One Journalist Went Bad, The Other Became Good

Reading back issues of the L.A. Times upon returning from my African cruise, I see that two journalists I knew very well died in late April besides the late, great Chuck Hillinger. (I did Hillinger's obituary blog on April 30 from my ship).

DeVan Shumway, bureau chief in Sacramento for United Press International part of the time when I worked there in 1962-63, died at 77 on April 23. He provides a striking example why journalists, if they can avoid it, should seldom go to work as PR men, or flaks.

Shumway was a conservative, but serviceable bureau chief for UPI. Although he was no comparison to Morrie Landsberg or Bill Stall over at the Associated Press bureau across the hall in the state capitol, he still employed some good people, including George Skelton and Bob Fairbanks.

He was ambitious, and he eventually went to work first for a Nixon cabinet member and former California lieutenant governor, Bob Finch, and then at CREEP, the Nixon relection committee in 1972, the Watergate year. It fell to Shumway to deny the stories in the Washington Post and other news outlets about the crimes of Mr. Nixon and his unsavory associates.

When the Post reported the FBI had linked the Watergate burglary to political spying and sabotage by other CREEP employees, Shumway called the story "not only fiction, but a collection of absurdities" He reacted to a New York Times story that detailed the connections between the Watergate burglars and CREEP by terming it "outrageously false and preposterous." Both stories, as the Times short obituary noted, were eventually established as true.

Shumway died in obscurity in Baltimore. During his career with Nixon, be also engaged in the "non-denial, denial," in which he denied things off the record, which also turned out to be true. Nixon had some semi-honorable spokesmen, like Herb Klein and Sandy Quinn, but Shumway and Ron Zeigler were not among them.

It is, however, barely conceivable that Shumway did not know he was prevaricating when he made his Watergate denials, just as it is barely conceivable that Sam Zell did not know he was lying when he said he would invest in the papers of the Tribune Co., rather than sell or downsize them. But it is not even barely conceivable that Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton did not know he was prevaricating when he said recently that Los Angeles Times employee morale was high.

The same day, the Times published the Shumway obituary, it also ran a paid obituary for the paper's longtime letters editor, Bob Jensen, who died April 27 at the age of 82.

Jensen was one of the distinguished group of writers and editors that the late Tony Day assembled around the editorial pages of the L.A. Times in the 1970s and 1980s, and he was a thoroughly outstanding editor, with whom I had a great many pleasant exchanges and dealings.

As a young Army lieutenant during World War II, Jensen was enraged by indignities he saw heaped on America's Negro soldiers, but he lived so long as to be able to see the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama.

After the war, Jensen finished his education, and embarked on a journalistic career which took him to the Associated Press in New York and to the Washington Post and Buffalo Evening News in Washington, D.C. He also served (but not dishonorably) as press secretary to Sen. Hubert Humphrey for several years, before joining the Los Angeles Times in 1971, where he became the letters editor until he retired in 1987.

During these years, the Times was at its height in circulation under Otis Chandler and Tom Johnson, and letters came in by the thousands. Jensen could always be found going through the stacks of letters for those he would publish. Day nearly never interfered with his judgment.

He had an excellent sense of humor about some of these letters. After all, President Truman had once said that he believed that "half the nuts in the world could be found within a 100-mile radius of Los Angeles," an assertion a Times editorial suggested that the newspaper would not rush to challenge, and of which Jensen saw daily proof.

Jensen, in short, was the commensurate professional, everything that Shumway, Zeigler, Zell and Stanton were or are. Of course, in those days, you could be a professional and not get fired for it, as Tribune Co. lackey David Hiller later did with the courageous Dean Baquet.

Chuck Hillinger, Dies At 82, A Great Loss

Written from Mombasa, Kenya--

It is hard to believe that our friend and esteemed colleague, Chuck Hillinger, is gone. Even in old age, he was such a lively, optimistic part of our lives in the retired employees association, he believed so much in the newspaper business, he was so justifiably proud of the many achievements of his life, that he commanded countless admirers.

I was lucky to have known him for more than 40 years. Chuck, who died of cancer Monday at 82 was a feature writer par excellence during the halcyon days of the Los Angeles Times, when Otis Chandler was publisher and Bill Thomas was editor. He worked 46 years for the paper.

He traveled everywhere, he wrote prolifically, he worked long hours, and many of the thousands of stories he wrote made their mark as a wonderful view of life, first in our state, then gradually throughout the nation and elsewhere in the world. The Times never stinted giving him the necessary financial backing for his reporting endeavors, and he richly repaid the backing he got.

There are many tributes to Chuck today, from Bob Gibson, Bob Rawitch, Ben Mintz and others, but one of the nicest and truest came from Bill Thomas' who recalled that he wrote so many stories it was hard to get them all into the newspaper. Some say there were 10,000 Chuck Hillinger stories in all. He was a treasure for the readers.

Chuck commanded admiration in the newsroom, and he was always on the spot, whereever he was needed. In November of 1970, with my wedding in Birmingham, Alabama, just around the corner, I was stuck in Montreal, covering a Quebec separatist kidnapping that had gotten much news coverage. I had already missed some of the pre-wedding events, when Chuck arrived in Montreal one night and told me I was free to leave in the morning for the wedding.

He always remembered doing this good turn, and would never cease to remind me, whenever we met, how grateful I was for the relief he provided. And I was. I have seldom been happier to see anyone than I was Chuck Hillinger that night.

In later years, Chuck was grieved, as we all have been, about the decline of the Times under new, uncaring ownership.

But he thought too much of newspapers to believe they would ever disappear or lose their ability to make distinctive contributions to their readers.

American journalism needs its Chuck Hillingers, those who never lose their thirst to provide newsworthy entertainment and whose interest in what they are doing is unbounded. His work, like that of Jack Smith, Art Seidenbaum, Paul Coates and so many other great Times writers, is part of our heritage.

We pause today in sadness to pay tribute to him, and to wish his family well at this sad time.

A California Soldier Killed In Iraq Comes Home

There was no story in the L.A. Times yesterday so touching, so appropriately emotional, as the one on the homecoming of the body of Army Sgt. David J. Hart, 22, of Lake View Terrace, who died in Balad of injuries received Jan. 8 while in combat in Iraq. Two of his fellow-soldiers also died as a result of the firefight with insurgents near Samarra.

The L.A. Times, which does a fine job in covering the dead from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, devoted both a front-page picture and then two in the California section to the ceremony for family and friends as Sgt. Hart arrived at the Long Beach Airport Tuesday afternoon.

Luis Sinco was the Times photographer. The story by Paloma Esquivel was a masterpiece, because it told with such gently-worded descriptions, of the grief of Sgt. Hart's family, his widow, his mother and father, and so many others, the military honor guard, the flag-flying veterans, even the ordinary airport employees, who were at the airport when Hart's flag-draped body arrived by private aircraft, along with an Army buddy. Pfc. Richard Gilbert, who accompanied the body home.

Sinco's main picture on Page 1 of the California section is a moving reflection of the grief of the Hart family. Who can look at that picture, without feeling tremendous sympathy for all of them? And Esquivel knows the power of spare, simple writing, not maudlin, to convey the emotion of the occasion.

"Freedom is not free," as has been said, and the sacrifices of those who volunteer for the U.S. Armed Forces must always command our admiration, always when they go, always as we support them with gift packages and messages when they are overseas, but, tragically, most of all when they are casualties in the conflict. Then, their bodies are brought home, to receive the homage they deserve, or, if they are wounded, they come home for treatment.

"Spirit that made those heroes dare to die and leave their children free," was the way that Ralph Waldo Emerson put it in his poem in 1837 at the dedication of the memorial at the Concord Bridge. He also wrote in hopes that "memory may their deed redeem, when like our sires, our sons, are gone."

The same is true today. We grieve with the loving relatives of Sgt. David Hart, and we honor his service, and his great sacrifice.

The L.A. Times, much more than the New York Times, devotes space, especially every week on Sundays to all those killed in the War on Terror, and, frequently, there are longer articles on Californians lost in the war. But there is a paragraph for everyone, telling who it was , where they were from, what military unit in which they served, and how they died.

I never fail to read carefully everything that is written. We were lucky in our family to be able to welcome home, with a gala family party, one of our family members who served in Fallouja. Our sympathies and greatest respects must always go to those who serve and do not come home alive.

Thanks, in this case, to Esquivel, to Sinco, and to the Times editors who so powerfully commemorated the homecoming of Sgt. Hart. His family will always lovingly remember him. May he rest in peace.

--

The estimable Molly Selvin writes a most interesting article in the Times' Business section about the new employee handbook at the Times distributed for the Tribune Co.'s new owner, Sam Zell, It uses just 3,663 words to say in a simpler, good-humored way what was said in 11,519 words in the old pre-Zell handbook, and was written by one of Zell's assistants, Randy Michaels.

According to Selvin, some lawyers think the new handbook is too simple, opening the company to lawsuits. But that remains to be seen. I like the new handbook much better than the old, in part because there is not so much legalese in it. Anyone who doesn't let lawyers command their lives is, in my view, to be lauded and not vilified. I've known good lawyers, but not too many. Most of them are nit-picking grinds, devoted to making life more miserable for themselves and everybody else.

I'm on the lookout these days for signs of how Zell intends to run the company. This is a good sign. His number one point makes eminent good sense: "Use your best judgment." The most important thing, though, is that, unlike past employee handbooks, this one is likely to be actually read by employees.

As Selvin writes, "In place of words like 'pursuant to,' 'required minimums,' and 'appropriate documentation,' the Zell model uses plain language -- and jokes."

But, as usual, a San Francisco attorney, Mark Schickman, tosses a wet blanket over everything. Selvin quotes Schickman as observing, "In an effort to be brief and funny, they've made a lot of mistakes."

Schickman is one of these attorneys who ought to be dumped in the Bay -- with the current running out under the Golden Gate.

Mike Sherman Dies, Liberal Alabama Journalist

I pause to pay tribute today to my former brother-in-law and distinguished Alabama journalist, Mike Sherman, who died Tuesday night of cancer at the age of 64. He was a strong personality with a dry sense of humor, a loving husband, father, brother and uncle, and, above all, in a conservative Southern state a liberal and humane man.

For 34 years, Sherman worked for Alabama newspapers, the Anniston Star, the Alabama Journal and the Montgomery Advertiser in a career that saw him serve as a reporter covering the Alabama Legislature, an associate editorial page editor, a city editor and a state editor. Other members of his immediate family also were in journalism, his sister Amelia a reporter for the Anniston Star and his son, Merrill, now a graphics designer with the Associated Press in New York.

Sherman grew up in Birmingham during the great civil rights struggle there eventually led by The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in what had been up to that time one of the most segregationist cities of America. He was 19 at the time of the cowardly church bombing that killed four black girls at the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham one Sunday morning in 1963, but as early as when he was eight years old, Sherman wore an Adlai Stevenson-John Sparkman button in the 1952 presidential campaign at a time when virtually all his school mates came from families that were Dwight Eisenhower supporters.

Sherman came from an unabashedly liberal Presbyterian family in the working class Ensley section of Birmingham, not far from the great steel plants. His mother was a long time Social Security employee, his father, a postman who had fought in Gen. George Patton's Third Army in World War II and was in the unit that liberated the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Carl Sherman never forgot what he saw that awful day in 1945, and he made the experience one of the foundations of the family's liberalism. The family was not wealthy, but three Sherman children, including Mike, graduated from the University of Alabama. They were the first generation of Shermans to go to college.

Growing up, Sherman lived on the same block as a boy his age who later became executive editor of the New York Times, Howell Raines. The two were close friends, and Raines recalled this week that Mike Sherman "picked journalism as a profession much earlier than I did."

Raines, who in his career also authored an oral history of the civil rights movement, still remembers when Sherman wore the Stevenson-Sparkman button to elementary school. "It was stunning to me that we had anybody in our neighborhood who supported Stevenson and Sparkman," he said in a tribute that was part of a lengthy obituary today in the Montgomery Advertiser.

Raines said Sherman enjoyed working for the Anniston and Montgomery newspapers "because he was a fair-minded man who knew those papers were tools for social progress in Alabama."

Colleagues from the Advertiser were quoted in the obituary as remembering Sherman for his integrity and as a reporter who could keep a confidence. His son Merrill told the newspaper, "Politicians opened up to him because they knew he wouldn't violate off-the-record comments. He was always proud of covering the Legislature."

The reporter who joined with him in a team covering the lawmakers, Mike Cason, described him as "the most honest, unselfish person I ever knew...Those who worked with him and those he wrote about say the same thing...He churned out great stories because he had a grasp of Alabama and its history. I was so lucky to have been his friend."

Other reporters quoted in the obituary said his dry wit and quick smile did not prevent him from coming up with some sharp rejoinders.

Ken Hare, editorial page editor of the Advertiser, said that as an editorial writer, Sherman "grasped complicated issues quickly and had a remarkable recall of Alabama history and politics. But his best editorials were those that had a human side, the kind that were designed to help people. That reflected what was most essential about Mike -- he was just a nice guy."

When Sherman's father died, he was very taken by the reaction of his young nephew, David Reich, who had gone with his grandfather and the family to a beach house on the Florida Gulf Coast on vacation and remembered how much Carl Sherman had loved Panama City Beach. Told that his grandfather had "gone to heaven," David, then only five, remarked, "Oh, he's gone to Florida." Mike Sherman wrote a column then that ended, "His grandfather would have liked that."

Sherman occasionally visited California after his sister and brother moved here, and he was in Los Angeles visiting when Los Angeles police surrounded members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in a South Los Angeles house and blew the place to pieces. I can remember, as if it were yesterday, his intent look as he viewed the dramatic proceedings.

But what I most remember was Mike's humanity, his love of the South, his admiration of the Southern Poverty Law Center founded by Morris Dees, and his respect for the civil rights pioneers, Rosa Parks and Dr. King, who had led the Montgomery Bus Boycott that began to bring Alabama out of the cruel age of segregation.

He will be greatly missed, no question about that. I was staying in Berkeley Tuesday night when I heard the news of his passing, and I sat in my hotel room silently for a long time, remembering the past and thinking of him with admiration.

Reflections On The Career Of Anthony Day

As its editorial page editor, Anthony Day, who died Sunday in Santa Fe at 74, was involved in a long and ultimately not completely successful struggle at the side of publishers Otis Chandler and Tom Johnson and editor Bill Thomas to make the Los Angeles Times a truly independent, nonpartisan newspaper, capable of endorsing the best candidates as it saw them, regardless of party.

The struggle goes on. It suffered a reverse in 1989, when, after 18 years on the job, Day was removed as "too liberal" at the behest of right wing elements of the Chandler family who had eased Otis Chandler out of his position as publisher and then, just two months before Day was ousted, got rid of Tom Johnson as publisher. An important issue in the Johnson ouster was his insistence on protecting Day.

When Day, son of the famed Baltimore Sun editor Price Day and a Harvard graduate, was hired away from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and came west, it was another step in Otis Chandler's wide ranging effort to make the L.A. Times one of the nation's preeminent newspapers. It could only be done by dropping the paper's historic baggage, as a tool of the Republican party and, often, of reactionary interests. Day joined him in that effort.

In his career as editorial pages editor, Day had many remarkable successes. His writer, Phil Kerby, won a Pulitzer in 1976 for campaigning against government secrecy and judicial censorship. He developed an Op Ed page. He assembled a class staff, with such writers as Kerby, Al Shuster, Roy Ringer, Lou Fleming, Marv Seid, Ernest Conine, Jack Burby, Sid Bernstein and Frank del Olmo. He often protected the prizewinning cartoonist Paul Conrad against his detractors. He stood for honesty in American government, honored diversity in Los Angeles, and, even before he became full editor of the pages, he had authored for the Times the editorial, on June 7, 1970, that called for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. In 1974, one of his editorials urged the impeachment of Richard Nixon.

But there were things that Day could not do. For a long time, reluctant or perhaps unable to challenge his family's Republican tradition head on, Otis Chandler mandated that the Times not endorse at all for major offices, thus abdicating its responsibility to let its readers know how the newspaper felt editorially about the merits of the candidates.

It took awhile even to get that far. In 1972, Day was forced to endorse Nixon for reelection against his better judgment, and in other political areas too, he had to compromise. So that even before the newspaper entered upon days of difficulty and ultimate sale, after the ouster of Johnson and Day, it was not everything it could have been, or everything Day wished it to be.

Still, as so many of us, Day did the best he could do to make the Times one of the nation's greatest newspapers. And, after an interregnum of less distinguished editorial page editors, the newspaper today sees the present editor, Jim Newton, carrying on the struggle for a truly independent editorial page, capable of making any endorsement it chooses.

On a personal note, I had many associations with Day, who I first met when we were in our 30s, covering the 1968 presidential race. In 1972, he made me his Op Ed Page editor, (although I proved ill-suited temperamentally to sit at a desk in an office all day, and after only six months went back to political reporting). Still, we remained friends. We frequently discussed between ourselves our respective viewpoints at the newspaper, and we often socialized. Once, he drove me to and home from a minor operation. After he retired and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to live closer to his son, John, Tony and his wife, Lynn, invited me to visit them, and I spent a week at their lovely home. During my stay there, I bought a Navajo rug that still adorns the entry way in my home, a purchase that Lynn remarked upon just last night when I called her to express my sorrow at Tony's death.

Tony and Lynn Day, who were married 47 years, bore with great sorrow and fortitude the tragic loss of their daughter, Julie, in 1989, and his body will be brought home to be buried near hers in Pasadena, Lynn said last night.

Day was a dedicated and perseverant professional. Even after he was ousted as editorial page editor, something he never really got over, he remained for awhile as a senior correspondent and then, in retirement, wrote book reviews for the Times. For many years, he edited columns written for the newspaper and its Opinion section by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Kissinger declared this week, "Although he was a constant critic of the policies of the administrations in which I served, I always considered him a critic of exemplary fairness, ability and honesty."

A newspaper like the Times needs Anthony Days to survive and prosper. He lives on as a true Timesman in the memories of those of us who respected him and counted him our friend. He was always a newspaperman. Like the late Paul Weeks, who died recently, Day wrote to the end. His last book review appeared in the Times Aug. 1.

Memories Of Michael Deaver, A Loyal Aide

Like Earl Warren, Michael Deaver grew up in Bakersfield in a lower middle class family, and like the great Chief Justice, he never lost his love for California. Warren, who like Deaver lived his last years in Washington, D.C., cited a Kipling poem about the Golden State on his death bed. Deaver, dying of pancreatic cancer, took a last trip to Lake Tahoe just before he died.

Both men had a gift for providing great visuals. Deaver conceived the pictures of President Reagan in Berlin, unforgettably saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," and speaking on top of Pointe-du-Hoc in Normandy, commemorating the brave Army rangers who scaled those heights against Nazi defenders on D-Day. Warren, for his part, appeared with Pat Brown in a memorable picture showing the two duck-hunting in 1962, a picture which helped Brown overcome the challenge of old Warren enemy Richard Nixon in that year's gubernatorial election.

Of course, Deaver could not compare to Warren in stature. But, still, as the loyal aide who worked assiduously to make Reagan a successful governor of California and then President of the United States, and then gave President Reagan the benefit of his candid opinions, Deaver was an important figure.

We cannot underestimate the value of loyal aides who put the careers of the leaders they work for above everything else. Without Louis Howe, Franklin D. Roosevelt might never have been President. Without his brother, Robert, John Kennedy might never have made it to the White House either. And without Deaver, Reagan would not have been the subtle, skillful President he turned out to be. Often, Deaver's advice to Reagan was more moderate than other aides, such as Ed Meese, gave him. And, Reagan, to his credit, knew when to listen.

It was ultimately a more valuable relationship than Jimmy Carter had with his two closest longtime aides, Jody Powell and Hamilton Jordan, when he got to the White House. Powell and Jordan were too limited. Deaver grew with his responsibilities and was a more savvy figure.

Deaver, who died Saturday at the age of 69, was also famously close to Nancy Reagan, the President's frequently underestimated wife. On Deaver's death, Mrs. Reagan, quoted in Johanna Neuman and David Willman's lengthy obituary in today's L.A. Times, reflected on their relationship: "Mike was the closest of friends to both Ronnie and me in many ways, and he was like a son to Ronnie. Our lives were so blessed by his love and friendship over 40 years. We met great challenges together, not just in Sacramento, during Ronnie's years as governor, but certainly during our time at the White House. I will miss Mike terribly."

