Donna Leff (Medill '71) is a Medill professor and was editor-in-chief of the Daily from 1969-70. This piece was written in honor of her friend and colleague John W. Walter (Medill '69), whose 62nd birthday would have been Feb. 10. John Walter was also a former Daily editor-in-chief.
When my oldest daughter was in 10th grade, she wrote an essay called "Daddy's Favorite" about the day she realized that her Dad had in turn told each of his three daughters they were his favorite. At first she was crushed. But she came to realize that it was his way of making each of his children feel special, as if she were the most important person in his life.
I thought of that essay when I read John Wesley Walter, the Story of a Much-Loved Man. The book was written by Jan Pogue, his wife, as a gift to their children at Christmas, the first Christmas without John, who died on Sept. 11 last year. The book was rich with reminiscences and tributes from his memorial service on Martha's Vineyard and from notes to the family. But the book could have been titled the story of a man who loved much. Like my daughters' father, John had made each of the people whose lives he touched feel incredibly special to him. Reading all the essays at once, I was struck by how many of the feelings expressed were my feelings, written by people I had never met, people I never knew existed, people who like me, counted John as a friend.
I knew John first as a reporter and then as editor of The Daily. John, the editor-in-chief a year ahead of me, taught me so much about writing, editing, telling stories, omitting unnecessary "thats," taking yourself seriously, not taking yourself too seriously, having a sense of humor, loving newspapers, having integrity and having passion. He was then, in 1968-69, funny, quirky, demanding and kind and he never changed. He had a distinguished career as a journalist - he was executive editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which won a Pulitzer in 1993 for explanatory journalism under his leadership, and was one of the founding editors of USA Today. One of his earlier jobs was at the Pacific Daily News, a Gannett paper on Guam. His wife recalled that while there, John "learned to love pie, served up to him by two local ladies of the night who refused to sell whole pies because their regular customers might then have to go without a slice."
My favorite stories, though, were the ones from college, written by the people who knew John as I did, from all the time we spent together down in the windowless basement room in Fisk Hall that was The Daily's home. Someone years before had painted the lake and the beach on the faded white brick wall and sometimes that was the only outdoors we saw for days on end.
Andy Lippman (Medill '70) of Los Angeles, a college roommate and Daily reporter, recalled those days when he wrote of inviting John to speak to a group of Associated Press editors in Nevada (Andy was a bureau chief). "After I picked John and Jan up at Las Vegas airport where John was going to speak one year, the first thing he did was go to the newsstand and buy several papers. Why should this surprise me? This was a man who kept his college bedroom filled with old copies of the New York Herald Tribune, a newspaper that hadn't existed for years."
Another tribute came from Elliot Brown (Medill '71), now a lawyer in New York, who was editor-in-chief of The Daily the year after me and two years after John. He writes to Jan, recalling John's year as editor-in-chief of The Daily, which he reviews by reading all the old Dailys from that year.
Elliot's summary of John's Daily tenure is a thumbnail biography of his friend but also of Northwestern, and I think it's worth sharing with you, reading The Daily 40 years later.
"They were giddy and serious times, and John was a splendid mix of giddiness and seriousness.
From the start, John made his mission clear. He set out his vision for his paper in his first editorial statement in early May 1968: 'We are a free voice, we are censored by no one….'
"And after a year of stress, near the end of his term he wrote on March 5, 1969:
'We exist in the middle of this university - a hypersensitive position that is continually under fire for one reason or another. The fire we accept when we tackle the job. Of late, we have been hounded by administrators for 'naming' a university center, by Students for a Democratic Society for calling some of their aims too generalized, by Greek leaders who close us out of meetings, saying we inhibit open discussion by reporting it; by friends of some students who were arrested for not indicating in our news columns that the students may be innocent.'
"…When you read the stories he wrote himself while he was editor, you can really get an understanding of what he cared about. Here's a story about a black homecoming queen, snubbed during the festivities. And a story about Arlington Cemetery, written at the height of the Vietnam War. And a story about the actress Patricia Neal, steadfastly making her way back from a devastating stroke.
"And John wanted so much for the new student center to be named for a beloved professor named Otis Walter, that for months, the Daily used only the name The Otis Walter Center while the administration steamed and fretted about the $2 million gift it was about to lose. That was a battle that could not be won. But how nice it would be if The Daily were published today from The Walter Center instead of Norris Center."
Our basement Daily office is long gone but the yellow house on Main Street that held John and those Herald Tribunes is still there. I think of him and of newspapers every time I drive past. I think of him when I delete unneeded words from my students' copy and when I feel defeated by the assault on "Journalism" in the Medill name. John W. Walter has always inspired me and the many others whose lives he touched. He'll go on inspiring us to be good journalists, to be good people and to keep fighting battles we know we can't win.
Be the first to comment on this article!