Working as a Rewrite Man at Benton Harbor
By James Donahue
Bert Lindenfelt, the managing editor of the News Palladium in Benton Harbor was a retired Navy submarine commander who I believed ran the newsroom much as he commanded his ship at sea. We didn’t have to salute or dress for inspections, but Bert kept a sharp eye on everything we did, and very little escaped his attention. He was a strict disciplinarian, the best journalism instructor I ever worked under, and we produced a newspaper that everyone on staff was proud of. He made such a strong presence that when Bert walked into a room, people stopped talking and all eyes were on him. I always found that was odd because he was a thin, bald headed man who wore glasses and thus carried the appearance of a normal middle-aged businessman. But when he spoke it was as if thunder was shaking the room, and his eyes peered right through us all.
When I interviewed for the job, Bert hired me on the spot then put me through about a year of hell. After that he gave me one of the best reporting jobs I ever had.
I was first assigned to be an assistant to the state editor, a reserved man named Earl Berry. The title state editor belied the work we did. The newspaper had a number of “stringers,” or little old women who scanned their neighborhoods in the towns throughout Berrien and neighboring Van Buren and Cass Counties. They went to the local school board and village council meetings and sent their stories to us in the mail regularly. It was my job to wade through those reports, check all of the facts, and rewrite them so they gave some resemblance of a news story. It was tedious and boring work. Sometimes, when something important was going on, I was sent out to attend certain meetings and write the stories myself. These little old ladies were paid for each inch of copy that appeared in print, so they resented it when I cut down the size of their stories. Consequently, I was constantly walking a tight rope attempting to keep them happy and still do a good job for my newspaper.
Doris and I found a cottage to rent that fall on Paw Paw Lake near Coloma, which was perhaps 20 miles from Benton Harbor. Bert decided that since I was living in the Coloma area, and I was a trained photographer, it would be a good idea to assign me to a personal speed graphic camera to carry in my car. I made good use of that camera.
The job on the state desk was a training period for me. I discovered there just how green I really was when it came to news reporting.
I remember in the spring, when local assessment rolls were released, I struggled with understanding the complex mathematical formulas used by towns, townships and school boards to calculate the tax dollars they would receive based upon the number of “mills” of voted and county authorized tax assigned to each unit. Those assessments established by county and local assessors sometimes meant the difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars for each school district or city. Learning how all of this worked, and writing a story that a normal person on the street could understand, was among the most difficult tasks I took on during my years of reporting. When I first ran into it there on that job I think I may have sweated blood over the first story I tried to write. I think I spent time on the telephone talking to a local assessor and having him explain the formula in a way that I could grasp what he was telling me. After that, and once I learned how it all worked, it became a challenge to me to write understandable stories.
I wrote some memorable police stories on that desk. I rarely went to the scene, but I remember covering one multi-vehicle traffic wreck by calling the police and getting the information. I got a great quote from one of the officers who had been at the scene. He told me the bodies were “stacked like cordwood.” I used the quote in my lead. Lindenfelt liked that quote so much he complemented me on the story and used it in the headline.
The job of rewriting poorly written copy filled with misspelled words eventually affected my own ability to spell. I got so used to seeing the same words spelled incorrectly that I began thinking the wrong spelling looked right. That led to the first of several lectures by Bert in the privacy of his office. I was shocked when he pointed out the spelling issue because I had never had a problem with it. It took a few days of serious review before I discovered why I was having a problem. I was being bombarded with incorrectly spelled words and getting them implanted on my brain.
Our rented cottage on Paw Paw Lake was a small one-bedroom place with knotty pine paneling on the walls. We had a kitchen and living area and a small bathroom. It was one of a cluster of summer cottages on the lake owned and operated by Woody Woodham and his wife. They agreed to rent for the winter months, but we had to move in the spring before the summer tourist season opened.
When I took the job I had visions of making better money. Our old car was worn out so we decided to buy a newer car. It was a Ford station wagon. The payments on that car, the car insurance, our rent, and Blue Cross Insurance almost broke us. I was going to have medical insurance provided by the newspaper after six months, but in the meantime, we were on our own. And with a second baby on the way, we had to have the insurance. Consequently it was a lean winter for us. We ate hot dogs, eggs and a lot of beans. My father eventually helped us out by taking over our car payments. He traded our Ford for an older Nash Rambler he had been driving. I never liked the Rambler but it turned out to be an almost indestructible car. As hard as I drove it, I could not wear it out. Also it was all paid for and that trade salvaged our meager bank account.
