC