Society of the Silurians LIFETIMESilurians Press Club EXCELLENCEACHIEVEMENT IN AWARDDONALDJOURNALISM G.DINNER McNEIL Jr. HonoringTimesAWARDS science Steve and GALA Kroft health Thereporter National speaks Arts onClub The15 Gramercy National ParkArts SouthClub Covid-1915 Gramercy and Park vaccines South Wednesday,Wednesday, October May 15,16, 2019 Drinks: 6 P.M. Dinner: 7:15 P.M. Drinks: January6 P.M. • Dinner: 13, 2020 7:15 P.M. PublishedPublishedPublished by by byThe TheThe Society SilurianSilurians of Pressthe Press Silurians., Club, Club, an an anorganization organization organization Meet old friendsNOON• and award winners [email protected] by Eventbrite or with; ofofof veteranveteran veteran NewNew YorkYork CityCity journalistsjournalists foundedfounded inin 19241924 [email protected] Zoom

NOVEMBERJANUARYMARCH 2019 2021 2019 ReportingLifetimeFeminism: honors Chappaquiddick for Kalb Brothers BY MORT SHEINMAN Beach on Long Island that featured pho- BY ANTHONY MARRO tographs of vacationers in bathing suits. Instead of covering history in the One man slipped him a $50 bill to make hen Newsday moved out of making, their accustomed preoccupa- Nowsure his daughter’s photographand appeared its Melville plant back in tion, the Brothers Kalb —Bernard and in the next issue. Uncertain what to do, WAugust, most of the pictures Marvin — made a kind of history of Marvin called his older brother, who told on the walls were put up for grabs. Rita their own in December, putting an excla- him to return the money. Ciolli, the editorial page editor, grabbed mation point on two lives of remarkable Then“That,” said Marvin, “was my first les- and sent me one that showed me and Bob journalistic accomplishment. son in Bernie Kalb ethics.” Greene and others standing on the bridge On the afternoon of Dec. 16, before Both Kalbs are native New Yorkers. at Chappaquiddick a few days after Sen. a Zoom audience of some 160 Siluri- They each attended public schools and Ted Kennedy had driven into the tidal ans, family, friends, former colleagues, each is a graduate of City College. They pond, a July 1969 accident that resulted contemporaries and classmates (such worked together at CBS News and at in the death of his passenger, Mary Jo Ko- as this one), the Kalbs became the first NBC News, and collaborated on two pechne. It shows that, like most reporters dual winners of the Silurians’ Lifetime books. For the most part, however, they on the job back then, I was wearing a suit Achievement Award, an honor that goes carved out discrete and distinguished ca- and a tie. A few nights later I was back back more than half a century to 1969 reers. on the bridgeMARVIN again, but thisKALB time wearing when became its first I first met Marvin in 1950, when I was only my underwear. recipient. a freshman at CCNY and he was a senior. figure. He reminded more than one fel- I dove into the pond and touched bot- lege experience,” Kalb wrote in a 2013 It was an occasion to be savored, filled (Well, we’re both seniors now, super-se- low student of a young Abe Lincoln. As a tom, which wasn’t difficult because the article in The Atlantic, “and it also taught with warmth, affection and, for the many niors actually. Marvin turned 90 last June, 16-year-old freshman, I was in awe. water seemed to be only about ten feet me important lessons in journalists, a reminder of why they were the “baby brother” to Bernard, who’ll be The euphoria over the basketballdeep. I came up and then dove down again helpful many decades later in my cover- drawn to the profession and to princi- 99 in February.). He was the sports editor players’ exploits lasted until the follow- four or five times. Kennedy had said that age of wars and political upheavals.” ples of impartiality and truthfulness that of The Campus, City College’s student ing season, when CCNY was revealed he had tried to rescue Kopechne, but that He warned against being “a cheerlead- kept their work honorable. When Ber- newspaper, and had a press-box view of toA be one ofWOODSTOCK many schools involved in a the current had been too strong. Greene, er with a typewriter,” and said if more nard explained what it was that drove one of the most dramatic sports stories nationwide gambling scandal in which who headed Newsday’s investigations news organizations had used “a dash of him to work as a journalist for 78 years, of that year: the unprecedented dou- players were paid to shave points. The team,skepticism” wanted whento know reporting just how on strong the activ the - he spoke of “a lust in yourself to know ble-championship victory of the school’s episode tarnished everything that hap- currentities of was. government But as a “weman might with ahave Sydney been what is going on.” basketball team in the NCAA and NIT pened earlier and taught Kalb some- MEMOIRGreenstreetable to avoid sort Vietnam of bulk, and he Watergate.”didn’t think In introducing them, Silurians pres- tournaments. I was lucky to be a new kid thing vital to journalism: the need for he wasKalb’s the career right person has been to testa testament it. to ident Michael Serrill lauded them as on his staff, to watch him work and learn. healthyBY JACK skepticism. DEACY bridge on Chappaquiddick Island and havingIt was learned such a thatdark lesson night well. that FollowI kept - “two titans of 20th century journalism” Kalb, a rangy six-footer, full of ener- “For the rest of my life, this basketball killed Mary Joe Kopeckne. During that Marro, left, and photographer Ken Spencer in front of the Harbor View Inn at Martha’s Vineyard in 1969. ing his graduation fromContinued CCNY, on he Page stud 6- and second vice president David Mar- gy and blessed with a deep baritone and scandal wouldn the taint sunny my memory morning of what of memorable year, the raged golick recalled how impressed he was as easy sense of humor, cut an impressive was otherwiseFriday a rich Aug. and 15, rewarding 1969, motel col- on, Nixon was swornContinued in and Sy on HershPage 4 a youngster listening to these “voices of Oowner Jack Besterman and broke the My Lai massacre story. The civilization and sophistication” on CBS I walked up the driveway of the Pine Black Panthers brought a militant new RecallingNews. the Clattering of theMotel in KeysWhite Lake, New York where phase to the Civil Rights movement, the “There was nothing pompous or it meets Route 17B. What we saw Manson murders shook Los Angeles, BY BILL DIEHL Sizing-Up-Trumpand started using a computer toamazed write Sequel hisus. newscasts.As far as our eyes Is could All see, Newin York’s the Stonewall Family riots started a gay off-putting about them,” Margolick said, Recently I took an informal poll of some of my fellow adding that they inspired him to become BY DAVID MARGOLICK leavethe roadway the White was aHouse vast sea once of cars.his lossAll revolution,would be “very, and the very Beatles ugly.” broke up. o many of us Silurians, it is a familiar mem- Silurians about their typewriterabandoned. memories. The Here only are things a moving on And on August 15 upwards of a journalist. few of the responses. was certified, though not without cry- Prognostication is cheap, though, and ory: the clackingAnne Roipheof 100, or (inset) 500, typewriters, and Katie Roiphe the road were the drivers Thereas reporterswere tributes and editorsfrom longtime worked toward t was their two weeksBert Shanas,after the who election, worked ingat the“fraud” New on York the wayDaily out. Yes, he’d box as polite as he is, Clyde has never been CBST anchor , who called the and Clyde Haberman, formerly and Bidenand inpassengers with various who executive orders; one to settle for softballs, even with his deadlines in open newsrooms. The sometimes deafening News for many years, recalled thathad whenabandoned the paper madethem, “I never seen nothing like this noiseKalbs could “a credit be almost to their soothing. heritage” For and some, “a the typewritformidably- the of switch the New from York typewriters Times, to computers,maybe he’d Jimmy go to war Breslin with Iran. But pre- own daughter at the plate. So he quick- BYcredit ANNE to our AND country.” KATIE Charles ROIPHE Sennott, a YorkIasked University. Maggie Haberman, She is the authorvery presently of The dictingall walking just whatslowly the west guy would do was ly pivoted to more titillating stuff, while er itself became a crucial part of the writingMorning process, After: couldn’t Sex, Fear, handle and Feminism,it. He wouldn’t toward go near their a computer destination and before,” he said to me. “All this co-founder of Report for America, which and conspicuouslywould of dictate the Times, his columns to assess to hisimpossible, secretary, even who to would perhaps his foremost understanding, surely, how unlikely it and manyilurian were reluctantAnne Roiphe to give was it up one when The computer Violet Hour , and the forthcoming The five miles away: the fosters local journalism, and Nancy the state of Donaldthen type J. Trump. them into the computer.chronicler, someone who’d followedfor him a concert? was that Maggie Who’s would playing, dish. Kindness, word-processingof the most arrived powerful in the andearly best- 1980s.Power Notebooks. She has also written Music and Gibbs,One reluctantformer editor convert of was Time longtime magazine print reporterShe andmade shortWhen work WNEW of her Radio father’s passed since into her history, days in veteranCity Hall. At least one even solicitude, were his cudgels. (2013-2017),known and feminist one of writers Marvin of Kalb’s the forfirst The batch New Yorkof questions. Times, Harper’s, Trump Slate,would thing,Art Fair. though, In this was pastoral clear: his departure Frank“We are Sinatra?” a journalism group, so let me CBSS commentator Andy Rooney. “I like beingThe a Paris writer Review, WNEW and otherreporter publications. Mike Eisgrau landed a job as Com- last century. Her daughter Katie Roiphe setting, for at least a few successors as director of the Shorenstein munications Director at the Javits Center, which was ask a couple of journalism questions,” butis one I also of thelike most writing,” prominent Rooney of wrotethis one. in his 2002 book days, the human foot Center on Media, Politics and Public using a computer system. Mike says he was able to he began gently. “I don’t know to what CommonSilurian ‘Non’News Sense.editor “MichaelThe only Serrilltime I feel inKatie control Roiphe: would overtake the combustion engine. 