I think it was on a Sunday late in the fall when Earl Berry called me at home and asked me to drive to Dowagiac, a city in Cass County, to cover a murder. There had been a quarrel between a woman and either her husband or lover, a shotgun appeared, and one of the two of them got blown away. I don’t recall all of the details. What I remember about the day was the long drive from Coloma to Dowagiac, and then standing around in the cold for hours, trying to get some information from the local police. It was a relatively flat story so I needed all the extra details I could get. That required hanging around and asking a lot of questions from officers who didn’t know me and couldn’t care less if they helped me get my story or not. In the meantime, it started to snow. By the time I had all the information I needed to write my story and could start my drive to Benton Harbor with film, I was facing a full-fledged blizzard. I had to follow a winding two-lane highway and I remember struggling to steer between mailboxes and fence posts, never sure if I was on or off the road. I got into Benton Harbor, dropped off the film and wrote my story. By the time I started the drive north to Coloma, the snow had tapered off and I got home safely.
There was another story located near Dowagiac that also remains etched in my memory. It involved numerous sightings of a big hairy monster that soon became known as the Dowagiac Bigfoot. I wrote several stories about these sightings. They always involved a hairy upright monster suddenly appearing from the trees and running across the road in front of drivers. The sightings usually occurred at night. I shared the opinion of the police that this was a prankster, dressed up in a monster costume. But the truth was never known.
That winter I also covered a spectacular train wreck right at the town of Coloma where we lived. There was a main C&O Railroad line between Chicago and Grand Rapids that ran right through the center of Coloma. The trains came through town at about 70 miles an hour so when the red lights started flashing on the crossing, and the gates dropped, even if we couldn’t see a train coming, everybody stopped. One cold winter day a north-bound freight jumped the tracks just south of Coloma. Box cars, tanker cars and flat cars rolled and tumbled, some of them almost slamming into some of the downtown buildings before they came to a stop. I walked for about a mile through snow up to my knees before I reached the other end of the wreckage. Nobody was hurt, no buildings were damaged, but it was a most spectacular wreck to photograph.
There was a YMCA located directly across the street from the News Palladium and I joined a few of the reporters on a fitness program that winter. We joined the “Y” and started spending our noon hours swimming in the pool. Coming back to the office with our hair still wet and our bodies smelling like chlorine became a problem. Our fitness program quickly died for lack of enthusiasm. We shifted our focus to a small tavern about a block in the other direction where they made the best hamburgers in the world. Somehow we got by with returning to the office with beer on our breath. I was putting on the pounds and should have continued going to the pool.
The smell of alcohol on our breath apparently didn’t bother Bert as long as we did our job and did it well. Every year the newspaper and its sister paper, the Herald Press in St. Joseph, directly across the St. Joseph River from Benton Harbor, held a large Christmas party for the staff. The party involved a fine dinner followed by music, dancing and lots of drinking. For the news staff, there was a “must-attend” party at Bert’s home where the liquor flowed free. Doris and I attended many of those parties and I remember at one of them, Bert announced that he didn’t trust anyone who wouldn’t take a drink.
While there were highlights, the work in that news office was demanding, and for me, as the guy who was daily burdened with the task of rewriting poorly written accounts of township and village council meetings and school board gatherings, I was beginning to wonder if I had chosen the wrong profession. I remember reading John Updike’s novel Rabbit Run, about a young man so bored with his existence that he got in his car one day and drove away from everything. I thought about that story every day as I drove the freeway from Coloma to Benton Harbor. There was a sign at the turnoff into Benton Harbor. It said Benton Harbor to the right, and Chicago lay straight ahead. I found myself tempted some mornings to head for Chicago. I always turned to the right, however.
Our second child, Ayn, arrived in April. I was at work when Doris called to say she was in labor. She wanted me to come immediately home and get her to the hospital in Watervliet, a town very close to Coloma. I announced to everybody that Doris was in labor then started the drive for home. I remembered the long time that she was in labor with Aaron and thought I had a lot of time, so I did not race home. When I got to the house Doris was at the door. She jumped in the car and urged me to hurry. I got her to the hospital and was still checking her in when the nursing staff put Doris on a gurney and rushed her into the delivery room. I think it was less than five minutes later that I was told that we were parents of a baby girl. I think the nurses delivered Ayn. The doctor didn’t get there in time. I shudder when I think that I almost didn’t either.
Doris now had her hands full with two babies in the house. She desperately needed some help, especially during those first weeks home with a new baby. I called her mother and asked if she could come. She agreed so I took time off from work to drive all the way across the state to Cass City, then drive her back. The woman proved to be more of a burden than a help. Doris found herself fixing meals and waiting on her mother as well as the two babies and getting almost no help. That weekend I drove Gladys back to Cass City and that was that.