The strange thing is, so will some of the reporters who knew Deaver over the years. I happened to be talking yesterday afternoon over the phone to Howell Raines, former Washington bureau chief and executive editor of the New York Times. He expressed his respect for Deaver and remarked that his death had come as bad news. As a political writer for the L.A. Times, I too had respect for Deaver, and, at a time when I occasionally did "insider" stories quoting politicians and their aides anonymously as to how political races were going, Deaver -- like Jesse Unruh, Ken Cory and former GOP California state chairman Paul Haerle -- was one of my favorite sources. The sources gave me their honest opinions, and they weren't as partisan as one might expect.

I notice that Lou Cannon, the former Washington Post political reporter and Reagan biographer, is quoted in the Neuman-Willman obituary today assessing Deaver as "curiously an underrated figure. Lots of people can do backdrops. Deaver was one of the few advisors who Ronald Reagan emotionally cared about."

That feeling obviously survived some of Deaver's shortcomings, his periodic alcoholism and his legal troubles after he left the White House as an overweening Washington lobbyist.

The underlying consideration here was that Deaver, no matter what, was always loyal, and Reagan knew it.

Deaver remarked modestly in a 2001 L.A. Times interview that all he had done was arrange photo ops. "I didn't make Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan made me."

That is not quite accurate. Without Michael Deaver, Reagan would not have been the successful governor and President he was.

Lady Bird Johnson -- And Other Political Wives

Both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times yesterday had long, colorful obituaries of Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who died Wednesday in Austin, Texas at 94.

Elaine Woo, the skillful LAT obituary writer, reported that the late House Speaker, Sam Rayburn, had once told Johnson that marrying Lady Bird was the wisest decision he had ever made, and Enid Nemy, writing in the New York Times, quoted the great New York Times reporter James Reston as saying in 1960, "Lyndon could never have made it this far without the help of that woman." It reminded me of something my late father, a Navy Rear Admiral, once told me: "The men who make admiral have wives who are accepted well by the Navy."

Both of the newspapers ran the famous picture taken in Dallas on the fatal day of Nov. 22, 1963, showing Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson comforting Jacqueline Kennedy after the assassination of her husband, John F. Kennedy.

Reading these long accounts of what a wonderful woman Lady Bird Johnson was (she suffered four miscarriages before persevering and having her first child, for example, and she stood by her husband, regardless of his affairs and the Vietnam war tragedy that ruined his reputation), I thought of some of the other great political wives and helpmates I knew as a political reporter for the L.A. Times. And some of those who were not distinguished.

Certainly one of the great political wives was Bernice Brown, the wife of former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown. The daughter of a San Francisco police captain, she had a college education (at U.C. Berkeley) when Pat never did, and she married him only after turning him down several times. He never regretted the great effort he had made to win her hand. Always self-possessed, Bernice Brown often had a wonderful wit about their marriage. One time, in Sacramento, when Pat seemed to have forgotten her first name, Bernice humorously interjected, "his wife of 38 years." She also was not only the wife of one governor, but the mother of another, and the mother of another child who was later a Democratic candidate for governor. She, in short, was the matriarch of a great political family.

During his first major bid for the Presidency in 1976, I had a chance to get to know Nancy Reagan, wife of Ronald Reagan. After Reagan had lost his first five Presidential primaries to then-President Gerald R. Ford, Nancy Reagan did not lose heart. She encouraged Reagan to bring up the Panama Canal issue, and he made a terrific comeback in the Southern and Western primaries, almost wresting the nomination from Ford that year. Nancy was bright and loyal as Reagan's longtime second wife. As with Lyndon Johnson, Reagan might never have become President without her help and devotion. And later her independence, on such issues as stem cell research, marked her as a worthy figure in her own right. She is very widely admired today.

Some legislative wives, as well, were invaluable to their husbands. Dolores Beilenson, wife of Assemblyman, State Sen. and Rep. Tony Beilenson, did her husband a great service by insisting on moving the family from Beverly Hills to Sacramento and Washington, when he served in both places. Not content to be a stay-at-home wife as so many, she made a major difference to Tony's happiness in office. Other prominent legislators who kept their wives at home, were not as well-adjusted.

Sometimes, it took a long time for a politician to marry the woman who was his helpmate and closest friend. This was true of Jesse Unruh and his longtime mistress, Chris Edwards. Unruh married Chris only long after she became his mistress, in the last year of his life, when he was dying of prostate cancer. He used to treat her with some disdain, not realizing her value. One time, when I talked to Unruh about possibly mounting another campaign for governor, he told me, "If I were to run for governor, I'd have to marry Chris, stop drinking and be nice to the press corps, and I don't want to do any of those things." But, finally, Unruh was glad he married Chris.

Jacqueline Kennedy, of course, later became a national icon, in part because of her unforgettable resilience after the assassination of her husband, in part because of her beauty, style and role as a parent of two memorable children. But Jacqueline Kennedy was not, in my view, all that great a political wife. She disdained much of the ordinary campaigning of successful politicians and only seldom accompanied her husband when he ran for President in 1960. As head of the Kennedy-for-President club at Dartmouth College that year, I had an opportunity to see Mrs. Kennedy's reluctance to stump New Hampshire with the future President. I sometimes wonder whether Jack Kennedy would have had so many affairs, had he felt closer to Jacqueline (although, of course, Johnson had affairs despite his closeness to Lady Bird).

Jacqueline Kennedy was nonetheless an asset to Jack, because of her great looks and style. But I knew a few political wives who were albatrosses around the necks of their husbands. This was true of Bethine Church, wife of the late Idaho Sen. Frank Church. When Church briefly ran for President in 1976, she had a nasty habit of interrupting him when he tried to answer reporters' questions. Like Lt. Gov. Glenn Anderson's wife and Los Angeles Police Chief Ed Davis' first wife, she was no asset. (Davis, when he went into politics married a campaign worker, Bobbie Trueblood, who was devoted to him and, despite being considerably younger, stuck with him in his last difficult years of retirement before he died at 89. She is a thoroughly admirable woman.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's wife, Ethel, seldom shared his life as mayor, and was chiefly noted as an inveterate Dodgers fan. Nina Warren, wife of Governor and later Chief Justice Earl Warren, was a direct contrast, always fully sharing in the life of her husband and a tremendous asset to him.

Of the four presidential candidates I covered, Nancy Reagan was my favorite as a wife. Abigail McCarthy and Rosalynn Carter created only indifferent impressions, and Lurline Wallace I positively disliked, although I felt sympathy with her for the way she was treated by her husband, George Wallace, when she was dying of cancer.

What was rare about Lady Bird Johnson, as the obituaries about her explained, was that quite aside from being a great helpmate and devoted companion to her husband, she was an accomplished person in her own right, a highly successful businesswoman and a champion of beautification in American life. She throughly deserved the honors that later came to her, a Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter in 1977 and a Congressional Gold Medal in 1988.

In that respect, she was like Eleanor Roosevelt, the memorable and indomitable wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But sometimes politicians' wives who remained out of the limelight were still tremendously important, because of the help and companionship they gave their husbands. Such was Bess Truman. Harry Truman almost never spent a night away from her, despite his long and varied career stumping the country. And we can never forget Clementine Churchill and Yvonne de Gaulle, the wives of the great World War II leaders. I didn't know them, but I admired them from afar, just as I did their husbands.