400,000 young people descended Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of rescue an IBM electric typewriter from the storeroom degree you can be completely forthright ofasked my lifethem is to when have I aam conversation sitting at my about typewriter—com I wrote -a piece for The Guardian on Besterman, an elderly Jewish on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm for the Government also lionized them. and used it throughout his tenure at Javits. “I did use on some of them but the first one would puterwhat now—typing.”has become known as the MeToo finding out that my male colleagues man who once ran a grocery store Woodstock festival. The country seemed “There couldn’t be better role models the Javits computer system, but never mastered the me- inevitably be your own relationship with movement, Like Rooney a vigorous and many debate of aboutus of athe certain were age, paid we more than me. When they got in , kept staring at the to be spinning out of control. But it was for the craft of journalism,” Sennott said. chanics very well, so I used the IBM to type addresses Trump. Can you discuss at all how ac- grewdiscrimination up with typewriters. and sexual In harassment high school Itheir needed job anoffers from the university they monumental scene. “I never seen a newspaper reporter’s dream. Claudia Kalb, Bernard’s daughter, on envelopes,” he says. cessible he has been to you, or maybe extrathat continues credit to graduate to plague and society took herea “touch and typing”negotiated class, and asked for more money nothing like this before,” he said to me. At the time I was writing a Daily News recalled her father starting dinnertime Silurian Clyde Haberman sent me an article from remains to you? I mean, you do have ex- soaround it was theme andworld. 30 young The format women. is AsKatie the yearsand went when by I got mine my instinct was “All this for a concert? Who’s playing, column three times a week that covered conversations by asking, “What’s the 1999 that he wrote for . A few traordinary stories, so presumably you andinterviewing I became herpart mother of some about big broadcasting how things newsrooms,just to say thank you. Since then I have Frank Sinatra?” music, politics, sports, government and headline?” She spoke of appreciating her excerpts: “Bit by bit—byte by byte?—computers have are talking to some people, and...” thathave, typing and haven’t, course becamechanged. important. I didn’tresolved have to ask for more money for my So began my five-day odyssey city characters. I was 25 years old and father’s endless curiosity in his world- pushed typewriters to the same musty shelf where you’ll It was a long wind-up, seemingly de- produceAnne, my a former copy memberby the “hunt of the and Silurian peck” methodwork. Havelike you ever asked for more covering the 1969 Woodstock Festival my cup runneth over. wide postings and how close her father find buggy whips, bottles of cod-liver oil and, any day signed to lull her into at least a minor manyBoard of of my Governors, colleagues. is the I too author joined of theUp computermoney forbri -your work? Do you think this for the New York Daily News. I had In late May I began receiving releases remained with her uncle Marvin. now, subway tokens,” he wrote. indiscretion. It didn’t work. In fact, she gade—notthe Sandbox, exactly 1185 parkkicking Avenue, and screaming, Epilogue butis a with feminist the issue? come to cover a music festival. But and materials from promoters of a three- The brothers were visibly moved by Why do some diehards even to this day cling to an said, before he finished, “I am talking to realizationand 15 other that Inovels had better and learn non-fiction computer skills or my it would morph into an absolutely day concert in upstate New York. It was all the encomiums and reminiscences, obviously outdated technology? Haberman quoted Lois some people but I would never say who jobbooks. would She behas in written jeopardy. for New York Mag- Anne Roiphe: incredible weekend and one of the going to feature some of the biggest though Bernard joked that “I had no Gould, who said, “the perfection I see on the computer those people are, whether it was him... azine,Yet whenThe Newcomputers York Times,were introduced Ms., Elle, at CBS I Radio,do think this is a feminist issue or major stories not only of 1969 but of names in rock and folk music: the idea there were so many press agents screen I find dangerous. It looks good, therefore you “...fair enough,” he conceded. correspondentVogue, Cosmopolitan Reid Collins and rebelled. a variety The of dayat he least arrived a problem for feminists. I would the Sixties. Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater on our payroll.” Marvin told a story that think it’s right.” “...or somebody else,” she continued. inother the newsroompublications. and a computer was on his desknever instead dream of asking for more money And what a year 1969 was for news. Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Stills captured their principled journalism. Another writer, Frances Whyatt, says the typewriter “And because we are a journalism group of aKatie typewriter, is the he director tossed theof machinethe Cultural into a wastebasketand I am sorry to say that I probably American astronauts walked on the Nash and Young, The Band, Janis andHe walkedrecalled out. how Collins as a teenager was suspended. he edit- A Father-and-daughtershort time “slows you news down duoenough Clyde to make Haberman you better.” and Maggie Haberman I assume this group would understand Reporting and Criticism program at New Continued on Page 5 moon, Ted Kennedy ran his car off a Continued on Page 3 latered ahe summertime went to CNN, newspaper where he later at gaveLido up werehis protest guests at the Fall Silurian Session. Continued on Page 7 CBS’s Andy Rooney at his belovedContinued machine. on Page 4 PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS JANUARY 2021 President’s Report KAMALA HARRIS CHOICE RECALLS Dear Silurians: So long, Donald Trump. We’re not sorry to see you go. It is a commonplace fact of jour- AN ILL-ADVISED ASSIGNMENT nalism that much of what we do on a daily basis is simply report what people BY CAROL LAWSON say--politicians, bureaucrats, business- men. Sometimes what they say is of or women like me, the night of July dubious credibility, and our stories point 19, 1984 triggered an explosion of that out by quoting other people offering joy and hope. It was the historic a counterpoint. Until four years ago we Fnight when accept- were rarely forced to take responsibility ourselves for deciding whether a state- ed the Democratic nomination for vice ment was true or false. Then Donald president of the . She was Trump came along. Walter Mondale’s choice for running According to ’s mate, the first woman named to a na- Fact Checker feature, the number of lies tional ticket.(Kamala Harris, whose told by Donald Trump during his time in nomination set off this chain of mem- office approaches 25,000. And the lying ories, was the third, though she was the took on bizarre dimensions after the Nov. first black woman.) 3 vote, with Trump declaring ten times For legions of women like me who daily that he won the election, that the had seen their careers diminished by sex vote count was fraudulent, even after the votes in swing states were certified as discrimination and had fought endless accurate, often by Republican officials. battles to crush it, the thrill of the mo- One recent day Trump made 15 misstate- ment was electric. My heart burst with ments of fact in just ten minutes. excitement, my eyes overflowed with Trump’s constant lying—and that of tears. GERALDINE FERRARO many of his fellow Republicans worried But my exhilaration didn’t last long. about antagonizing Trump’s loyal base— The next morning when I arrived at my though he was known for traveling all about Ferraro’s hairdresser at this his- has put the press in an awkward position. desk in the Style department of the New over on his bicycle, Bill also toric moment for women would be a big We can’t go find a Democrat or an expert York Times, my editor gave me an assign- knew the ins and outs of the subway sys- mistake. It would make The Times look to contradict him every time he tells a lie. ment that completely destroyed my eu- tem and was able to navigate our journey foolish. And what the President says is news by phoria. She wanted me to go to deep into Queens. To Arthur’s credit, he consulted not definition, so we have to report it. But to maintain OUR credibility we are forced to interview Ferraro’s hairdresser. We found the hairdresser’s tiny salon his male masthead colleagues but the to pepper our stories with such phrases Her hairdresser? What a throwback! in a quiet neighborhood of Queens. Our group I called the Front Wall, the row of as: “…the President claimed, without When did the Times ever interview the arrival surprised and puzzled him. He secretaries who sat in front of the mast- evidence….’: “the president falsely assert- barber of a man running for President or couldn’t understand why we were there head editors’ offices. The verdict of these ed…” and a dozen similar warnings to Vice President, particularly on the day — just as Bill and I couldn’t. Whenever I women was unanimous: responding to our readers that what you are reading is after he was nominated — as if his hair asked a question, he answered with a few Ferraro’s historic nomination with an fiction. was his most important qualification? non-informative words: “Mrs. Ferraro article about her hairdresser was embar- Then, of course, comes the President I tried to persuade my editor that this comes here,” or “I cut her hair.” rassing. shouting that, no, it is we who are lying, assignment was a bad idea — a dumb Soon Bill and I were ready for the long Arthur killed the story. that we are the “fake news” and “enemies idea, really — but she was adamant: trip back to Manhattan. At the office, I Which brings me to Kamala Harris. of the people” whose sole purpose is to “This is your assignment,” she said. told my editor that I didn’t have a story. Thirty-six years later, women are again bring him down. This daily fight with the holder