“Go East Young Man”

 

The meeting at the Fairmont Hotel bar in San Francisco marked a turning point in my life in 1963.

“How would you like to come and write  for me at the Delaware State News?” said Jack Smyth, the publisher, who was attending a newspaper convention.  Smyth decided to interview me there after I answered an ad in Editor & Publisher magazine.

I got the job, but I guess I committed a gaffe. “Mike only had one drink and left,” he complained to people later.

When I told my mother about the job, she was horrified. “Delaware?!!!” She lamented. After graduating from UC Berkeley, I had worked for three months in a summer replacement job on the staid Berkeley Daily Gazette. She expected me to stay in the area.

But I piled my belongings into my 1956 Ford and crossed the country to Dover, Del., a small town but also a state capital. I had to borrow money from Smyth when I got there. Smyth was a native Pennsylvanian who definitely had the luck of the Irish. A farmer came into his newspaper in Renovo, PA., telling Smyth of a dream he had: There was natural gas on his property. Smyth invested in the exploration, and sure enough gas came up! As soon as Smyth moved to Dover to open a daily newspaper, the population spiked when the government installed an Air Force base.

Smyth was loads of fun but drank a tad too much.  He would write editorials against his wife in the newspaper and hosted a drinking lunch for the news staff on Fridays. A fake April Fool’s photo on the front page April 1 showed a C-133 cargo plane crashing into the state capital.  Base employees were not laughing!

Smyth was pilloried by a rival newspaper for writing in November, 1963, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and his name is Jack Kennedy, and he should be shot literally before Christmas.” (He said later he meant figuratively.)

The newspaper was a great training ground for a young journalist. Besides writing headlines and designing news pages, I got out to cover speeches by John F Kennedy (eight days before he died), Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson. I covered the school board and often the city council. I wrote a column called “Go East Young Man.”

But then I got called up for six months of active duty in the Army Reserve. Smyth hadn’t thought to check my draft status but helped me get into the local unit. While I was gone, his doctor insisted that he sober up to stay alive.

He did, but the fun was gone. When I returned, there were no more wild lunches or crazy editorials. Budgets and professionalism mattered. He began a Sunday statewide newspaper and chain of newspapers that stretched to Arizona, where he later moved.

I love living in a small town now, but I didn’t as a 22-year-old. While Petula Clark was singing “Downtown” on the radio, I was heading to Pittsburgh.within six months.