Strong and devoted wives, in and out of public life, are a Godsend.

--

Khalid Hassan, 23, an interpreter and reporter in the New York Times bureau in Baghdad since 2003, was killed today under mysterious circumstances, while he was on his way to work. He was the 110th journalist to be killed in the Iraq war, including 87 Iraqi citizens and two Americans.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, issued this statement: "Khalid, was part of a larger, sometimes unsung community of news-gatherers, translators and support staff who take enormous risks every day to help us comprehend their country's struggle and torment. Without them, Americans understanding of what is happening on the ground in Iraq would be much, much poorer. To the Times, Khalid was family and his death was heartbreaking."

John Burns, the great Baghdad bureau chief for the Times, called Hassan "a resourceful and brave member of our news team." He was the second NYT staff member in Baghdad to lose his life.

Ray Hebert Remembered As Conscientious, Modest

I'm just back from three days with the family in Yosemite Valley, where the weather last weekend was almost summer-like, and the waterfalls were full. The park remains, in my view, the greatest natural wonder of California. Six generations of my family have now visited Yosemite, and never once have any of them been disappointed. The Valley and the rest of the park are awe-inspiring. The park is a boost to everyone's spirits.

When I looked at my messages, there was one telling of the death at 86 of Ray Hebert, long an urban affairs writer for the Los Angeles Times, and a man who gave me friendly prodding on both the Olympic assignment and some of my early police brutality stories for the Times.

Hebert was a conscientious, careful reporter, with a dry sense of humor. He believed in getting things right, and he warned me on several occasions to be properly skeptical of what I was hearing from civic boosters of one kind or another.

He had some acquaintances in the Inland Empire, and when I first went to Indio and Blythe, on police brutality stories in the late 1960s at a time when the Times seldom went out of its way to cover such stories, he had contacts and friends whose names he passed along and who were of great assistance.

Later, Hebert wrote about 1984 Olympic plans for Olympic villages. He was skeptical about Bradley Administration promises not to build an Olympic village for the athletes, but, as it turned out, no village was built, and USC and UCLA were made into Olympic villages during the Games, saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ray retired to Carlsbad, but sometimes would turn up at reunions. He occasionally gave me encouragement even in his retired years. I remember him fondly and, like so many of his colleagues at the Times, will miss him. He was always a gentleman. (In answer to a question from an anonymous commentator on this blog, Hebert was white and did not cover the Century Plaza demonstration of 1967. He may have been involved in Watts coverage in 1965, but I'm not certain about that).

--

Mark Arax is being something of a hot head in his present dispute with Times managing editor Doug Frantz over Frantz's proper decision to kill an article he had written on the Armenian genocide.

I sometimes had the same fault, when an article was killed, building it into a big deal when ultimately it would blow over. Bill Boyarsky once gave me some good advice when he said he had had columns killed, and it was important to move on, and continue your work. The same advice should be given to Arax. He seems to want to humiliate Frantz for taking the decision he did. He ought to back off.

An Obituary Need Not Be Positive Pablum

Comparing the New York Times and Los Angeles Times obituaries on Darryl Stingley, the paralyzed former pro football player who died Thursday at the age of 55, is instructive. The great NYT sportswriter Frank Litsky did a far better job than the L.A. Times sportswriter, Sam Farmer.

Obituaries need not be all positive. Sometimes, dismal facts must be allowed to intrude.

Both Litsky and Farmer did let facts intrude, but Litsky properly dealt at length with Jack Tatum, the Oakland Raider player whose intentional hit against Stingley, when Stingley was playing for the New England Patriots in 1978, rendered Stingley a quadriplegic for life, while Farmer dealt more with mistakes made in Stingley's treatment immediately after the injury occurred.

Tatum never apologized for his foul hit against Stingley, never went to see Stingley. In other words, he compounded the sin by his subsequent conduct and proved himself a thoroughly miserable human being.

As Litsky reported, Stingley ultimately forgave Tatum, telling the Boston Globe in 2003, "One person deliberately hurt another person. I'm not in denial about it. He said he went out there to hurt and maim people. But for me to go on and adapt to a new way of life, I had to forgive him."

That same year, complications of diabetes led to the amputation of Tatum's left leg below the knee, and his right leg was threatened by a blocked artery.

But Stingley did not gloat.. "You can't, as a human being, feel happy about something like that happening to another human being," he said. "Maybe the natural reaction is to think he got what was coming to him, but I don't accept human nature as our real nature. Human nature teaches us to hate. God teaches us to love."

Litsky observes, in his obituary of Stingley, "Similar sentiments appeared in Stingley's 1983 autobiography, 'Happy to Be Alive.' Tatum's autobiography was titled, 'They Call Me Assassin.'"

Farmer's obituary, on the other hand, goes quite a bit easier on Tatum. It mentions the two players never met after the injury, but it goes lighter on Tatum's reprehensible failure to apologize. He does indicate that Tatum actually tried to capitalize on the incident.

Farmer does, appropriately, note that those who rushed to aid Stingley after the Tatum hit occurred, failed to properly stabilize his head, which might have lessened the ultimate paralysis.

Inappropriately, the Farmer obituary, however, never describes the Tatum hit as intentional. Litsky, appropriately, describes it in the lead paragraph of his obituary as "an intentionally violent hit." In a later paragraph, he adds, "Tatum symbolized the violent play of many National Football League players at the time. He was not penalized on the play, and the league took no action, but it tightened its rules to punish players who made such hits."

Litsky is a great sportswriter. The comparison of the two obituaries proves that Farmer isn't one yet.

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A Chicago Tribune story notes that the inept CEO of the Tribune Co., Dennis FitzSimons, was given a $1.4 million bonus for 2006, compared to $250,000 for 2005 and $260,000 in 2004. On top of the bonus, FitzSimons received $999,327 in salary in 2006.

This is another corporate spectacular. The more CEOs drive their companies into the ground, the better they seem to be compensated. FitzSimon's big bonus qualifies him for a bigger separation package should he leave the company.

The Tribune buyer, Sam Zell, has said he plans, at least for the time being, to keep FitzSimons and other Tribune executives in place, at least until he can evaluate their efficiency. Judging from FitzSimons' record, he deserves to be terminated as soon as possible, and, judging from his mistreatment of the company's properties outside of Chicago, he should never be permitted to work outside that city again.

Ford's Career Shows Reporters Can Be Wrong

Gerald Ford, who died Tuesday night at his home in Rancho Mirage, was an example how political reporters can be mistaken about major personalities and events in politics at the cost of the personalities themselves.

Most political writers, of whom I was one, felt Mr. Ford lacked intellect and was chosen for the vice presidency by Richard Nixon when Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace as a kind of guarantee that Mr. Nixon himself would not be removed.

This assessment of Mr. Nixon's reasoning may have been correct, but after the Watergate scandal intensified, Mr. Nixon was forced out, and Mr. Ford became President, the view that the new president was without intellect proved overstated in its importance.