of The editor assigned Bill Cunningham, She insisted that I write one. celebrating the nomination of a woman the highest office in the land has been the Times’ famous fashion photographer, Somehow I wrote enough to satisfy to be vice president of the United States enervating and exhausting for those to go with me to shoot the hairdress- her, but I followed up by writing some- on the Democratic ticket. But this time who populate our newsrooms. And it er. Bill’s dim view of this assignment thing else: a letter to Arthur Gelb, the journalists are writing about her profes- has done permanent damage to our matched mine, but he went along. Al- managing editor, to say that an article sional accomplishments, not her hair. profession, assuming that many of those 70 million people who voted for Trump believe what he says about journalists and journalism. As a story in The Atlan- tic put it recently, “Trump…, capitalizing on ‘truth decay’ and diminishing trust in JONATHAN DIENST HONORED sources of factual information…, exploit- ed them more effectively than anyone else has in American history.” On Jan. 20, the nightmare—for the WITH PETER KIHSS AWARD press and for the nation—will finally reporter. He is also a pillar of the WNBC end. That doesn’t mean the press and BY TONY GUIDA the Biden Administration will always see intern program providing nourishment things the same way. Maggie Haberman, n the night of Tuesday Septem- for cubs hoping to be bears. our guest at a Silurians Zoom program ber 15, Jonathan Dienst was On the terrorism beat, his work in- in November, noted that reporters were burning up the phone lines to cludes deep dives into the two attacks already complaining that President-elect Ohis sources at the NYPD and FBI chasing on the World Trade Center as well as Joe Biden was not making himself avail- information about a Queens man arrest- plots to bomb the Federal Reserve Bank, able enough for the usual press confer- ed in a house brimming with explosives. Times Square, and fuel lines at JFK air- ence interrogation. But we all hope that Not for one of his investigative reports, port. those phrases “without evidence” and but to help a colleague enrich her story The Dienst menu also offers a spe- “falsely claimed” will, for the most part, of the arrest for Channel 4’s 11PM news. cial in political corruption. An excellent be put back in the box. choice when one’s beat includes New Jer- Maggie, interviewed by her father The next night: Dienst spent a good part Clyde, pulled in a record number of of it sharing professional advice with a sey, a banquet of turpitude even before Zoom watchers. (See a story on that class of aspiring journalists. the place became a State. Its first colonial event in this issue, and go to our You- Snapshots of those two evenings governor, Lord Cornbury, fed a rapa- Tube channel on Silurians.org to listen to might as well be X-rays. They reveal cious appetite for other people’s money the whole program.) We also attracted a the essential Dienst: tenacious report- on a steady diet of bribes and embezzle- large audience for the presentation of our er, dedicated mentor. What they don’t JONATHAN DIENST ment. Lifetime Achievement award to Bernard show is that he appears to have been One Garden State mayor went to and on Dec. 16, and expect born for both roles. As a result, Dienst Lockerbie Scotland. prison on the strength of Dienst’s ex- the same when we host Don McNeil, was honored with the Silurians’ annual cavations. And his exhaustive probe health reporter for the New York Times Through that winter, Dienst binged Peter Kihss award, given to a journalist on the work of investigative journalists into Senator Robert Torricelli’s mis- and expert on all things Covid, at our deeds forced him to abandon his run for Jan. 13 meeting. with an outstanding career but also one sifting through the wreckage of 270 lives. By the way, we moved that program known for mentoring younger or newer Eventually, their stories exposed fail- re-election. Tips of the Dienst iceberg up a week so it wouldn’t conflict with colleagues. ures by the U.S. State Department lead- that also helped sink two former NYPD the Biden inauguration, which most of “Dienst,” in German, is a masculine ing up to the catastrophe and Pan Am’s detectives, an FBI agent, a Brooklyn us will watch with great relief as our pres- noun meaning “service” or “duty.” Jon- mendacity in its wake. “A great service,” judge, a Bronx city councilman, Jeanine idential tormentor fades into athan’s first glimpse of how he might Dienst called it. “Heroic,” too. He saw his Pirro and Bernie Kerek. There’s plenty the background. render service came from horrific televi- future and embraced it. more on the Dienst resumé, but you get sion images of an airliner blown apart by the idea. Stay safe. Now, as chief investigator for WNBC terrorists. Pan Am flight 103. December and a frequent contributor to NBC It is worthy of note that on the after- Michael Serrill noon between the two snapshots de- President 1988. Dienst was 20. Two of his Colgate News, Dienst has crafted a distinguished classmates died in the mournful sky over reputation as a scrupulous and relentless scribed above, Jonathan Dienst accepted JANUARY 2021 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 3 Television Reporting Veteran Tries Brushing Away Hostility to Immigrants

Former television news reporter Betsy Ashton spent months painting immigrants living in and around New York City in an effort to highlight their courage and their contributions to their adopted homeland.

BY BETSY ASHTON of and for the rich had to learn English and and accomplished. repeat years of nurses’ By the beginning of For someone who training all over again to 2017, I had had enough. loves pushing oil get licensed here. Diego Our new president, paint around taut- Salazar, who arrived as Donald Trump, continued ly stretched linen, a penniless high school to claim immigrants com- I was focusing on graduate from Bogota, ing from south of the bor- how posture, the Colombia, was hired as der were “bringing drugs, BETSY ASHTON position of hands, an apprentice in a picture crime. They’re rapists.” At the turn of a mouth, frame shop and became an best, he claimed, all immi- a glance, and the expert in repairing and re- grants were “stealing our jobs.” When arch of a brow reveal character and soul. producing antique frames. he banned Muslims, even war refugees I decided that others — working He now owns the building who had helped our troops in Syria and journalists — could compile the facts next door to my art studio Afghanistan, and his admirers cheered and numbers and tell some stories, but and two more. what I knew from solid news reports to maybe, just maybe, I could use my art to But how to find the un- be lies, I felt that I had to do something. humanize the ordinary immigrants who documented? Willing to Living and working in Long Island live here. paint them in shadow and City, Queens, in the borough with the There is something special about not reveal names wasn’t country’s highest concentration of im- sketching a person while interviewing enough for two Mexican migrants, in a city where 52 percent of them in their home or workplace, watch- cleaning ladies, terrified of businesses were owned by immigrants, it ing their eyes as they tell me their story, being deported. But many seemed that I had to help tell the truth catching a smile that reveals a passion, visits over coffee to Eddie’s about people I saw every day, to lessen studying repeated gestures of hands that shop turned up someone the fear about why they came here and almost scream, “This is who I am.” who had a Guatemalan whether they took jobs or made a con- At first, finding subjects was easy. housekeeper. Syrian Muslim, Amina Ahmed, her husband, and tribution. Edilson Rigo managed the espresso bar Maria-Salomé’s hus- three children lived in hellish underground condi- But I was retired from my nearly two that I visited on the five-block commute band had abandoned her tions in Malaysia for five years before being res- decades as a television news reporter, was to my studio. He readily agreed to pose with their five children, cued by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. far removed from the deadlines of news- and tell me his immigration, story. After ages three to sixteen. Un- rooms and challenges of nailing down the eighth bloody robbery at a pizza par- qualified to do more than laundry, she for Amina Ahmed, her husband, and the truth in words and film. Indeed, I lor they owned in Sao Paulo, Brazil, they could not earn enough to feed them. three children. The family had owned was enjoying a return to an art career closed up and moved to the safer coun- Her choice: become a prostitute or leave and ran a grocery in Aleppo, Syria’s fi- I had abandoned years earlier, and was tryside. But chef Eddie was young, loved Guatemala and send money home to a nancial center, and stayed until nightly busy painting commissioned portraits cities, and posted online to see if anyone relative, who would raise the kids. “In- government bombing came dangerously needed “a pizza man” in decent work? No, no!” she told me. And close to their suburban home. Fleeing on New York. Someone did so she hired a “coyote” and crossed Mex- tourist visas to Malaysia — all they could and sponsored him. He ico and the Rio Grande at night. “BAD, get — they wound up living in hellish un- has since opened and bad!” is all she would say of the trip that derground conditions there for five years run several cafés and included two scary days and nights of before HIAS discovered their plight and coffee bars, become a walking through parched desert brush sponsored them into the U.S. citizen, and suffered the until a bus picked them up on a lone road As a Muslim Kurd educated in Syri- pandemic lockdown at two in the morning. She was lucky to an schools, Amina was stunned to be with the rest of us. His get to New York where Guatemalan men “saved” by Jews. “They educate us to latest café in Williams- renovating a house got her a job cleaning hate Israel. I now see it’s more complicat- burg, Brooklyn, is “tem- up the construction dust. Hired as that ed. These are good people!” Amina now porarily” closed. But he’s home’s housekeeper, she sent money has a good business doing