It was now spring and time for Doris and me to move out of the Woodham cottage. We looked around and found a modest rental home not far away, still in the Coloma area, and moved into it. This was a nice place with extra space. I remember it had furnishings, a sun porch and a full basement. On one wall in the basement was a large old steamer trunk. When exploring the house one day, Doris said she wanted to open the trunk and see what was inside. I joked that there was probably a body in there. When we opened it, the trunk was filled with someone’s very personal belongings, including a musical instrument. In one corner was a box. In the box was an urn full of somebody’s cremated ashes.
I decided that spring to plant my first garden. The rear yard was large enough to provide space for it. I bought a spade, turned the soil, and planted my seeds. That garden was a memorable place at a time of great frustration. I truly enjoyed watching the plants come up even though we did not stay there long enough to enjoy any of the vegetables growing there.
One day when I was in Coloma, I happened to be driving on a side street and saw a 1947 vintage Studebaker with a for sale sign in the window. An old man was sitting on the porch of the house so I stopped and asked him what he wanted for the car. He said he would take $50. He said he hadn’t driven it for several years and just wanted to get it out of his garage. He got in the car and started it up, and it ran. I bought it.
I knew right away that some repairs were needed. The car’s exhaust system was almost rusted away. But the car ran well and I was pleased to find that it had a six cylinder engine with an standard shift transmission with overdrive. I had a new toy. That night I had to attend a meeting somewhere nearby so I took the Studebaker. On the way home I was stopped by the police. That was when I discovered that most of the lights on the car were not working.
At about that time, Earl Berry took a week off for a vacation, and I was given the task of acting as the State Editor. I had a lot of responsibility that week and it kept me jumping. But I had been on the job long enough to know what had to be done. We had a couple of issues come up that demanded some decision making, which I apparently handled well.
When Earl returned from his vacation, Bert called me into his office for one of those personal talks. I went in the office thinking I was in trouble. I was pleasantly surprised. Lindenfelt said he watched my work that week and noticed that I was able to make good decisions on my own. He told me about the South Haven bureau, and how staff reporter Ben Nottingham, who was attempting to open that bureau, had been discouraged. He said he also knew that I was not happy in the office and wondered if I would be interested in trying the South Haven bureau. It was an offer I could not refuse.
By James Donahue
Bert Lindenfelt, the managing editor of the News Palladium in Benton Harbor was a retired Navy submarine commander who I believed ran the newsroom much as he commanded his ship at sea. We didn’t have to salute or dress for inspections, but Bert kept a sharp eye on everything we did, and very little escaped his attention. He was a strict disciplinarian, the best journalism instructor I ever worked under, and we produced a newspaper that everyone on staff was proud of. He made such a strong presence that when Bert walked into a room, people stopped talking and all eyes were on him. I always found that was odd because he was a thin, bald headed man who wore glasses and thus carried the appearance of a normal middle-aged businessman. But when he spoke it was as if thunder was shaking the room, and his eyes peered right through us all.
When I interviewed for the job, Bert hired me on the spot then put me through about a year of hell. After that he gave me one of the best reporting jobs I ever had.
I was first assigned to be an assistant to the state editor, a reserved man named Earl Berry. The title state editor belied the work we did. The newspaper had a number of “stringers,” or little old women who scanned their neighborhoods in the towns throughout Berrien and neighboring Van Buren and Cass Counties. They went to the local school board and village council meetings and sent their stories to us in the mail regularly. It was my job to wade through those reports, check all of the facts, and rewrite them so they gave some resemblance of a news story. It was tedious and boring work. Sometimes, when something important was going on, I was sent out to attend certain meetings and write the stories myself. These little old ladies were paid for each inch of copy that appeared in print, so they resented it when I cut down the size of their stories. Consequently, I was constantly walking a tight rope attempting to keep them happy and still do a good job for my newspaper.
Doris and I found a cottage to rent that fall on Paw Paw Lake near Coloma, which was perhaps 20 miles from Benton Harbor. Bert decided that since I was living in the Coloma area, and I was a trained photographer, it would be a good idea to assign me to a personal speed graphic camera to carry in my car. I made good use of that camera.
The job on the state desk was a training period for me. I discovered there just how green I really was when it came to news reporting.