With the advantage of hindsight, we can see now that he made the right decision when he pardoned Mr. Nixon, because it made Watergate history and spared the country the spectacle of putting a former president on trial. Instinctively, it was the right thing to do. But at the time, many political writers, including myself, thought it was a mistake. It may have ultimately cost Mr. Ford the 1976 election and also led, here in California to the victory of Democrat Jerry Brown over Republican Houston Flournoy for governor. But years later, the Kennedy Library awarded Mr. Ford a prize for his courage in granting the pardon, and Sen. Edward Kennedy confessed he had been mistaken to have opposed it.

The often-goofy L.A. Times editorial page as late as this morning said it would have been better to let the legal process go forward on Mr. Nixon, but this is not the common view today.

If I had been asked in 1976 who would make the better President for the next four years, I would certainly have said Mr. Carter. After all, I was covering the Carter campaign, and very favorably. Now, I feel in retrospect I went too easy on him.

As it turned out, Mr. Ford was a better President than Mr. Carter. He may not have scored as highly on an I.Q. test, but his instincts were good on the great issues, and he had more of a sense of command than Mr. Carter. He knew better how to prioritize, and even to inspire the country. His staff was superior.

Mr. Ford was in office in 1975 when the U.S. finally abandoned the fruitless Vietnam war enterprise and withdrew from the Southeast Asian country without devastating strategic consequences.

But when Cambodian Communists soon thereafter seized the unarmed American container ship Mayaguez and its crew, Mr. Ford quickly showed that American forbearance had its limits. He ordered the U.S. military to attack Cambodia, and the ship and crew were quickly released. Had Mr. Carter adopted the same policy in the Iranian seizure of American hostages in Tehran four years later, the outcome of that crisis might have been different and terrible subsequent events in Afghanistan and the Middle East avoided.

I now feel the press put entirely too much emphasis on Mr. Ford's perceived ineptitude and occasional awkwardness. His mistakes, such as his denial in a debate with Mr. Carter that Poland was under Soviet subjugation, turned out fairly inconsequential. Mr. Carter's mistakes were far more destructive.

My own most personal memory of Mr. Ford came from an episode in 1980 when I went to Rancho Mirage to interview him about the possibility that he might thrust himself into the 1980 presidential race, (which he decided wisely not to do).

I took my son, David, then five years old with me, and David threw up all over the rug in Mr. Ford's office. The former president was visibly disturbed, but the interview went on successfully.

Mr. Ford was always a gentleman, if a partisan one. We can all view him today with fondness and respect.

Tracy Wilkinson Slanders Oriana Fallaci In Obit

For a long time now, L.A. Times reporter Tracy Wilkinson has proved herself an Arab sympathizer. I think it's time she's moved to a post where she can't do more harm than she has done already.

The latest example of bias is Wilkinson's obituary in Saturday's paper on the courageous Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, For Wilkinson to use pejorative terms as she did in this article is improper, and the editors should not have allowed her to get away with it.

After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, Fallaci began to write more and more frankly about Arab terrorism and the steady infiltration into Europe of Muslim immigrants opposed to assimilation and understanding, and devoted to the kind of violence deplored by the Pope in his recent speech. The Pope, trying to dampen violence which has already resulted in the murder of a nun in Somalia and the burning of churches in Gaza and the West Bank, unwisely, in my view, has backed down from his honest remarks, but it should be remembered that he had the courage to tell the truth in the first place. The violent reaction against him only goes to show he was right.


Wilkinson, meanwhile, calls Fallaci bigoted in her obituary and says her articles were "derogatory, ugly, distasteful."

Shame on Wilkinson. It reminds me of her anti-Israel coverage when she was a Times correspondent in the Middle East, and since she has moved to Rome, she has lost few opportunities to build on her bad record.

Fallaci as a young person resisted the fascists and the Nazis. Now, fundamentalist Islam has taken up the Nazi banner and is, daily, committing grossly offensive actions against civilization.

The United States is at war with these people, and Wilkinson, unfortunately, often seems to be taking the other side. American papers who love liberty should erase the opportunities these fellow travelers like Wilkinson have to denigrate the United States of America and those who have supported it, like Fallaci.

Bigot, by the way, is defined in Webster's New World Dictionary as "a narrow-minded person." By this standard, Wilkinson is more of a bigot than Fallaci, because Fallaci was trying to defend Western values, and Wilkinson continually insults them.

Shav Glick Remembers The Past

After 71 years as a sportswriter, Shav Glick, retiring at 85, remembered the past in an article L.A. Times Sports Editor Bill Dwyre asked him to write Monday, Jan. 16.

And the greatest memory of them all was of the day, when Glick was just 17, and the young Jackie Robinson played in an exhibition game against the Chicago White Sox in Brookside Park near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, on March 13, 1938.

The White Sox won the game against the Pasadena Sox that day, 3-2, but Robinson got two of Pasadena's six hits, stole a base and played flawlessly at shortstop. After Robinson started a double play on American League batting champion Luke Appling's hard grounder, Jimmy Dykes, the White Sox manager, talking with reporters, said, "If that boy was white, I'd sign him right now. No one in the American League could make plays like that."

Glick was the official scorer for the memorable game. It was to take Robinson nine more years to become the first black player in Major League Baseball.

Great pictures accompanied Glick's retirement story, including one of him standing next to Robinson in the Pasadena Junior College honor society photo of 1938.

But Glick's celebrated comment about his retirement wasn't in the article. "I haven't left the Times," he has said. "The Times has left me."

Glick did write, "You think about all the wonderful things you have seen and been privileged to write about -- 35 Indianapolis 500s, Formula One races, Times Grand Prix sports car races, every Long Beach Grand Prix but one, world championship motorcycle events, midgets, spring cars and yes, even drifting. And that's only the motor sports. How about two Olympic Games, a dozen Masters and U.S. Opens, a British Open at St. Andrews, Wimbledon, the World Series, Santa Anita Handicaps, and as a Pasadena native, more Rose Bowl Games than I can count..."

Now, if the Times had a decent editorial page, there would have been an editorial commemorating Glick's retirement. But of course, after the purge of virtually the entire editorial page writing staff, no one there remembers Glick.

Glick is not the oldest sportswriter in history. The Washington Post's Shirley Povich, if memory serves, wrote the last week of his life before he died at 93.

But still, Glick is a marvel. And the Times sports pages, diminished under the Tribune Company's awful ownewrship, still can muster great articles like his retirement piece. Dwyre, the great sports editor, is still in his place.

"As long as I covered sports, I got the most enjoyment from spotting young talent before it became famous, and interviewing young people before the world claimed them," Glick writes.

"Baseball fans think of Ted Williams as one of the game's greatest pure hitters. I saw that hitting when the Thumper was in high school in San Diego. He hit two prodigious home runs in the Pomona 20-30 tourament."

Thanks for the memories, Shav. "Retirement," he wrote, 'The dirtiest 10-letter word in the English language,' said media critic George Seldes -- begins today."