alterations for always been wildly bull- home for 24 years, until she had saved many Jewish customers out of her fami- ish on America. enough to get a proper green card. ly’s Westchester apartment. “When you come A week after I finished her portrait, That’s a truly American story. here and see everyone Maria flew to Guatemala to hug grown Instead of criminals, I found people interacting and building children she had supported for almost a with the guts and drive to leave war, pov- this country, it’s a beau- quarter century, to meet their husbands erty and political turmoil for hard be- tiful thing,” he said. “We and wives, and hold grandchildren she ginnings in strange new places. Isn’t that have to keep it this way.” had never touched. immigrant pluck one of the forces that Advised to paint 18 Finding a Syrian refugee took months. made America great? portraits — the num- Not even Kurds, who had fought battles ber needed for a solo art on behalf of U.S. troops, were being al- Betsy Ashton spent nearly two decades show — I sought sub- lowed in. Joe Berger told me at a Siluri- reporting the news for radio and TV sta- jects from many coun- ans’ lunch that he knew of synagogues tions in Washington, DC, New York City, tries, faiths, and cul- working with HIAS, the Hebrew Im- and CBSNews. She is now an artist/writer tures. Some were very migrant Aid Society, that were helping as well as past president of the Silurians. close to me: Polish-born Syrians settle in the U.S., and he put me “Portraits of Immigrants” is slated to nurse Beata Szpako- in touch with one woman, who led to open at Concordia College in Bronxville Edilson Rigo immigrated to New York after his pizza wicz Kombel, works in another, who’d worked to find an apart- in March, 2021, and to go to Snug Harbor parlor in Brazil was repeatedly robbed. my doctor’s office, but ment, job, schools, and sewing machines in Staten Island at a later date. PAGE 4 SILURIAN NEWS JANUARY 2021 An Appreciation of Betsy Wade, Injustice Fighter BY JAN BENZEL to know people, from the publisher of Of her firing at the New York the Practical Traveler. I was her The New York Times to the editors and Herald Tribune because she editor for a few of those years. If you’re a Silurian, chances are you reporters to the copy boys and girls to the was pregnant, she told me: Among the lines of coverage knew Betsy Wade, who died Dec. 3, at printers. She had great zest for the col- “When something like that she was most on fire about 91.Betsy was many things, but she was laborative element of putting out a daily happens to you it sets your was travelersʼ safety. She was not shy. She made it her business to get newspaper. politics in order right fast.” an early champion of defibril- I first met Betsy on the Timesʼ night Betsy had been passion- lators, and staff trained to use national desk in the early 80s, where a fa- ate about journalism her them, on airlines, writing per- mously foul-mouthed supervisor treated entire life. She was proud of suasively about lives that could Kalb Brothers me, a young green female editor new to the women’s suit, and of the be saved by the quick medical Continued from Page 1 the paper, with skepticism (to put it po- adoption in 1986 – better late attention they afforded. Her ied Russian language and literature at litely). than never — of Ms. as Times reporting was so persuasive, Harvard, where he got his M.A. In 1956, Betsy, who would calmly pull out her style. (She worked behind the BETSY WADE in fact, that Punch Sulzberger he was working on his Ph.D. in Russian knitting as she waited for reporters to file scenes on that effort, but her had the devices installed in the history when he was hired by the U.S. their stories, looked out for me, answer- hand is unmistakable.) But the real fire in Times building on West 43rd Street. She State Department as a translator at the ing the questions I muttered under my her belly was for the work itself. was onto eco-travel early, and sorted out American Embassy in Moscow. A year breath and making sure I occasionally She described with enormous relish the real from the window dressing when later, he became the last correspondent had someone to grab dinner with. Her taking part in the coverage of two of the it came to green hotels and tours. She recruited by Edward R. Murrow to join kindnesses were legion, shown in the biggest news stories of the second half of fumed that there was no efficient, inex- CBS. Assigned to the Moscow bureau outpouring of stories about her when her the 20th century: the Cuban Missile Cri- pensive public transportation from New and later to Washington, Kalb became a death became known. sis and the Pentagon Papers, which in- York City to its airports. familiar television presence. In 1980, he By the time I was watching her knit volved the high drama of working at an If Betsy saw unfairness — in actions, moved to NBC News as chief diplomat- on the national desk, the four-year class anonymous suite at the New York Hilton paychecks, treatment or language — she ic correspondent and host of “Meet the action suit Elizabeth Boylan v The New on Project X, 7,000 pages of top-secret set about challenging the institutions that Press.” York Times, had been settled. Betsy, us- documents obtained by The Times that perpetuated them. With her collegiality In 1987, Kalb became founding direc- ing the name “on my driver’s license,” detailed the history of American involve- — which is not to say she wasn't tough; tor of the Shorenstein Center, remaining she would say, was the named plaintiff ment in Vietnam. Allan M. Siegal, the she was tough as nails — she showed a until 1999. Today, he is a guest scholar among seven who represented some 560 foreign editor at the time, asked Betsy generation or two in the newsroom that at The Brookings Institution, hosts “The female employees at the paper, who had if she wanted to join the project, adding generosity was a good way to go. Kalb Report,” a periodic discussion of successfully sued for equal pay and op- that it might lead to jail time. Would she media ethics at the National Press Club portunity for advancement. She had also mind? Jan Benzel was an editor at The Times and is a contributing analyst for Nation- just finished four years as the first woman For the last 14 of her 45 years at The for 30 years , most recently as editor of al Public Radio and the Chan- to lead the New York Newspaper Guild. Times, she wrote a weekly column called the Metropolitan section. nel. Kalb has written or co-written at least a dozen non-fiction books, including Kissinger, a 1974 biography of the for- Sizing-Up-Trump Sequel Is All in the Family mer Secretary of State cowritten with Continued from Page 1 brother Bernard, and two novels, includ- conceded, noting that, thanks to Twitter, tice, she said. “Voters had every piece of ing one also co-written with Bernard. that.” “Yeah. OK,” he added, a bit deject- reporters had to monitor such things in information they needed.” His many honors include two Peabody edly. a way they never previously had to do. “One of the most disappointing as- Awards and the DuPont Prize from Co- Later on, when Maggie took some The Times, she said, had been slow pects of the last four years for me is in lumbia University. questions from her virtual audience, to recognize the power of Twitter, es- watching the knee-jerk, reflexive, ‘but Bernard Kalb was an acclaimed news- her Trump ties arose again. And she pecially after inviting the Twitterati to the media...’ response to everything,” she paperman, television broadcaster, au- was just as resolute: if she wouldn’t dis- assume the role its now-defunct Public said. “How about the voters?” thor and media critic for decades, but he cuss it with him, she said, she wasn’t Editor once played. She’d returned to But even her newsroom colleagues, made headlines of his own in 1986 when about to with anyone else. “By the way, Twitter herself after a self-imposed and she suggested, were initially naïve about he resigned as a spokesman for the State I should add that she has not answered well-publicized exile because, she said, him. “People chose to assume that the Department under Secretary of State it even at family gatherings,” her father no one covering a man who lived on it office would change him,” she said. “I George P. Schultz to protest a govern- volunteered. “This is an endless frustra- could responsibly stay off it. said this to my entire D.C. bureau, that ment “disinformation” campaign against tion.” Though faulting theTimes for over- he is not going to change, I am telling Col. Muammar e-Qaddafi of Libya. In For the two Habermans it was a re- selling the Mueller probe – its readers you what he is,” she recalled. “I was di- so doing, he became a hero to many for turn visit to the Silurians, following a grew convinced Trump “was gonna get minished, waved off, told I was too tired calling attention to the importance of more traditional session at the National frog-marched out of the Oval Office” from the campaign, that I wasn’t seeing governmental credibility, an issue that Arts Club at the dawn of the Trump era. when it was over, she said – she stood by things clearly. People just didn’t want to resonates even more strongly today. Since then, Maggie has become a famil- the paper’s performance in the Trump believe what they were hearing.” “Faith in the word of America is the iar face (on CNN) as well as an indis- era. “In general, I think that we did the Veteran New York Post news- pulsebeat of our democracy,” Kalb said. pensable byline, picked up a million and best we could have covering a pretty ex- man (and Silurian Governor) Myron “Anything that hurts America’s credibili- a half Twitter followers, become a piñata traordinary four years,” she said. Rushetzky directed a question to both ty hurts America.” on the left and right. And signed up to Her father asked her about her forth- Habermans. “You have been assigned “In his final official act,” wrote colum- do a Trump book. coming Trump book, and the direction to write Trump’s wait-order obituary,” nist William Safire, Bernard Kalb “rose This time, the duo spoke not over it would take, especially given the glut he typed. “Other than a few obvious above State Department spokesman to rubber chicken but from contiguous of them already. “It’s not an untapped