One Call, That's All

Never having been incarcerated, I don't know for sure if new prisoners actually get just one phone call before their cell door slams shut. If they do, most probably would not call a sportswriter.

Years ago when I was sports editor of the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Dick Knar, basketball coach at Assumption High School, phoned me from the local police station about 12:30 one Saturday night. He was sloshed, and he was headed for the slammer.

Knar was something of a wild man. He started games attired rather nattily in a coat and tie, but soon ripped off the tie and was known to toss the jacket on the floor, rip his shirt, and actually jump up and down as the contest progressed. We once took advantage of his antics by doing a photo sequence.

Tribune photographer Bill Kiefer aimed a telephoto lens at the coach throughout a Royals' game. We picked out five scenes showing Knar's transformation from a calm gentleman into a raging maniac. As Associated Press members, we gave the sequence with captions to the AP. It went nationwide, appearing in many papers, including the Los Angeles Times.

In his late-night call, Knar asked if I would keep his arrest on a drunk and disorderly charge out of the Tribune. He had lost control in the bar of the Dixon Hotel, where the sports crowd hung out, and finally had to be removed by the police. I told him that since I now knew about the incident, I had an obligation to tell our managing editor. Anyway, I said, one of our reporters would pick it up on the police beat early in the morning.

Managing editor Ollie Williams decided the story didn't merit any special treatment on the sports page, but we would run it as a normal police report item. A bit later, the high school principal appeared in chief editor Carl Otto's office.

After the priest left, Otto emerged with a broad smile, and said. "He wanted me to kill that story about Knar getting arrested. I told him if the Pope was here asking us to kill a story, I wouldn't do it. But I would print the news that he asked all over the front page. Our little talk ended right there."

Heads Up

Writing newspaper headlines can be a high art, but also a risky business. The story labels must fit in a precise space in a style specified by the publisher, and be written in a minute or two. Trying to quickly capture the gist of a story in an appealing way doesn’t always work out.

Almost anything can result in a headline gaffe. The classic example used in journalism school in the 50s stemmed from the fact that Manly and Fertile are two small towns in Iowa. A newspaper serving both communities announced a wedding thus: Manly Man Weds Fertile Miss. Wonder how many offspring resulted?

A headline blunder ruined my first attempt to cover a basketball game as sports editor of the Daily Tribune in Wisconsin Rapids in 1964. The home team scored an important win, and I affixed a rather large headline to my story. It said something like: Dempsey Scores 19 as Raiders Win. Seems ok, however, the young man’s name was Dempze, not Dempsey. Dempze was a well-known family name around Wisconsin Rapids, and Chief Editor Carl Otto blistered me with a commentary on my headline writing abilities when he saw my version.

Otto skewered me so thoroughly that I greeted his comeuppance with relish a few months later. He had a special red phone in his office available for a “stop the presses” command just like those in the movies. Every day, just before the presses were turned on, the printing plant superintendent hustled into Otto’s office with a proof of the front page. He and Otto sat side-by-side checking Page One to ferret out any errors needing last minute corrections. One day they somehow missed a badly misspelled word in the biggest headline on the page. When he found out (after thousands of copies had been printed), Otto turned redder than the phone he had failed to use that day. Playing dumb, I observed he didn’t appear to be feeling well, and offered any help I could give. That turned him purple.

My headline recollections were inspired by an internet message forwarded by Ray Brown, retired Intermountain Research Station scientist, and Dave Tippets, public affairs officer at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, CO. The message showed strange headlines published by papers around the world Here they are, with comments:

Alton Attorney Accidentally Sues Himself (Wonder which of him won)

County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds (That’ll help)

Volunteers search for old Civil War planes (Difficult task. Didn't the first plane fly in 1903?)

Army vehicle disappears (Story was about an Australian Army vehicle with camouflage paint that mysteriously vanished)

Caskets found as workers demolish mausoleum (Probably were bodies in them, too)

Ten Commandments: Supreme Court says some OK, some not (Now, there’s a choice?)

Utah Poison Control Center reminds everyone not to take poison (Duh)

Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons (Surprise!)

Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25 (I would have guessed 20)

One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers (Oh come on, we know what the headline writer meant)

Give Yourself a Proper Sendoff

A badly overused joke among mature adults is that they read death notices in newspapers just to make sure they're not among the deceased that day. Having reached a ripe old age, I'm certain the real reason oldsters read the obits so religiously is because their contemporaries are dropping like flies, and the readers are very curious to see what is written about the dearly departeds they knew. I maintain that obituaries prepared by funeral directors or newspaper staffers with information provided by family members are not first rate, an unfortunate situation that could be corrected with a bit of advance work.

Everyone should write his or her own obituary.

An elderly writer who I supervised in the early 1980s convinced me of the truth of this. The guy wasn't extremely productive, but he could be creative. When he began telling me of the virtues of writing one's own swan song, I expected some of the usual fiddle faddle about how it would help the family in a time of great emotional stress. Nope. The principal reason was entirely self serving--you can portray yourself in a highly favorable way and not say a single thing that is untrue. And you'll be doing the readers a favor because you can leave out all those unfounded, irritating laudatory statements, such as "he was beloved by all who knew him" or "she was a true friend in times of need" or "he will be sorely missed" or similar banal nonsense.

Another virtue of the do-it-yourself approach is it gives you one last chance to say before a large audience a few nice things about the people you love or admire.

The secret to successful, yet honest, self-aggrandizement starts with the realization that all obituaries are written in the past tense. Thus, you can mention every positive activity you ever engaged in without regard to how long you did it or how effective you were. You know more of the little positive things in your life than anyone else, so you should do the job or work with another to prepare the final salute to yourself.

The obituary I wrote in preparation for my demise follows. Every word in it is the truth. But you will find several instances of making myself look more impressive than I was by simply stating an unqualified fact. An example is in the second paragraph. I was a class president in high school. Sounds pretty grand. However, I was the freshman class president, and the frosh came from several different grade schools. They hadn't been together long enough to get to know each other before elections were held. Most who voted for me didn't know a thing about me. And there were only 80 kids in the class, anyway.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Richard J. Klade left us on ___________ after __ years of living well, laughing often, and loving much.

Dick was born Jan. 1, 1936 at Tomahawk, WI, to wonderful parents, Fred and Margaret Klade. As a youth, his passion was playing baseball on youth league, high school, American Legion, and county league teams. He also was a high school class president, saxophonist in the band, and a football player.

He started working at age 10 as a shoeshine boy and later was a waiter, farm and canning factory laborer, supermarket butcher, and printing shop helper. His savings and two small scholarships financed study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a journalism degree in 1957. At UW, he was a member of Sigma Delta Chi, professional journalism fraternity, and was elected president of Sigma Nu social fraternity.

He served with pride in the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960, primarily as a troop information specialist at Fort Sill, OK.

Dick's professional work included stints as City Editor of the De Pere (WI) Journal-Democrat and Sports Editor of the Daily Tribune in Wisconsin Rapids. He also worked in public relations and sales promotion at The West Bend Company, Allis-Chalmers, and the McCoy Job Corps Center as an RCA employee. His writing occasionally appeared in the Sporting News and other national media. Dick achieved his two minutes of fame in 1973 when he presented a report on the "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite."

He joined a great outfit, the U.S. Forest Service, in 1968. He served as a writer-editor at the Forest Products Laboratory, Public Information Officer for the Boise National Forest and Eastern and Intermountain Regions, and Director of Research Information for the Intermountain Station in Ogden where he retired in 1994. He was awarded 11 Certificates of Merit for outstanding performance during his Forest Service career.

Along the way he was a charter member of the De Pere Junior Chamber of Commerce, a Kiwanis Club member in Boise, and for several years volunteered as a Greek Awards applications judge for Weber State University. He devoted more than 16 years to serving his neighbors in various capacities with the White Barn Homeowners Association in Pleasant View, UT.

Dick married the love of his life and best friend, Sandy, in West Bend, WI in 1961. Their son Lee, a stained glass artist in Plainwell, MI, was raised to be an honest man with good values by Sandy while his father pursued less important activities. Sandy and Lee remain with us, along with five nieces and nephews.

Dick loved his family, people of integrity, trying to hit golf balls (he got four holes-in-one, but said all were accidental), the Green Bay Packers, and Dixieland jazz, in about that order. He was a member of People's Church, a Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Kalamazoo, where for several years he chaired the Men's Discussion Group and met many new friends.