(Shav Glick died of the complications of melanoma on Oct. 20, 2007, less than two years into his retirement. He was 87).

In Honoring Rosa Parks, America Honors Its Ideals

When she refused to give up her seat to a white man on the bus in Montgomery, Ala., on Dec. 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested, taken downtown and booked. Ultimately, she was fined $10 and lost her job. There were no big newspaper stories. In those days, the newspapers of Alabama scarcely covered civil rights.

That is not the case today. As Parks' body lay in state in the city known as "the Cradle of the Confederacy," thousands of persons, black and white, filed past, the U.S. Secretary of State, a black Alabamian, said she would not be Secretary of State were it not for Parks, and every major Alabama paper had the story on Page 1.

Hundreds of people waited at the Montgomery Airport for the arrival of Parks' body. On this occasion, a police escort of six motorcycles guided her into the city.

Today, Parks will be taken to Washington, where she will be the first woman to ever lie in the Capitol Rotunda. The President of the United States will be there to honor her, as will the Republican governor of Maryland, the leaders of Congress and many more thousands of ordinary people.

Why such an outpouring? Because now virtually all Americans recognize Parks as "the mother of the Civil Rights movement." They know that her refusal to give up her seat on the bus marked the beginning of the historic Montgomery bus boycott, which destroyed segregation on the buses of the Alabama capital and ultimately throughout the U.S.

But, more than that, in honoring Parks, we honor our country and ourselves, for rising above evil racism, for truly becoming the country where all are viewed as equal. It is American ideals which are represented in the story of Rosa Parks.

Maybe, it was retired Times' cartoonist Paul Conrad who showed it best, with his cartoon in the paper the other day. On the bus he drew, on the front seat, there was a plaque in gold: "Rosa Parks Sat Here."

Rosa Parks, dead at 92. But living still in the nation to which she gave so much.

George Ringwald Dies, Pulitzer Prize Winner at Riverside Press-Enterprise

Let's pause today to mark the passing of a great newspaperman, George Ringwald, who won a Pulitzer Prize for protecting the Agua Caliente Indian tribe from unscrupulous white guardians in 1968 as a reporter for the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

Ringwald, 81, died of cancer last Sunday, Oct. 9, at his home in Eureka.

I knew Ringwald well. In fact, he was responsible for giving me my first real job in journalism, as a vacation-relief reporter for him when he worked as the Press-Enterprise reporter in Palm Springs in 1955.

Ringwald was in his late 20s when he took the Palm Springs assignment, introducing honest journalism and a skeptical mind to a town that saw little of it up to that time. Not only did he protect the Indians, but he went after gambling proposals in the nearby town of Cabazon and investigated a controversial city councilman in Palm Springs, Jerry Nathanson, who claimed to be my father's fifth cousin by marriage.

In 1952, when as a 14-year-old, I became a prep reporter for the Press-Enterprise on Palm Springs High School sports, Ringwald was working seven days a week at the paper's regular correspondent in town. He started asking me to stop by the police station on Saturdays, pick up what news there was, write it up and take it to the Greyhound bus station in Palm Springs by 12:30 p.m., to send it on to Riverside.

Then, after I got my driver's license, Ringwald suggested to Al Perrin, then managing editor of the Press, to take me on as vacation relief for two weeks. Just an hour after he left town on vacation, a sensational murder was uncovered. The Palm Springs city building inspector, Dutch Graham, had been killed in his kitchen by a man who claimed he had made advances to his wife. This was my real start in journalism.

When Ringwald won his Pulitzer in 1968, the prestigeous award for meritorious public service, the staid Press-Enterprise celebrated the event with champagne in the city room. Also contributing to the newspaper's coverage of the Agua Caliente tribe controversy was the late great editorial page editor, Norman Cherness, a prominent figure in California journalism.

The prizewinning stories had to do with a group of judges and attorneys who were responsible for robbing the Agua Caliente drive by charging exorbitant fees on their estates when tribe members died.

Ringwald left the Press-Enterprise is 1969, first for a Stanford fellowship and then became the BusinessWeek bureau chief in Tokyo for 15 years. Later, he retired to Eureka.

Ringwald was an idealistic iconoclast who once proposed that Detroit stop making cars and let the American people find another, non-polluting way to get around.

He is survived by his wife, Kimiko, and two sons, one by a former marriage.

When I called down to the Press-Enterprise to see if there would be a memorial service, I was told that so much time had passed that no one in the city room had worked there while Ringwald did, so no one not retired remembered him.

I suppose not. But I remember Ringwald as a young honest reporter, ambitious to make his mark on Palm Springs and Riverside County. May he rest in peace.

Erwin Baker, Perseverent City Hall Reporter, Dies

Written from Fairbanks, Alaska--

This has been a sad week. Following the death Monday of L.A. Times great David Shaw comes word that Erwin Baker, the Times City Hall reporter in the 1960s and 1970s, died today in a care facility in Kanaas City.

Erwin was 86 and in the last few years suffered from Alzheimer's disease. He had to give up playing tennis for the most part, and at one point had ordered his own home phone disconnected, breaking ties with many friends who loved and respected him.

Such are the depredations of old age, because once Erwin was as bright and hardworking a reporter as the Times had. At City Hall, he was a dynamo, inquiring into every facit of city government and known especially for his close ties to City Council President John Gibson and other luminaries. The honest ones. Erwin detested the dishonest and inept officials, of whom he perceived there were quite a few.

Erwin was a stickler for ethics and never ceased to be fascinated by just how much money city officials were spending on trips, just what their ties to lobbyists were, and just who really had influence at City Hall.

Such interests led him into natural conflict with that "real" corrupt old fart, Mayor Sam Yorty, and I do not use that term with the pleasant connotation it has for us today. Erwin realized early on that Yorty was an unscrupulous demagogue who never failed to promote his own and cronies' interests, in the 1969 mayoral campaign descending to racism to turn back the challenge of Tom Bradley.

As a political writer, I coordinated with Erwin on many stories, but none more important than one detailing how Yorty had spent 372 days of his third term out of the city, gallivanting around the world, at public expense.

When that story broke during Yorty's bid for a fourth term, the Encyclopedia Britannica happened to be doing a film on a day in the lives of two reporters. The subjects were Erwin and me, and the story line featured that report and Yorty's hamhanded reaction to it.

Erwin and I were delighted. We played our roles with gusto, questioning Yorty at a news conference, and the film played in the public schools for years. Meanwhile, Bradley swept by Yorty in ihe election and Yorty wallowed in retirement. He went on a cruise rather than graciously showing up at Bradley's inauguration.

Erwin was a good friend of Bill Boyarsky. The two often played tennis, and they made a great team at City Hall until Baker retired. He had a heart condition and his ensuing years were quiet ones, until, at his 80th birthday party, at a West Side hotel, he confided sadly that his memory was failing. The party was held close to Erwin's other great love in life, besides his two daughters, UCLA. We constantly kidded Erwin about his allegiance to UCLA.