blanks, what is your lead?” become the spokesman for all Ameri- rectangles on a computer screen ne- genre, that is true,” she conceded. But On this one, Maggie ducked. “I don’t cans who respect and demand the truth.” cessitated by the coronavirus pandem- alone among White House correspon- write obits,” she said. (When he was spokesman, I met Ber- ic, with 173 other squares listening in. dents, she noted, she’d had a prior histo- “Well, I do,” her father chimed in, nard at a City College alumni dinner and What grizzled veterans called the Siluri- ry with the man. noting he had about 25 advance obits in remember his cheerfully introducing ans’ largest audience ever was treated to “Part of what confuses people who the can. “How about, ‘HE’S DEAD,’?” he himself as “keeper of the nation’s ambi- an insider’s reflections on a bizarre slice cover him and people who are around suggested. guities.”) of American history and, incidentally, a him in Washington is they sort of had Along with their assorted other dis- For more than 30 years prior, Kalb demonstration of two great journalists never seen someone like him, but if you tinctions, the Habermans are surely the covered international affairs at The in action. covered City Hall in New York, you ac- only father-daughter combo to migrate Times, CBS News and NBC News and Only Clyde addressed their blood tually understand him somewhat well,” from New York’s sauciest paper to its was based in Indonesia, , tie, and only glancingly. He spoke of she said. Her book, she said, would most staid. One last exchange of theirs Paris and Saigon. Kalb was also the the pain he felt when his daughter was bridge those two worlds. hinted at which of them retained more founding anchor of “Reliable Sources,” maligned, though more, he insisted, as a “I hope there will still be an appetite of the South Street sensibility. CNN’s critique of the media, and, for a fellow reporter than as a father. And he for it in a year,” she said. “I think there “I have to ask, as an old New York decade, a frequent panelist. winced upon hearing that she texted at will be because I think we’ll be writing Post person, albeit pre-Murdoch but No story about the Kalbs would be the wheel. about this period of time for decades to still a tabloid, the inevitable question, complete without mentioning the phone “Not anymore,” she assured him. c om e .” “does this marriage last?” Clyde asked. call from Bella Kalb, their mother. As the “OK. Good to know,” he said. She took umbrage at a suggestion “Between Murdoch and Trump?” story goes, both brothers were working Were there Trump-related stories she from the floor that the locals had failed Maggie asked. at CBS when a call came in and a voice regretted doing, he asked, or wished to cover Trump adequately or sound the “Between Trump and Mrs. Trump,” said, “This is Marvin Kalb’s mother. Can she’d done, or that were especially sat- alarm to everyone else. “Ridiculous,” Clyde replied. “Oh. That marriage,” she I please speak to Bernard Kalb?” isfying? She could better answer, she she called it. “The New York press spent said. “I have no idea.” “I’ve heard that story. I often tell it replied, in six months, after she’d had an enormous amount of time trying to myself,” said Bernard, according to a more sleep. But generally, she said, she explain to people the President’s real David Margolick spent most of his Times profile. “There’s no sibling rivalry. was pleased with her coverage. business record, and it didn’t matter to a career at the New York Times and Vani- Only sibling love.” “There are a million headlines that I public across the country who had got- ty Fair. He’s now finishing up a book on wish had been written differently,” she ten to know him through The Appren- comedian Sid Caesar. JANUARY 2021 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 5 The Pitcher and the Columnist: A Beautiful Friendship BY IRA BERKOW 1, 200-pound tive, regard- hurler would “We shared meals and we less of the call it the night that and stoically have shared laughs. He could be silly, affection one I slept together, but it was a great deal to make do might feel more innocent and monumentally with his sport with a rather goofy giggle.” for a subject. Iless risqué than it sounds. The story: jacket and tie. But a partic- It was the last Sunday in January, Well, Lou- ular circum- 1970, when Tom Seaver and I, along with is went to bed early and the three of us stance, in this case, changed that worthy Joe Louis, the former great heavyweight stayed up late talking sports. I remem- dictum to a significant degree for me. boxing champion, and Curt Blefary, a ber the conversation came around to the The following baseball season, in journeyman major-league “greatest athletic feat,” and Seaver said, April 1970, three months after that train most recently with the Yankees, rushed “, for having pitched four ride, NEA hired Seaver to write a once- from the Baseball Writers dinner at the no-hitters.” a-week column. I was to shepherd the Waldorf-Astoria to catch a train. The organizer of the Rochester event, column. I’d call Seaver and we’d discuss Seaver had been awarded “Player of who made the sleeping arrangements, a subject and then, using his words, I’d the Year” by the New York baseball writ- had Tom and me sharing a compart- fashion a column. He was thoughtful and ers, and the four of us raced to Penn Sta- ment with bunk beds. The room was often generous, as he was, for example, to tion in hopes of arriving in time to catch so small that it seemed if you turned , the Mets’ , who was, the 10:30 overnight train to Rochester. around you’d bump into yourself. Tom he said, “my most important influence in There Seaver, who that year had com- and I shrugged and flipped a coin. He professional ball. He was a pro’s pro. He piled 25 wins and a 2.21 earned run av- got the lower berth and I the top one. held that there were no prima donnas on TOM SEAVER erage and led the Mets to a “Now I know what Rube Walker meant,” this ball club. He had one important rule: championship, was to receive the 1969 said Seaver, referring to Rube Walker, Everyone is treated alike.” Greenwich, Ct., then moved to Cal- Professional Athlete of the Year award, the Mets’ pitching , “when he said Seaver also had a great admiration istoga, California, where he joyfully and Louis would get a Lifetime Achieve- you really came to know your roommate for the professionalism of Henry Aaron, produced quality wines. In the fields, ment award, both presented annually when teams used to travel by train.” and recalled the first time he faced the he contracted Lyme Disease. It affected by the Hickok Belt Company headquar- Only a few hours later, jostled and legendary slugger, as a first-year Mets’ him in numerous ways, including with pitcher in 1967: “The first time I faced an increasing loss of memory. In 2013, him, I was a rookie. I got him to into I ran across a publicity photo of the two a play on a sinker down and in. I of us in the NEA office when he began could have lit up a victory cigar. I was so the column, and it showed Tom behind proud of myself. I figured I had his num- a typewriter and handing me a sup- ber. And he figured I was figuring that, posed draft. I sent the picture to him to too, because I threw him the same pitch be autographed, and wrote “My best to in the same spot the next time he came Nancy, and with hopes of good grapes to bat and he whacked it into the left- and fond memories.” field seats for a three-run homer. Anoth- About a month later, he sent back the er piece of education.” photo autographed and with it a note. And through the years I covered The note read, in part, “Sorry for taking Seaver as objectively as possible, and so long to get back to you, but this Lyme sticking to what I saw and how he per- Disease is no fun.” The autograph on the formed, with that long, powerful stride picture read: “To lra – A long-stand- off the mound and so low to the ground ing friend! Between us – 311 W’s in the that his right knee would drag through `Bigs.’ Best, Tom Seaver.” Needless to the dirt, besmudging his pants leg, as he say, there had never been any “Bigs” in went. His was a luminous 20-year ma- my past. jor-league career, from the Mets to the On August 31, Tom Seaver, who had Reds, back to the Mets, to the White Sox become reclusive the last few years, died to the Red Sox and, finally, enshrined in from complications of Lyme Disease, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooper- Lewy Body Dementia and Covid-19. stown, with 311 wins against 205 losses He was 75 years old. I have framed the and a 2.86 earned run average. He was photo of two of us together in the NEA sixth all-time in major-league strike- office, two young friends, exactly a half outs with 3,640 and won three Cy Young century ago. awards as best pitcher in the . Ira Berkow was a longtime sports re- We shared meals and we shared laughs. porter and columnist for The Times and He could be silly, with a rather goofy gig- shared in the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for gle. I saved a photograph of us on the national reporting for the series, “How Busch Stadium field in St. Louis before Race Is Lived in America.” His most a 1982 World Series game between the recent book, How Life Imitates Sports: Cardinals and Milwaukee. I was cover- A Sportswriter Recounts, Relives and ing the game as a columnist for The New Reckons with 50 Years on the Sports York Times and Seaver was working as an Beat, was published by Skyhorse this analyst for NBC-TV. He made a silly face past summer with scrunched Tom Seaver wrote a weekly baseball column for Newspaper Enterprise up mouth for the Association in 1970 and Ira Berkow was his editor. photographer and later sent me tered in Rochester. dreamy, we emerged onto the Roches- an autographed I was then the 30-year-old sports col- ter platform. It was raining in the dark copy of the pho- umnist and sports editor for Newspaper before dawn and Seaver and the rest of to, with the in- Enterprise Association, a Scripps-How- us waited for the laggard chartered bus. scription: “To Ira ard feature syndicate, and tagged along Blefary, in an act of kindness that only a – Are you proud to write a story about Seaver. I don’t re- hitter might perform in respect to a star to know the ma- member what Blefary was doing with us pitcher, took off his coat and draped it ture #41. Best – maybe he got lost, he had been notice- over Seaver’s right, pitching shoulder. as always, Tom ably drinking – but he would soon make Tom expressed surprise, but also grat- Seaver #41” (his his presence felt. itude. Finally, the bus made its appear- uniform num- We luckily grabbed a cab at the Wal- ance. ber). dorf curb, and made the train, with little And so ended the night that I slept with Seaver, had time to spare. In the hurry, and as the Seaver – rather slept above Seaver. But it lived with his train began to chug north, Seaver real- was the beginning of a lifetime friend- wife Nancy, and ized he had forgotten to take his overcoat ship. Now, a journalist should, in the two daughters, from the hotel. The 25-year-old, 6-foot- best of all possible worlds, remain objec- in a house in Tom Seaver, with Ira Berkow, mugging for the camera. PAGE 6 SILURIAN NEWS JANUARY 2021 Seymour Topping: A Personal Recollection