I remember in the spring, when local assessment rolls were released, I struggled with understanding the complex mathematical formulas used by towns, townships and school boards to calculate the tax dollars they would receive based upon the number of “mills” of voted and county authorized tax assigned to each unit. Those assessments established by county and local assessors sometimes meant the difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars for each school district or city. Learning how all of this worked, and writing a story that a normal person on the street could understand, was among the most difficult tasks I took on during my years of reporting. When I first ran into it there on that job I think I may have sweated blood over the first story I tried to write. I think I spent time on the telephone talking to a local assessor and having him explain the formula in a way that I could grasp what he was telling me. After that, and once I learned how it all worked, it became a challenge to me to write understandable stories.
I wrote some memorable police stories on that desk. I rarely went to the scene, but I remember covering one multi-vehicle traffic wreck by calling the police and getting the information. I got a great quote from one of the officers who had been at the scene. He told me the bodies were “stacked like cordwood.” I used the quote in my lead. Lindenfelt liked that quote so much he complemented me on the story and used it in the headline.
The job of rewriting poorly written copy filled with misspelled words eventually affected my own ability to spell. I got so used to seeing the same words spelled incorrectly that I began thinking the wrong spelling looked right. That led to the first of several lectures by Bert in the privacy of his office. I was shocked when he pointed out the spelling issue because I had never had a problem with it. It took a few days of serious review before I discovered why I was having a problem. I was being bombarded with incorrectly spelled words and getting them implanted on my brain.
Our rented cottage on Paw Paw Lake was a small one-bedroom place with knotty pine paneling on the walls. We had a kitchen and living area and a small bathroom. It was one of a cluster of summer cottages on the lake owned and operated by Woody Woodham and his wife. They agreed to rent for the winter months, but we had to move in the spring before the summer tourist season opened.
When I took the job I had visions of making better money. Our old car was worn out so we decided to buy a newer car. It was a Ford station wagon. The payments on that car, the car insurance, our rent, and Blue Cross Insurance almost broke us. I was going to have medical insurance provided by the newspaper after six months, but in the meantime, we were on our own. And with a second baby on the way, we had to have the insurance. Consequently it was a lean winter for us. We ate hot dogs, eggs and a lot of beans. My father eventually helped us out by taking over our car payments. He traded our Ford for an older Nash Rambler he had been driving. I never liked the Rambler but it turned out to be an almost indestructible car. As hard as I drove it, I could not wear it out. Also it was all paid for and that trade salvaged our meager bank account.
I think it was on a Sunday late in the fall when Earl Berry called me at home and asked me to drive to Dowagiac, a city in Cass County, to cover a murder. There had been a quarrel between a woman and either her husband or lover, a shotgun appeared, and one of the two of them got blown away. I don’t recall all of the details. What I remember about the day was the long drive from Coloma to Dowagiac, and then standing around in the cold for hours, trying to get some information from the local police. It was a relatively flat story so I needed all the extra details I could get. That required hanging around and asking a lot of questions from officers who didn’t know me and couldn’t care less if they helped me get my story or not. In the meantime, it started to snow. By the time I had all the information I needed to write my story and could start my drive to Benton Harbor with film, I was facing a full-fledged blizzard. I had to follow a winding two-lane highway and I remember struggling to steer between mailboxes and fence posts, never sure if I was on or off the road. I got into Benton Harbor, dropped off the film and wrote my story. By the time I started the drive north to Coloma, the snow had tapered off and I got home safely.
There was another story located near Dowagiac that also remains etched in my memory. It involved numerous sightings of a big hairy monster that soon became known as the Dowagiac Bigfoot. I wrote several stories about these sightings. They always involved a hairy upright monster suddenly appearing from the trees and running across the road in front of drivers. The sightings usually occurred at night. I shared the opinion of the police that this was a prankster, dressed up in a monster costume. But the truth was never known.
That winter I also covered a spectacular train wreck right at the town of Coloma where we lived. There was a main C&O Railroad line between Chicago and Grand Rapids that ran right through the center of Coloma. The trains came through town at about 70 miles an hour so when the red lights started flashing on the crossing, and the gates dropped, even if we couldn’t see a train coming, everybody stopped. One cold winter day a north-bound freight jumped the tracks just south of Coloma. Box cars, tanker cars and flat cars rolled and tumbled, some of them almost slamming into some of the downtown buildings before they came to a stop. I walked for about a mile through snow up to my knees before I reached the other end of the wreckage. Nobody was hurt, no buildings were damaged, but it was a most spectacular wreck to photograph.
There was a YMCA located directly across the street from the News Palladium and I joined a few of the reporters on a fitness program that winter. We joined the “Y” and started spending our noon hours swimming in the pool. Coming back to the office with our hair still wet and our bodies smelling like chlorine became a problem. Our fitness program quickly died for lack of enthusiasm. We shifted our focus to a small tavern about a block in the other direction where they made the best hamburgers in the world. Somehow we got by with returning to the office with beer on our breath. I was putting on the pounds and should have continued going to the pool.