Erwin was a great companion of mine. He was always encouraging about my career at the Times and a backer on occasions when I needed backing. I remember him with the greatest fondness.

Two fine colleagues in one week. I'm flying to Barrow tomorrow, and I hope it's a safe trip. (smile). Meanwhile, I'm going to miss attending the services for David and Erwin.

Meanwhile, if I had to write an epitaph for the old City Hall reporter, it would be, "He hated corruption, and was able to do something about it."

A Memorial To David Shaw

Written from Denali National Park, Alaska--

This is a little late because I've been at a wilderness camp in Denali National Park and had no Internet access to immediately pay tribute to a great friend and distinguished colleague, David Shaw.

David was one of the finest reporters of this era at the Los Angeles Times. You didn't have to agree with him on everything to realize that his contributions to the paper and to life in Los Angeles were unequaled.

For many years, David was the media critic of the Los Angeles Times, winning a Pulitzer Prize for that criticism in 1991. Fiercely independent, he put tremendous efforts into each of scores of long stories examining American journalism from every angle. Particularly distinguished were his pieces on abortion coverage, the McMartin school abuse case, the use of confidential sources, the efforts of other newspapers and the Times. He had the support and encouragement of Bill Thomas and Otis Chandler, making his work one of a kind.

In the 1999-2000 Staples crisis that ultimately destroyed the reign of Mark Willes as Times-Mirror CEO and resulted in the sale of the Times to the Tribune Co., David was chosen to write the definitive piece for the Times on the mess, and under the editorship of George Cotliar, retired managing editor, did a superlative job. David's coverage specifically reflected on both Willes and Times editor Michael Parks. Parks, I believe, would have been an outstanding managing editor, but lacked some of the skills he needed as editor in this critical situation. Shaw's piece will long be remembered as outstanding.

Later, under Tribune ownership, David shifted to a column on the media that ran in Calendar weekly, and also wrote for the Food section periodically on food and wine.

No one who went to such countries as France and Spain could wisely do so without asking for David's advice on restaurants. He knew the most expensive and the best values. The restaurants he touted were fabulous and David could easily have been, in my view, the world's most distinguished fulltime restaurant critic, except that he said he didn't want this, because it would have forced him to go to some bad restaurants. David could never understand why people even visited countries not distinguished for their food. In 1987, when I took my children to Australia, David remarked to me he couldn't understand the trip, because Australian food wasn't the best.

David's recommendations of restaurants in Spain, particularly in Barcelona, were followed, to our delight, by my son and I on a trip there, and we especially enjoyed a Tapas place called Ca Pepe, near the Picasso Museum. Later, I recommended it to many friends going to Barcelona and all who went there were delighted. When my mother had her 80th birthday, we picked a Los Angeles restaurant for the party that David had recommended.

But David was great not only on the great restaurants, but on such lousy food offerings as those at Dodger Stadium. His article on Dodger Stadium food was a masterpiece.

The first article by David I ever read was a tremendous piece on a Jesse Unruh campaign for the Long Beach Press Telegram. He would have been a distinguished political writer had he wanted. He had wonderful talents in so many areas. His personality did not find favor with some, but all in all, I believe he came to deserve all the admiration he customarily received.

There were times, as I said, when I disagreed with David, such as on confidential sources, but I always respected him as a great reporter.

And you had to like a man who felt strongly about so many things, including his love for Ellen Torgerson, her children, and others.

David died too young last Monday night at 62. When he first learned he had a brain tumor, just three months before, he had hoped it could be corrected. He told me that he hoped every day to return to work and continue his articles. Later, before I left on my Alaskan trip, his last message to me was that his doctors had found the tumor was faster growing and more dangerous than they had first thought. David was disappointed, but had not lost hope.

I responded that I would pray for David and keep him in my mind every day.

And that will be so for a long time. Journalism needs the David Shaws, who work so hard for so long, who never lose their interest, their focus, and their dedication to the public. David ran the course as one of the great members of the Times staff.

Joan Sweeney, Distinguished Reporter, Dies

Joan Sweeney, one of only three female reporters in the L.A. Times City Room when she was hired in 1971, died of Lou Gehrig's Disease on Saturday, Jan. 22 at home. She was 68. We will all miss her.

Sweeney, a successful novelist after she left The Times in 1984, was a popular member of the Old Farts, the organization of retired Times employees. Just last Wednesday, a card was circulated at the group's luncheon for members to sign, wishing her well.

Dorothy Townsend was the only female reporter in the City Room when I came downtown from the West Side suburban edition in 1967, and she was joined later by the second, Susan (Holly) Stocking.

In those days, women did not have it very easy at The Times. Most often, they were given "women's assignments" and not allowed to do very much on the main stories. Gradually, that changed, with the addition of such hard-driving and well-respected reporters as Narda Zucchino, Nancy Skelton, Myrna Oliver, Janet Clayton, Anna Gorman, Julie Cart, Tracy Wilkinson, Andrea Ford, Becky Trounson, Carla Hall, Tracy Wood, Carla Rivera, Tina Daunt, Julie Tamaki, Stephanie Chavez, Joselyn Stewart, Teresa Watanabe, Tracy Weber, Bettina Boxall, Usha McFarling, Jennifer Oldham and the remarkable Bella Stumbo among others..

Now, of course, The Times women are highly successful and well accepted. Sweeney helped pave the way for that. It wasn't always so, and at one or two times they had to assert themselves, demanding equal treatment.

Joan was a well diversified reporter, even contributing a skiing column to the Sports Section.

Recently, she sustained her most difficult and tragic disease with grace and dignity. We all admired her.

It's always shocking to read of a valued colleague's passing, Just in the past year, we've lost many fine members of the Times family, including Frank Del Olmo, Bruce Cox, Betty Hughes, , John Dreyfuss, Stan Allison, Jody Jacobs, John Lawrence, and Lee Austin, among others.

Joan Sweeney was a talented and wonderful person, friendly to everyone. May she rest in peace. The paper today says donations in her memory may be sent to the ALS Assn., 27001 Agoura Road, Suite 150, Calabasas Hills, California 91301.

Rather, Brokaw Retire; Leroy Aarons Dies

Honor and good wishes to Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw on their retirements. Both network anchors accentuated the positive about this country and the journalistic profession.
There's a good deal of talk about Rather making a mistake this fall. What I prefer to remember was his hard-driving good reporting over many years going back to the administrations of Nixon and Kennedy. Rather believed in this country, and he cried with joy when American troops entered Kuwait City in the first Gulf War. He was not afraid to show his emotions, which made him not only a better journalist, but a better human being. And I particularly remember that he spoke up for New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines when Raines was railroaded out of that job by a weak publisher.
Tom Brokaw captured the respect and love of millions for extolling the heroes of America's "greatest generation" thosewho fought in World War II. Steady, incisive, and modest, all will remember fondly his great work.
Leroy Aarons, former editor of the Oakland Tribune, Washington Post West Coast correspondent , and a man who came out of the closet and led gay journalists to great advances within a too-often prejudiced profession, died on Sunday. He deserved the respect of us all. We'll miss him.