BY DAVID A. ANDELMAN Pentagon Papers, Watergate, East-West confrontations as the Cold War peaked, It’s difficult to overstate just how much a Middle East in the grip of dictators in Seymour Topping meant to my life, my those pre-terrorist years. Abe & Top— career, my self-image as a journalist. they were really inseparable—created Quite simply, I would not be the same the multi-section paper, transformed person, my work would not have been as it into a national, then an international rich, nor as comprehensive, and certain- force in journalism. ly would have lacked whatever humani- There were long stretches when Top ty I succeeded in bringing to it, without really ran the newsroom, created each Top. He died in November at the age of day’s front page, doled out to each desk 98, surrounded by his daughters and his the news hole and established the look remarkable wife of 71 years, Audrey. and feel of the product. I first stumbled on Top, or should I Top was also very much a leavening say he stumbled on me, in December force in the newsroom, moderating Abe’s 1968. Topping had recently become SEYMOUR TOPPING AND HIS BELOVED WIFE AUDREY mercurial moods and running interfer- foreign editor at The New York Times all I needed to know about the essence Gary Powers in 1960 and chronicled the ence between Abe and the publisher. So I following an already-brilliant career as of a foreign correspondent—down to emerging rift between the Soviet Union was hardly surprised that it was Top who a foreign correspondent. I was then a his Rolex GMT Master wristwatch and and China. It was Top’s stories from wheeled an aging Arthur Ochs “Punch” fledgling night beat reporter at News- Burberry trench coat, each of which I Moscow about the aggressive moves by Sulzberger down the aisle of Central day in Garden City, though with grand eventually acquired as soon as my mea- Nikita Khrushchev that John F. Kenne- Synagogue at Abe’s funeral in 2006. He foreign-correspondent aspirations. My ger budget allowed. dy was reading throughout the Cuban also never forgot those whom he men- friend Roy Silver, the Times venerable It was his personal and professional missile crisis in 1962. Then it was back tored and who loved him. When I took Nassau County reporter, happened to history that made him such a consum- to Southeast Asia as bureau chief from over as editor and publisher of World live next door to Gerald Gold, Top’s dep- mate foreign editor, then managing ed- 1963 through 1966, reporting on the first Policy Journal, he eagerly agreed to join uty, who mentioned in passing that Top itor of The Times, finally director of the moves by the American military into the my editorial board as its chairman. was looking for an eager young man to Pulitzer Prizes. Essentially, Top made his colonial wars of Indochina--in Vietnam, Following The Times, Top found his become his news assistant in a program mark in Asia—hardly surprising since he Laos and Cambodia. It was, in retro- way to Columbia (whose library is now a to recruit younger correspondents for was seduced into this career by reading, spect, perhaps fortuitous, perhaps quite repository of his archives) and its Grad- overseas assignments. Top hired me and as a teenager growing up in the Bronx, intentional, that I would follow Top into uate School of Journalism. There, he was for the next 14 months, I learned what Edgar Snow’s “Red Star Over China.” As Southeast Asia as bureau chief a decade proud to take over administration of the it meant to be both a gentleman of The a correspondent, barely 26 years old, for later. Pulitzer Prizes, a most worthy capstone Times and of the world from a master of The Associated Press, he was held pris- When I eventually made my way to a remarkable career. both. oner overnight by the People’s Liberation overseas, I finally got around to asking But he was proudest of his five daugh- My brief was to arrive by 8 a.m., scan Army in a peasant hut outside Nanking Top how I would know — or better still, ters, each born in different world capi- the wires, the overnight telexes from on the doorstep of the Battle of the Huai- how he would know — if I’d succeeded tals where he was based—Susan in Sai- some 40 correspondents scattered across Hai, the only correspondent with Com- as a foreign correspondent. I still recall gon, Karen and Lesley in London, Robin bureaus from London to Tokyo and pre- munist forces when Mao Zedong defin- his reply: in Berlin and Joanna in Bronxville, NY, pare a morning note, ready for Top when itively defeated the army of Nationalist “If, at the end of your tour in a partic- not to mention his seven grandchildren he walked through the door shortly after leader Chiang Kai-shek. In the course ular region, whether it is two, three, four and four great-grandchildren . He was 10 o’clock. If there was an urgent ‘rock- of 14 years with the International News years or more, your readers can feel that especially proud of his beloved wife, Au- et,’ I was authorized to ring him at home, Service, then the Associated Press from they have lived there with you, experi- drey, daughter of the remarkable Chester which I did on rare intervals with trepi- Nanking to Saigon, London to Berlin, he enced your experiences, felt as you felt, Ronning, the first Canadian ambassador dation, but was met always with kindness became the first American correspon- had an intimate sense of the texture, the to Mao’s government and the son of a and appreciation. Gradually, through dent in Vietnam since World War II. hopes and dreams and aspirations of the missionary to China. that amazing year (man’s first walk on Following a succession of scoops, The people whose lives and civilizations you Audrey and Top met in Nanking and, the moon, Bloody Sunday, Northern Ire- Times hired him in 1959 and he would are chronicling, you will have succeeded. herself a brilliant journalist and photog- land, the Prague winter), I learned, bit by spend the next 34 years at the paper. You must always carry each of them on rapher, followed him to every posting, bit, the history behind this remarkable, In Moscow, where he served as bureau your shoulder so that they can see and through every tribulation. Indeed, her calm, soft-spoken man who appeared to chief, he broke the news of the Soviets feel and smell as you do, through your final poignant tribute in an e-mail to me carry the whole world so lightly on his downing the U-2 spy plane of Francis eyes and ears and sensibilities.” Those was perhaps most evocative of his life shoulders. It was Top who taught me wise words guided and motivated me. and all they shared: “ By the time Top returned to New Top joined his ancestors this morn- York as foreign editor, the paper and the ing. He read his last headline — Biden world were changing at an ever acceler- Wins. Top met his last deadline and died The Silurians Press Club ating rate. It was Top who, with execu- with a smile….We are all proud of him Andy Fisher using his ancient manual to mock FEMA. tive editor A.M. “Abe” Rosenthal, shaped and grateful for our 71 years of happi- Officers 2020-2021 the Times coverage of a period of tumult ness. Never a dull moment. Top sends his love forever to all of his best friends President COMMITTEE and transformation—Vietnam and the MICHAEL S. SERRILL CHAIRPERSONS: the world over.” First Vice-President Awards: JOSEPH BERGER JACK DEACY Second Vice-President Constitution and Bylaws: DAVID MARGOLICK ALLAN DODDS FRANK Secretary Continued from Page 8 several academics and coined the term CAROL LAWSON Awards Dinner: clean up the property. In 1972, Sheehy “Second Adulthood” to describe the AILEEN JACOBSON traveled to to report equilibrium that follows the crisis. Treasurer KAREN BEDROSIAN Futures: on the women involved in the Irish civil In the 1980’s, Sheehy began to work RICHARDSON ALLAN DODDS FRANK rights movement. The British govern- with Cambodian refugees. While vis- ment had created the Special Powers Act iting in 1981, Felker pointed BOARD OF GOVERNORS: Membership: LINDA AMSTER SCOTTI WILLISTON that allowed British soldiers to round up out a camp of Cambodian orphans that DAVID ANDELMAN Catholic men. The women and family he suggested would make a good story. BETSY ASHTON Nominating: members left behind became fierce fight- Sheehy visited the camp and the couple JACK DEACY BEN PATRUSKY BILL DIEHL ers. Sheehy was standing next to a young decided to adopt her second daugh- ALLAN DODDS FRANK Silurian News boy right after a march, and as British ter, Mohm, who lost most of her family TONY GUIDA JOSEPH BERGER, Editor soldiers moved in, a bullet struck the boy MYRON KANDEL during the murderous Pol Pot regime. BERNARD KIRSCH in the face. That day, Jan. 30, 1972, be- Felker and Sheehy had a tempestuous Website: AILEEN JACOBSON came known as Bloody Sunday. Sheehy MORT SHEINMAN, Editor romance for some years but it turned into BEN PATRUSKY escaped, fleeing to safe houses and made MYRON RUSHETZKY a happy marriage in 1984 and she nursed MORT SHEINMAN Webmaster: her way back to the States, but the expe- him for two years before his death in SCOTTI WILLISTON FRED HERZOG rience affected her deeply. 