Police Reporting at the Ocala Star-Banner
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Volume 1, Issue 7, 2018 the early 1940’s and by the mid 1950’s had produced the area’s first Kentucky Derby winner, Needles. In the late 60s, most people Police Reporting at The Ocala passed through Ocala on US-301, one Star-Banner of the main arteries into the state from the Northeast. Those who David Lee McMullen, UNC Charlotte stopped grabbed a quick meal in a roadside restaurant or spent the night in one of the numerous motels that It was the Spring of 1966. The lined the highway. If they stayed, they Civil Rights movement was at one of were probably headed for one of its most divisive moments, with Florida’s most popular tourist violent confrontations occurring attractions, Silver Springs, or perhaps throughout the South. America’s the now long defunct Six Gun military build-up in the Vietnam War Territory, a wild west town, complete was underway, motivating the with saloons, dance halls, and government to increase the number of regularly scheduled gun fights. This young men being drafted into service. was Florida tourism in the days just Anti-War demonstrations were before Walt Disney World. The 1960’s, beginning, particularly on university however, would be the turning point campuses among those who felt most for the community, as Ocala was affected by the threat of being called caught up in the state’s exploding to serve. population growth, experiencing more In those heady days Ocala was still than sixty percent growth during each very much a sleepy little, old Florida of the next two decades. village. According to the 1960 census, I was nineteen, a pimply-faced the community had a population of reporter for the Ocala Star-Banner less than 14,000 residents. Situated in with less than two years of college to the rolling countryside of Central my credit. It was my first full time job, Florida, Ocala was in the center of the a job for which I was totally state’s thoroughbred horse racing unprepared. The move would change farms, an industry that had begun in my Selective Service status to 1-A, 1 removing my student deferment and family a few years later when they making me eligible for immediate sold off the chain. It was the final induction into military service. It was heyday of newspaper journalism and a threat that worried a great many the Star-Banner, like many small town young men of my generation, twisting afternoon newspapers, was just our plans for the future and drastically beginning the fight against the assault reshaping our lives, but it was also an of television’s evening news programs. uncertainty that most of us tried to The newspaper had begun life as ignore, at least until the last possible the East Florida Banner the year after moment. the Civil War ended, later merging When I started at the Banner, I with the Florida Iacon, before had never taken a journalism course becoming a daily publication in 1890. or written for a student newspaper. I By the end of that decade, the rival still dreamed of becoming a great Ocala Weekly Star was born in the American novelist. At that point, my press room of the Florida Baptist only newspaper experience came from Witness, the official publication of the delivering the St. Petersburg Times Florida Baptist Convention. with my father and mother as a boy Interestingly, two of its early editors and working part-time for the same included Frank Harris, a Confederate newspaper as a copyboy, city desk veteran, and later C.L. Bittinger, who clerk, and early morning truck driver. served as a commander of the Grand As a result, I understood almost every Army of the Republic before moving aspect of how a large newspaper south. Not until World War II did the worked, from when the story left a Star and the Banner merge into the reporter’s notebook until the Ocala Star-Banner. newspaper was tossed onto the During my time in Ocala, the paper reader’s front lawn. was located on the second floor of an Why the Star-Banner hired me that aging, nondescript office building on a spring is still a bit of mystery, side street a block off the main especially with a major journalism square. I can still remember climbing school just thirty miles up the road. I those dusty wooden stairs to the hope it was because they saw at least second floor, which was one large a little potential, although it probably open space, divided only by the walls had more to do with the poverty level of the stairwell. To the left was the salary of $75 a week they paid, barely advertising department, occupying a fifty cents an hour above the space at least twice as large as the minimum wage of the time. When I newsroom, which says a lot about the was hired, the Banner was still owned true priorities of most newspaper by the Perry family newspaper chain, publishers, then and now. a tight-fisted group of 27 publications that would make millions for the 2 Almost everything at the paper with two walls of windows behind him. seemed to be worn out – the offices, My only interaction with him outside of the furniture, even some of the his office was at civic club luncheons. people. The paper itself was printed His family moved to Ocala when he on an old press first used by one of was four and he has lived the vast the Atlanta newspapers, the Journal if majority of his life there. Except for a I remember correctly, to print their dozen years in Tallahassee, he spent color comics, another tidbit of trivia most of his professional career at the that sticks in my memory. Star-Banner. Today, in his early 90’s, he uses the wealth of experience he There were some fascinating acquired working for the paper to individuals at the Banner, some of write local history and he is the author whom came from old school of Historic Ocala: The Story of Ocala journalism, when newspapermen were and Marion County. hard-drinking, chain smoking escapees from a Damon Runyon play. At the other end of the newsroom Others at the Banner were the future sat Bernie Watts, the managing editor, of journalism, younger and more an almost speechless fellow who idealistic. These individuals were spend most of the hours approaching among my earliest mentors, people the paper’s early afternoon deadline at who helped to shape my career as a a small rectangular table in a dark, writer. windowless area, hunched over piles of copy. He was a real workhorse, the The editor of the paper was David man who oversaw every word that Cook. He was the man charged with appeared in the paper. A World War II the administration of the editorial side veteran and a University of Florida of the business, the public face of the journalism graduate, he made certain newspaper. He was also the the Banner adhered to basic representative who attended Chamber journalistic standards and met each of Commerce and civic club meetings, new deadline. glad-handed local politicians, and wrote editorials. He was the man who During my six months at the hired me, and he would be the guy Banner, I rarely spoke to Watts. To be who sent me packing. Curiously, our totally honest, I was afraid of him. paths would cross again, ever so Our conversations always came in briefly, at the Tallahassee Democrat. response to his questions concerning the news articles I wrote. I still have a Cook was the only member of the sense of dread when I think about editorial staff afforded any privacy. being summoned to his desk, I His desk was in the back corner of the imagine it is what it must have been newsroom, protected from roving eyes like to have faced the Spanish by a single wood and cork partition. Inquisition. He sat behind an old wooden desk, 3 Watts went on to become editor of Howland. Both were a few years older the Star-Banner, when Cook moved to and looked after me like big brothers. Tallahassee. He worked for the paper Sam, the assistant sports editor, for more than 45 years, holding was the one man at the Banner almost every editorial position at some destined to become nationally known. point in time, finally retiring at the end A sports enthusiast, he briefly played of 1994. He died in 2013 at the age of professional baseball, rode the rodeo 93. In true Watts style, his obituary in circuit and enjoyed golf well enough to the Star-Banner remembered him as hobnob with sports figures such as “an inveterate, bred-in-the-bone Ted Williams. Back then Williams newsman, having composed his own worked for the Boston Red Sox minor obituary.” league teams, teams that did their Thom Wilkerson was the city spring training at Gerig Field in Ocala. editor, a frustrated poet from Boaz, One of America’s legendary baseball Alabama, who produced at least three players, Williams was noted for his thin volumes of verse. From my explosive temper. On a round of golf perspective, he was the friendliest with Sam, Williams started yelling and member of the editorial hierarchy. He screaming, throwing his golf clubs into appreciated words and edited them a water hazard after an especially with loving care. I also think of him as disappointing shot. As for the spring someone who hoped that fate would training field where Williams coached, not condemn him to a career in it was named for a local druggist and backwater journalism.