Sad, sad news came at midafternoon on an otherwise perfect post-election Wednesday. I was going to spend today’s entry gloating, but then word came that Richard Battin, who hired me in Fort Wayne, has died. And so, once again, I find myself overtaken by events.
Grief, too. And recrimination, because I was going to stop in to see him the last time I was in Florida, and didn’t. Next time, I told myself. I am now the second person in my circle in recent days to learn the hard lesson that sometimes there isn’t a next time. But enough about me.
Richard was my first interview in Fort Wayne, which, like other Knight Ridder papers, had a particular style of vetting applicants: You did a round robin of virtually everyone in the newsroom who mattered, and you took tests. Apparently I did well on the tests, which was no biggie, but also was, kinda. It was basic Reporting 101: You’re working alone on a Sunday morning and hear over the police scanner that a plane has gone down at the airport. Who is your first call? Answer: A photographer. There was also some copy editing stuff that boiled down to having an eye for unusual spellings of notable names. Barbra, not Barbara, Streisand. Charles Addams, not Adams.
But after that, you were shipped around to this editor and that, and Richard was mainly my shepherd. You went to lunch, and then dinner. We ate at Hartley’s and Casa d’Angelo. I left knowing I’d get an offer, because my connection with Richard was almost a mind-meld: We got each other’s jokes and references, and had a similar outlook on the world. I also loved his stories about growing up in San Jose, and working for the storied Mercury-News before coming to Indiana to step on the management track. I remember he told me early on that he’d been drafted and refused induction. He didn’t go the conscientious objector route or hightail it to Canada, just flat-out said he wasn’t going. To be sure, he’d have made a terrible soldier. He was slight and not very tall, and while he could wield a wisecrack with lethality, probably would have had problems with a weapon. Lord knows he wouldn’t have thrived in prison. But in a stroke of almost unbelievable luck, his case landed before a San Francisco judge who hated the Vietnam war as much as he did, and gave him community service or something.
As a reporter, his skills were similar to mine: Not much for spending hours in dusty libraries doing research, but a nimble hand with a Page One bright. He showed me a picture once of the time he’d taken a turn on a saddle bronc at a rodeo, for a story, wearing borrowed chaps that said GARY down one leg. He said it was his alter ego.
He loved good writing, and was adept at it himself. He had a brief role in a community-theater production of “A Few Good Men,” playing the officer who gives the Tom Cruise character his mission, then disappears until curtain call. He would deliver his lines, then pop out for a drink at a nearby bar, still in his costume. People would clap him on the back, say “thanks for your service, colonel” and buy him a drink. He thought that was so funny he wrote a play about it, called “Feint of Heart.” He said it was about “love and language,” and contained several lines and speeches I recall from the newsroom.
It also had the story of how he met his wife, Adrienne. She was with another guy, a friend. He saw the two of them walking toward him one day and thought to himself, “What is she doing with him? She should be with me.” Soon, she was. His first wife wanted no children, and insisted he get a vasectomy. He reversed it when he married Adie, who gave birth to two daughters, and then got another, making him the second man I know who’d had two vasectomies. I always found this amusing, and he was always willing to talk about it.
What else? Even in a shitstorm of breaking news, he could keep his cool and often power through on jokes and coffee. On Fridays, during the last morning news meeting of the week, he’d print a little quiz, as a TGIF gesture. The only one I aced was about all the lyrics to “Ode to Billy Joe,” given on June 3, of course. He had a round scar on his jawline the size of a dime; it didn’t look like skilled work. He told me he’d hurt himself as a youngster but his parents couldn’t afford to take him to a doctor, so a local veterinarian did the work. I think about that when idiots discuss health-care policy.
One year, the phone company brought in new phone books for the newsroom, and a stack of the old ones piled up in a wheeled recycling bin where they sat for days and days. (The janitorial services in that building were basically non-existent.) One day Richard pulled one out and said, “I think I read there’s a trick to tearing a phone book in half. It’s not strength, it’s technique.” He figured it out, and tore one successfully. Then I, and a couple more people did, and then David Heath, a reporter notable for his red hair, tried. He couldn’t get it, and strained so hard his face nearly turned purple, an arresting sight under that hair. (He went on to great success as a journalist, so don’t feel bad that he couldn’t tear the Fort Wayne phone book in two.) My point is, that’s the kind of boss Richard was, serious when he needed to be but capable of being a great, merry prankster during down times.
People would be absolutely justified in asking anyone my age why they went into this field, currently stripped to its bones by rapacious vulture capitalists, tech bozos and other horrible people. The reason is, when it was good, it was very good – fun, but also serious, a real public service, from recipes to investigations of corrupt public servants. And one of the people who made it so was Richard.
I hope if there’s something after this, that I see him there.