2008. She was visiting her last compan- It was about this time that she began ion, Robert Emma Gonna Jr., a former GOVERNORS EMERITI: Social Media: BILL DIEHL work on Passages. After conducting Harvard professor and a co-founder of GERALD ESKENAZI 40 interviews for a book on couples, GARY PAUL GATES People magazine, when she was stricken HERBERT HADAD SILURIAN CONTINGENCY FUND many in their late 30’s and early 40’s, with pneumonia. ROBERT D. McFADDEN BOARD OF TRUSTEES: she became intrigued when they ex- STEVEN MARCUS, PRESIDENT pressed feelings of being unsettled. She Stewart Kampel was an editor at The researched the work on midlife crises of Times for more than 40 years. JANUARY 2021 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 7 From Brass Tacks to UFOs: The Tale of One Hard-Nosed Reporter’s Strange Journey BY RALPH BLUMENTHAL neered mind-altering breathing tech- me in Manhattan. Then too, I’d been niques that took him back to his earliest spending summers teaching journal- wasn’t thinking much about UFOs traumatic childhood memories. Mack ism to international high schoolers at or aliens when I landed in Texas in was an early devotee of the Czech-born Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH, 2003 as Southwest bureau chief for transpersonal psychiatrist Stan Grof and epicenter of a flying-saucer craze in the IThe New York Times. his technique of regulated breathing, 1960s and not far from the site of abduc- Growing up in the dawning space called “Holotropic Breathwork.” tion’s lode star, Betty and Barney Hill’s age, I’d shared my generation’s romance But his career had been largely incomprehensible 1961 encounter in with science fiction, its rosy colonies on conventional until a captivating art- the White Mountains, as told by John G. Mars, starship voyagers and bug-eyed ist-turned-abduction researcher, Budd Fuller in the book and subsequent mov- monsters. But my realities evolved as I Hopkins, launched Mack into his own ie, The Interrupted Journey. got into painting and sculpture at the investigation of an unfathomable mys- I spent the years after Mack’s death High School of Music and Art and jour- tery : why were so many seemingly nor- reading, researching, interviewing, and nalism at City College, Columbia grad- mal people coming forth with these sear- writing, including a 2013 piece on Mack uate school and The Times. I spent my ing narratives of encounters with alien for Vanity Fair online (“Alien Nation: entire newspaper career covering hard- beings? A Temple University professor Have Humans Been Abducted by Ex- edged stories filled with perceivable, also researching alien experiences, Da- traterrestrials?”) and, with Times col- verifiable facts about cops and mobsters, vid M. Jacobs, made them a triumvirate. leagues, exposés of the Pentagon’s secret Nazi war criminals, the arts, and the ev- I thought that Mack, then almost 75 efforts to track UFOs. Finally my book, er-wild American West. and living in Cambridge, could make The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard And then about a year after arriving a compelling profile and figured to call Science, and the Passion of John Mack, in Houston, I came across a used paper- him up for an interview. Naively, I had is set for publication by High Road back from 1999 that carried me back to no idea how famous, or infamous, he al- Books of the University of New Mexico my origins. It was Passport to the Cos- ready was. And then, days later, I picked Press on March 15, 2021. mos, by a renowned Harvard psychia- up the paper to read he was dead. In So what did I conclude? Read the trist, John E. Mack. London for a symposium on his beloved book to find out. I’ll only say there are I’d never heard of it, nor its prequel, T.E. Lawrence, he had exited a Tube sta- no easy answers. But I’ve grown surer of Mack’s 1994 blockbuster Abduction: tion late one night, looked the wrong what UFOs and aliens are generally not Human Encounters with Aliens. They way crossing the street and been run -- hoaxes, publicity stunts, products of detailed his years of serious research into over by a drunk driver. Police reports mental illness or the delusion of crowds. the many ordinary men, women and ruled out any foul play. John Mack would take issue with the children, devoid of identifiable mental I wasn’t immediately thinking of a title of my book. He swore he was nev- illness, who came to him with stupefy- book. My last book, Miracle at Sing Sing er what people called a believer but was ing accounts of terrifying interactions on the “fearless fighting warden” Lewis only following a trail of overwhelmingly with alien beings that (or who?) who Lawes, was just then coming out and I powerful anecdotal evidence, the kind beamed humans up from their noctur- hesitated to plunge into another punish- of eyewitness testimony that gets people nal beds or daytime cars into hovering ing publishing project on top of my day convicted in court and executed . spacecraft for pseudo-medical probes job. There were, for example, the unex- and reproductive procedures seemingly It also felt somewhat odd for an inves- plained scars and lesions, including RALPH BLUMENTHAL bent on breeding a hybrid race. The elu- tigative reporter like me. I had broken wrist wounds on a quadriplegic abduct- sive evidence included mysterious scars, stories on the hunt for wanted Nazi war another book. I didn’t think, though, it ee that could not have been self-inflict- frequent proximity of UFOs during re- criminals like Klaus Barbie and Josef would take 16 years. ed. After an abduction, experiencers of- ported abductions, and the sometimes Mengele, embedded with precinct cops To my surprise, I found that the ten found themselves oddly displaced or physical absence of abductees. around the city, exposed shifty deal- Macks and I had repeatedly crossed translocated. Passport was Mack’s attempt, after a ings at the Port Authority, tracked the paths in what Carl Jung called synchro- A snowmobiler named Cathy had tormenting inquiry by scandalized su- botched terrorism investigation into the nicities — apparent coincidences that been dumbfounded to discover her periors at Harvard Medical School, to 1993 truck-bombing of the World Trade seem random, with no causal relation- missing outer garments neatly piled be- put his work in better context, temper- Center that might have headed off the ship, yet may be meaningfully related side her. A woman called Jill had found ing some of his earlier certainties, but 9/11 attacks, and tried to figure out who through unseen cosmic threads. herself back in bed, “tucked in so hard it was still plenty sensational. He had was who at the wake for the rubbed-out John’s father, Edward, was an English I couldn’t get up.” Her husband hadn’t grown convinced, for example, that the Colombo family mobster Joey Gallo. professor at the City College of New done it; he had been “turned off,” asleep bizarre encounters — which he gave But now — aliens? York when I was an undergrad and stu- the whole time. “You can’t tuck yourself credence to as evidently real, if unprov- And then I learned anew the eerie les- dent newspaper in,” Jill said. “I tried it.” able, absent any other editor there in Others reported waking with their explanation he could the early 1960s. pajamas on backward or inside out, or find — seemed relat- (I had gotten my naked with the nightclothes they had ed to warnings against job through The worn to bed nowhere to be found, or the continuing despo- New York Times, their feet caked in mud. Drivers were liation of the planet. as the old ad cam- confused to find themselves suddenly “Astonishingly,” he paign went, but I far from where they had been, way off wrote, “the damage was paper-trained the intended road, or much closer to we have been inflict- at The Campus.) their destination than they remembered. ing upon the Earth’s Much later, Mack’s As I say in “The Believer,” I believe life-forms appears not stepmother, Ruth Mack believed. He believed in the un- to have gone ‘unno- Prince Gim- quenchable human spirit and an infinite ticed’ by whatever in- bel, a New Deal and benign cosmic intelligence. telligence or creative economist whose He believed in taking risks and principle dwells in the first husband, a breaking boundaries to boldly explore cosmos, and it is pro- great-grandson the deepest secrets of existence, which viding some sort of of the founder no one yet has come close to fathoming. feedback to us, how- of Gimbels, had Never mind aliens, where did this table ever strange its form thrown himself and chair—and everything and everyone seems to be.”. from a window of else—come from? John Mack set forth, UFOs? Aliens? journeyed far, had many adventures, and Dr. John Mack wondered why so many normal people told of encounters with the Yale Club in Harvard? Mack was returned to tell the tale around the digi- alien beings. the Great Depres- not just any ivied ac- sion, left scholarly tal firelight, for humanity’s sake. It’s what ademician. A char- papers in a his- heroes do. It’s what human beings do. ismatic, cobalt-eyed innovator of com- son of our profession: we don’t choose toric collection I came to be archiving munity health services, he had written a our subjects as much as our subjects at Baruch College, where she had once Ralph Blumenthal reported for The groundbreaking biography of Lawrence choose us. taught and where I also taught. Times from 1964 to 2010. He was on the of Arabia that had won a Pulitzer Prize In deep grief, the Mack family put Mack’s cousin Walter Henry Liebman Metro team that won a Pulitzer Prize for in 1977. He had joined world physi- off my inquiries. But eventually, Mack’s 3d, known as Terry, the last brewer breaking news coverage of the 1993 truck cians and a Nobel laureate campaigning three sons agreed to provide access to of his family’s Rheingold beer and a bombing of the World Trade Center. He against nuclear weapons, talked Middle their father’s private archives. By then good source of family history, turned has been a Distinguished Lecturer at Ba- East peace with Yasir Arafat, and pio- it was inescapable. I would have to do out to be living across the street from ruch College since 2010. PAGE 8 SILURIAN NEWS JANUARY 2021 ond adulthood” (45 to 75) and “third adulthood” (75 Obituaries on). And for many Siluri- ans, of which she was one, she had a message: “Older Gail Sheehy, 1937-2020 is better.” The book, published in 1976, sold more than Ground-breaking Journalist 10 million copies and