The smell of alcohol on our breath apparently didn’t bother Bert as long as we did our job and did it well. Every year the newspaper and its sister paper, the Herald Press in St. Joseph, directly across the St. Joseph River from Benton Harbor, held a large Christmas party for the staff. The party involved a fine dinner followed by music, dancing and lots of drinking. For the news staff, there was a “must-attend” party at Bert’s home where the liquor flowed free. Doris and I attended many of those parties and I remember at one of them, Bert announced that he didn’t trust anyone who wouldn’t take a drink.
While there were highlights, the work in that news office was demanding, and for me, as the guy who was daily burdened with the task of rewriting poorly written accounts of township and village council meetings and school board gatherings, I was beginning to wonder if I had chosen the wrong profession. I remember reading John Updike’s novel Rabbit Run, about a young man so bored with his existence that he got in his car one day and drove away from everything. I thought about that story every day as I drove the freeway from Coloma to Benton Harbor. There was a sign at the turnoff into Benton Harbor. It said Benton Harbor to the right, and Chicago lay straight ahead. I found myself tempted some mornings to head for Chicago. I always turned to the right, however.
Our second child, Ayn, arrived in April. I was at work when Doris called to say she was in labor. She wanted me to come immediately home and get her to the hospital in Watervliet, a town very close to Coloma. I announced to everybody that Doris was in labor then started the drive for home. I remembered the long time that she was in labor with Aaron and thought I had a lot of time, so I did not race home. When I got to the house Doris was at the door. She jumped in the car and urged me to hurry. I got her to the hospital and was still checking her in when the nursing staff put Doris on a gurney and rushed her into the delivery room. I think it was less than five minutes later that I was told that we were parents of a baby girl. I think the nurses delivered Ayn. The doctor didn’t get there in time. I shudder when I think that I almost didn’t either.
Doris now had her hands full with two babies in the house. She desperately needed some help, especially during those first weeks home with a new baby. I called her mother and asked if she could come. She agreed so I took time off from work to drive all the way across the state to Cass City, then drive her back. The woman proved to be more of a burden than a help. Doris found herself fixing meals and waiting on her mother as well as the two babies and getting almost no help. That weekend I drove Gladys back to Cass City and that was that.
It was now spring and time for Doris and me to move out of the Woodham cottage. We looked around and found a modest rental home not far away, still in the Coloma area, and moved into it. This was a nice place with extra space. I remember it had furnishings, a sun porch and a full basement. On one wall in the basement was a large old steamer trunk. When exploring the house one day, Doris said she wanted to open the trunk and see what was inside. I joked that there was probably a body in there. When we opened it, the trunk was filled with someone’s very personal belongings, including a musical instrument. In one corner was a box. In the box was an urn full of somebody’s cremated ashes.
I decided that spring to plant my first garden. The rear yard was large enough to provide space for it. I bought a spade, turned the soil, and planted my seeds. That garden was a memorable place at a time of great frustration. I truly enjoyed watching the plants come up even though we did not stay there long enough to enjoy any of the vegetables growing there.
One day when I was in Coloma, I happened to be driving on a side street and saw a 1947 vintage Studebaker with a for sale sign in the window. An old man was sitting on the porch of the house so I stopped and asked him what he wanted for the car. He said he would take $50. He said he hadn’t driven it for several years and just wanted to get it out of his garage. He got in the car and started it up, and it ran. I bought it.
I knew right away that some repairs were needed. The car’s exhaust system was almost rusted away. But the car ran well and I was pleased to find that it had a six cylinder engine with an standard shift transmission with overdrive. I had a new toy. That night I had to attend a meeting somewhere nearby so I took the Studebaker. On the way home I was stopped by the police. That was when I discovered that most of the lights on the car were not working.
At about that time, Earl Berry took a week off for a vacation, and I was given the task of acting as the State Editor. I had a lot of responsibility that week and it kept me jumping. But I had been on the job long enough to know what had to be done. We had a couple of issues come up that demanded some decision making, which I apparently handled well.
When Earl returned from his vacation, Bert called me into his office for one of those personal talks. I went in the office thinking I was in trouble. I was pleasantly surprised. Lindenfelt said he watched my work that week and noticed that I was able to make good decisions on my own. He told me about the South Haven bureau, and how staff reporter Ben Nottingham, who was attempting to open that bureau, had been discouraged. He said he also knew that I was not happy in the office and wondered if I would be interested in trying the South Haven bureau. It was an offer I could not refuse.