CELS News Article

CELS News Article Spring, 2005

Spotlight On Alumni:

He may be retiring (after 40-plus years in journalism), but he remains as curious and as committed to the community as ever

Reprinted Story about Rudi Hempe by ARLINE A. FLEMING, Journal Staff Writer – Published in the Providence Journal, South County section, on May 13th, 2005.

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Introduction by: GLENN SCHRODER, CELS News Editor and Publisher

The University of Rhode Island has had an association of one form or another with Rudi Hempe for over 40 years. In 1962, Rudi launched his career as a writer and editor with a degree from URI in Journalism.

Since then, he has maintained ties with the university as an adjunct professor, by serving on the Honorary Degree Committee, assisting the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, and as a volunteer and as president of the CE Center Master Gardener program. And now, the College of the Environment and Life Sciences can claim to be a beneficiary of Rudi’s most recent association with URI.

As some already know, Rudi Hempe has joined our CELS staff as a writer and editor for the recently launched CELS News initiative. After retiring from a long and successful career as a journalist and editor, Rudi has come full circle and is back again at the place that prepared him to make a start and a name for himself in the local news industry.

Having done that, Rudi now brings his wealth of knowledge and experience as an editor and journalist back to URI. This is only the latest installment of what is sure to continue to be a long legacy of support to the URI community in the years ahead by Rudi Hempe.

This edition of the “Alumni Spotlight” shines on Rudi Hempe. As such, a most fitting tribute to Rudi and his career has been recently published in the South County section of the Providence Journal. That article, published on May 13th, 2005 is posted here (below) for your review. ------

Article Published in the Providence Journal, South County section, on May 13th, 2005.

NARRAGANSETT – After officially retiring after more than 40 years in the business, newspaper editor Rudi Hempe still intends to spend his days digging up dirt.

Not reports of political spats, but the rich soil at his Narragansett home and at URI’s East Farm were he is a perennial volunteer.

Rudolph A. Hempe, 65, editor of The Standard-Times of North Kingstown since 1969, has taken the multiple layers of photos, thank-you notes, and awards down from the walls of his Wickford office, and then closed the door on a journalism career which began in the early 1960’s.

From the office at 13 West Main St., Hempe covered the comings and goings of the Navy, and the growth o the small town where he started his career as a URI journalism intern at the Providence Journal’s Wickford bureau.

“I cleaned up the clip files for a month, and then I covered my first meeting in Exeter at the Wawaloam School,” he said.

That night, School Committee members gathered “with a jug of cider and a box of doughnuts, and talked about potato farming,” he recalled.

Hempe returned to the Wickford bureau, typed out a four-paragraph report, and sent it to Providence by way of a teletype machine. By the time it got in the next day’s paper, it was only two paragraphs, he said. No byline, of course.

This was his introduction to a career in journalism in which he accumulated a closet full of newspaper clips, the first and last ones datelined Exeter.

In between the meeting with the doughnuts and the final Exeter editorial written behind the red, Wickford office door, Hempe worked for the Providence Journal, was drafted, served in the military, including in Vietnam, returned to the Journal and covered Johnston, and eventually became bureau manager in Wickford and Wakefield.

At the time, Gerald S. Goldstein, former South County bureau manager for the Providence Journal, was editor of the Wilson Publishing Company-owned Narragansett Times.

Hempe and Goldstein had news rivalry going, which grew into the beginnings of a lifelong friendship.

Hempe’s work caught the eye of Wilson Publishing owner Fred Wilson. Wilson, with Goldstein’s encouragement, offered Hempe the helm of The Standard-Times. “I liked the idea of running my own show,” Hempe recalled. He also liked the idea of teaming up with Goldstein.

So in 1969, Hempe became editor of the Standard, and Goldstein ran the Narragansett Times news office.

“We were it,” Hempe recalled of the days of gathering the news, writing the stories, shooting the photos, writing the headlines, designing the pages, taking the obituaries, and watching the newspapers fly off the press-the editors were required to stay behind and check over the early runs.

“A big edition back then would be about 10 pages,” Hempe said, but as the area’s population grew, so did the newspapers. Eventually, they were able to hire a reporter to share, and a photographer.

“He has been the quintessential grassroots journalist, concerned with local issues that directly shape how we live our lives,” said Goldstein of Hempe.

“He’s always done his work close to the people he covers. Ever since he started in Wakefield with the journal in the early 1960’s he’s worked from an office on village main streets where readers could pop in without notice either to praise him or to shake a finger at him.”

There were weeks when Hempe saw more of his typewriter than his home.

“I’d put my kids to bed on Sunday nights and not see them again until Thursday,” Hempe recalled of his early years at the Standard Times. His three children, David, Judi and Christine, are grown and he and his wife Lorraine have eight grandchildren.

Because he worked late into Tuesday nights and early Wednesday mornings for years, there were television shows Hempe said he never saw until they went into re-runs. But that was just the nature of running a weekly newspaper almost single-handedly.

While doing so over the past decades, Hempe also volunteered at a number of organizations, among them South County Museum, South County Hospital, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, and in recent years, URI’s East Farm – where he can usually be found on good weather days.

In recent weeks, Hempe and an army of volunteers have been preparing for tomorrow’s East Farm Open House and Crab Apple Festival at URI, caring for the grounds, sprucing up Master Gardener greenhouses, and getting ready to sell the 1,5000 plants they have cultivated.

“He is the single best volunteer organizer I have ever worked with,” said Marion Gold, director of the Cooperative Extension’s education center at the Kingston campus. Gold, who does outreach for the College of the Environment and Life Sciences, works closely with the Master Gardeners, witnessing their many volunteer efforts, and Rudi, she said, “has brought in a lot of other people passionate about plants.”

Though retired from the newspaper business, Hempe will not retire from writing. He’ll be working as a science writer part-time for URI.

And he’ll be digging things up at East Farm where he gathers with fellow gardeners who have completed the master Gardener program. Several years ago, Hempe completed the master Gardener course requirements, coming full circle from his childhood in Providence. His father Max grew roses in their small yard, and often took his young son to a friend’s farm in Warwick where he could roam around in the verdant fields.

“As a kid, I fell in love with the smell of it,” but working and raising a family left Hempe little time to pursue that interest until recently.

His little Ponderosa, as he calls his Narragansett acre, has produced Christmas trees and fruit trees, and paths lined with flowering shrubs. Hundreds of daffodils waive in his front yard.

“I never get bored,” he admits. A life in journalism has brought him into contact with a variety of interesting people, he said, and he’s grateful for that.

He’s also prod that between the two newspapers, the Standard and the Narragansett Times “we won our share of awards.”

Last Friday he was presented with the Goddard Award at the Rhode island Press Association’s annual editorial awards banquet in recognition of his longstanding commitment tot the organization.

Despite now being officially retired from the weekly newspaper business, Hempe never leaves home without his Palm Pilot which is already jammed with meetings, and garden events.

“I’m ready to try something different,” Hempe said, checking his schedule to see where he needed to be next – already eyeing conflicting commitments.

Perhaps retirement won’t be so different from full-time employment after all.

The University of Rhode Island has had an association of one form or another with Rudi Hempe for over 40 years. In 1962, Rudi launched his career as a writer and editor with a degree from URI in Journalism.