was named one of the 10 most influential books of mod- and Cultural Interpreter ern times by the . For the pa- BY STEWART KAMPEL a variety of literary devices to denote perback rights to a book social class or the thoughts of a central about menopause, The Si- t would not be an overstatement to character. lent Passage, in 1992, she GAIL SHEEHY say that Gail Sheehy was one of the She was a relentless believer in on- received an advance of $1 most influential journalists of the the-spot reporting. “Whenever you hear million. I20th century, particularly in writing her about a great cultural phenomenon, Raised in the suburb of Mamaroneck, In 1969-70 Sheehy won a Rockefeller ground-breaking best-seller, Passages, drop everything,” she said in a com- N.Y., the daughter of an advertising man, Foundation fellowship to attend gradu- which traced adult life’s changing stag- mencement speech at the University of Sheehy graduated from the University of ate school at . While es and the opportunities they offer for Vermont, her alma mater. “Get on a bus Vermiont and got her first job with J.C. there she studied under the renowned emotional growth. or train or plane and go there, stand at Penney, the department store chain. She anthropologist Margaret Meade, who, Sheehy, who died of pneumonia on the edge of the abyss, and look down traveled across the country putting on she said, inspired her to become a cul- Aug. 24 at the age of 83, was the author into it. You will see a culture turned in- educational fashion shows for college tural interpreter. of 17 books, many spun off the Passag- side out and revealed in a raw state.” home economics departments. At the For New York magazine in 1971, es model, and numerous psychologi- For Passages, which was on the same time, she wrote for the company’s Sheehy wrote a series of articles on lo- cally probing profiles of major political best-seller list of The New York Times magazines. She married Albert F. Shee- cal prostitution called “Wide Open leaders like , Mikhail for three years, she explored predictable hy in 1960 and moved to Rochester, N.Y, City.” One centered on characters called Gorbachev, , both president adult crises and suggested how they could where she supported him while he at- Redpants and Sugarman, and she came Bushes and , published be used for making creative decisions in tended medical school. under criticism for fictionalizing a char- in New York magazine and Vanity Fair. shaping the years ahead. She named the Interviewed for a job on the women’s acter who she later acknowledged was Sheehy sometimes practiced New Jour- stages “provisional adulthood” (from 18 page of The Rochester Democrat and a composite of several actual women. nalism, or creative nonfiction, using to 30), “first adulthood (30 to 45), “sec- Chronicle, she thought the editor was Felker took the blame for removing a reluctant to hire her, fearing she would paragraph explaining the composites. leave if she became pregnant. She did The story was told in the bookHustling, get hired and learned some valuable les- later made into a television movie of the Linda Goetz Holmes, sons. “The paper,” she said, “taught me to same name starring as write on deadline and to see that to get Redpants and as the jour- Advocate for Allied POWS the good stories — to build a career — I nalist. Sheehy was also the inspiration had to get in on it early and have vision.” for a reporter in the HBO series The BY ALLAN DODDS FRANK she moved to CBS where she met and, The Sheehys moved to New York, Deuce. in 1959, married producer Theodore where she gave birth to a daughter, Mau- In the summer of 1971, Felker and nspired by a conversation with a Holmes. They had two sons before they ra. The couple divorced in 1968. She got Sheehy, by then a couple, rented a house WWII prisoner of war, Linda Goetz divorced. a job in the women’s section of The New in East Hampton. While there, Sheehy Holmes found her journalistic chops As a single mother juggling two chil- York Herald Tribune. She approached and her daughter found an abandoned Iin her middle age. dren between New York City and Shelter , an editor. and pitched a sto- box of kittens, but since they could not A chance encounter on Shelter Island, Island, Linda wrote for local publications ry about men in Manhattan who held take them back to New York, her daugh- N.Y. with an Australian staff sergeant and was active in the Hay Beach Associ- “specimen parties,” using women to ter suggested they take the kittens to the who had been imprisoned by the Japa- ation before she began seeking justice for bring in more attractive women. He told “witch house” across the street. It was nese army during World War II, prompt- POWs. She was so dedicated to the cause her to “write it as a scene.” there that Sheehy first encountered Little ed her to begin investigating the treat- that she named her Lakeland terrier “Ce- It opened her eyes to a novel kind of Edie Beale and her mother, the reclusive ment of POWs in the Pacific. cil” in honor of the POW. journalism. She took on major journal- cousins of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, That initial conversation in the 1990s By then, her sons were adults and as istic assignments, following Felker’s ad- living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion with POW Cecil Dickson led Holmes her elder son Theodore recalls: “From vice to write “big stories.” One of the first called . on a three-decade-long crusade to call the time I was nine years old, she was was an exclusive interview with Robert Sheehy spent a few weekends on the attention to the mistreatment of Amer- pretty much a single mom. She did real- F. Kennedy shortly before he was assas- beach with Little Edie learning about ican and Allied prisoners-of-war by the ly well..... We were proud to see her get sinated. After her sister became addict- their bizarre story. The result? The Se- Japanese Army. to do what she had wanted to do for all ed, she covered the rise of amphetamine cret of Grey Gardens, a story in New Dickson had been captured as a these years. And do all the travelling. She use in New York. Sheehy helped her sis- York magazine that caused a sensation. member of the Australian Pioneer Bat- actually visited China at least twice.” ter get off drugs and they attended the After the article was published, Mrs. talion and forced to work on the bridge In 2000, her second book, Unjust Woodstock music festival to hide from Onassis gave her cousins $25,000 to that was featured in the classic, Acade- Enrichment: How Japan’s Companies her sister’s drug pusher. Continued on Page 6 my-Award winning movie, “Bridge Over Built Postwar Fortunes Using Ameri- the River Kwai.” Dickson, a journalist can POWs, documented how Japanese from Melbourne, had written his wife companies exploited American POWs during 3½ years in captivity and she as forced labor. Her final book in 2014, Dan Andrews, passed the letters on to Holmes. That led Guests of The Empire: The Secret His- to her research on her first book, 4,000 tory of Japan’s Mukden POW Camp, Bowls of Rice, a Prisoner Comes Home, exposed Japanese biological warfare ex- Queens Spokesman published in 1994. periments conducted on POWs at a Mit- Dan Andrews, the spokesman for vivid memories of his time as a Queens Through the next three decades subishi facility in Manchuria. more than two decades for two consecu- spokesman. Holmes, a former president of the Siluri- “She was a real blood hound hound- tive borough presidents of Queens, died “Going to Elmhurst Hospital with ans (2004- 2006), performed as an inter- ing the Japanese,” her son Philip told The on Oct. 12 at his home in Bronxville, Claire after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks,” he national investigative reporter, military Silurian News. At one point, she tried to N.Y., after battling cancer for several said. “The staff was told to expect hun- historian, advocate for P.O.W. restitution enlist George Takei of “Star Trek” fame, years. He was 72. dreds of people. It was heartbreaking. and class action lawsuit consultant. even though he was from the other side Andrews, a 1970 graduate of St. John’s They had no survivors to treat.” Her relentless pursuit of the subject of the equation and had been interred University and a long-time Silurian, be- In the same Daily News article, An- generated three books, earned her ap- in California. That is how big a net she gan his journalism career as a caption drews was asked what “lessons” he had pointments as a military historian ad- threw in trying to get the Japanese gov- writer at United Press International in learned as a reporter and as a spokesman. vising the U.S. National Archives and ernment to apologize and compensate New York. “After 40 years in the communica- involved her as an expert witness in POWs for their health problems.” He was promoted to reporter and tions business,” he answered, “I am still lawsuits seeking compensation from the Holmes, who was also a longtime eventually was named chief of UPI’s City amazed at how badly so many of us com- Japanese for POW victims. member of the Overseas Press Club of Hall Bureau. In 1990, he left UPI and municate. We frequently don’t say what Holmes father, longtime Silurian America, spent her last days at San Sime- headed over to Queens Borough Hall as we mean, or mean what we say . . . and Theodore Goetz, was an executive with on by the Sea, a nursing home in Green- the spokesman for Claire Shulman, then too many people hold grudges. Effective Westchester Rockland Newspapers and port, N.Y. before dying Aug. 18 at the age the borough president. He performed communication is essential. Words are Linda went to high school in Scarsdale of 87. the same duties for Shulman’s successor, powerful. They can inspire or disappoint, before graduating from Wellesley Col- “She left instructions for almost every- Helen Marshall, until retiring at the end hurt or heal, and sadden or gladden the lege. thing, but no obituary,” Philip said. “The of 2013. feeling of others. Most important, words Her first job was in television produc- thing that she wanted to be remembered In an interview with the Daily News, can generate the sound of laughter from tion at the Ted Bates ad agency before most for is this body of work.” he was asked to cite some of his most a child.”