John Martin September 26, 2017 interviewed by Jane Meyers for San Diego State University 01:54:38 hrs:min:sec of recording Transcribed by Jardee Transcription Meyers: Today is Tuesday, September 26, 2017. I am Jane Meyers, and today I will be recording the oral history of John Martin, eminent alumnus of San Diego State University, Class of 1960. This oral history for the SDSU Special Collections and University Archives is funded by the Jane and John Adams Humanities Grant. John was born in New York City, grew up in San Diego, and graduated from Saint Augustin High School. While at San Diego State, he majored in journalism, became a reporter for The Aztec, and then the managing editor. After graduating, he served in the Army, where he worked at night as copy editor for The Augusta Chronicle; then reporter for the Army publication, Rome [phonetic] Interview, and became editor of the Army weekly, The Jayhawk. During his time in the Army, he reported on the Kennedy assassination in 1963. After John completed his military service, he worked in Paris for The New York Times, and in Spain where he wrote a travel guide. Returning to the United States, John worked from 1966 to 1975 as a correspondent for KRCA News in Sacramento. From 1975 until 2002, he worked for ABC News, where he soon showed his reporting and writing expertise as a national and international correspondent, working with David Brinkley, Ted Koppel, and Peter Jennings. In 1983 he successfully uncovered the story of notorious Nazi fugitive, Klaus Barbie. John Martin, 9/26/17, Draft 1, Page 1 [00:01:39] Martin’s documentary-style, on-air obituaries of famous people in politics, entertainment, and sports, such as Henry Fonda, Edith Head, Anwar Sadat, and Leonid Brezhnev, reviewed and captured each life. John Martin has a long and distinguished career as a writer, news reporter, editor, photographer, avid tennis player, adjunct journalism professor at Columbia University, and now a Wilson Center Fellow. John also travels to the tennis Grand Slams to write stories and take photos for his publication, The World Tennis Gazette. His career is not only of interest to journalists, but to historians, political science enthusiasts, writers, editors, television newscasters, and those who follow the news. Good morning, John! It’s a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to conduct this interview. Shall we begin with your childhood? Martin: [00:02:36] Well, Jane, I guess you could call me a grandson of immigrants, because all four of my grandparents were from other countries, and they all came around the turn of the 20th century, to the New York area. One was from Ireland, one was from Northern Ireland, one was from England, and one was from Denmark. And the Dane—I like to call him the Dashing Danish Sailor—jumped ship in New York Harbor, which meant he had no documentation, he was an illegal immigrant for about forty years. And I tell friends who ask about it, I’d say, “About 1940 he realized that if he were uncovered, he could be deported.” And the problem in 1940 is that if he was deported, he would be sent back to Nazi Denmark, because the Germans had occupied Denmark by that time. So he went to Immigration and he pleaded, he said, “Look, I’ve never been arrested, I pay my John Martin, 9/26/17, Draft 1, Page 2 taxes, I have a wife and two daughters, I’m a building superintendent gainfully employed. Can I please stay?” They investigated him and gave him an alien resident’s document, so he was able to stay. All four of those people were, of course, part of my life. My father never graduated from high school, but he was a taxi driver for about sixteen years in New York City. My mother was a high school graduate, again in New York City; became a sales clerk in a department store, then the floor manager in the department store, Woolworth’s. And so they were happily settled in New York, loved the Broadway theater, loved all the things about New York that are loveable, until the eve of Pearl Harbor. And on that night, my father was driving his taxi, and he was at the corner of Lexington and 52nd Street, and he looked across the street. There were three men lined up against a building, and a fourth man going through their pockets. And suddenly one of the three men turned and shot the fourth man and went running off—all three ran in different directions. My father followed the gunman, and the gunman tried to get in his taxi, and he waved him off because he already had a fare. Another taxi driver came up, he had no idea what had happened, so he picked up the gunman. My father followed them to where he dropped the gunman off, and they went to the police, and they were able to begin a manhunt, because this was an off-duty policeman who was shot. There were 150 policemen, detectives, on the streets of New York, looking—thanks to my father and the other driver—at places they might find him. Long story short, he went home, went to bed, didn’t tell my mother anything, and a few hours later reporters came and said, “Where’s the hero taxi driver?” And John Martin, 9/26/17, Draft 1, Page 3 she said, “What hero? What are you talking about?” And they told her, and she said, “Well, if I wake him up, there’ll be another murder.” So they talked her out of a picture. The picture showed me, I was three years old, standing on the running board of his taxi. She was beside the left fender, and he was at the wheel. And his mother came over and said, “You gave them a picture?! My God, they’ll come and they’ll kill us, this will be terrible!” Well, they worried all day, and the family story was that the next morning things were alright because the headlines said, “Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor.” And I believed that story for many years until I realized the news of the day before Pearl Harbor went in the newspaper of the day of Pearl Harbor; that news of Pearl Harbor went in the newspaper the next day. So for a full twenty-four hours, his name and address were on the front page of every newspaper in New York City, and they were terribly worried about this. Anyway, he did his duty, testified before the grand jury, but shortly before the trial we more or less started our own witness protection program. We got on a train, went to Chicago, got on another train, went to Los Angeles, and came here to San Diego. My mother’s sister was here and had been urging us to come for a couple of years. Anyway, that’s how I got to San Diego, that’s how I wound up living in Pacific Beach from the age of three. My father took a job as an aircraft mechanic in a bomber factory along Pacific Highway, and worked during the war as an aircraft mechanic there, and for the Navy on North Island; and got so interested in aviation he got a pilot’s license, learned to fly, bought a small little plane, took me flying. He just loved to John Martin, 9/26/17, Draft 1, Page 4 fly. He was a really talented guy—not educated, but incredibly smart. So he knew aircraft mechanics, auto mechanics, and things of that sort. [00:07:28] So I was, I guess, an ordinary kid in Pacific Beach, did a lot of basketball playing, football, baseball. I went to Saint Bridget’s Grammar School and played quarterback on the flag football team. I guess my shining achievement was that I threw two touchdown passes in the Ice Cream Bowl, which was held at the end of the year in my eighth grade. So then it became a question of where to go to college. I looked at Saint Mary’s, but it was expensive. I had a partial scholarship offered, but I just didn’t see a way clear, so I went to San Diego State, which, of course, is this wonderful institution here. It’d been here for many years. All of us there were mostly people who didn’t have much money, and so here we were, learning what we could. I majored in journalism. I also played tennis as a junior. In high school, every day after school the tennis team would walk into Balboa Park—our school was very near it—and there was a fellow there who would give free lessons, group clinics he called them. His name was Fred Kinney, and he always seemed available in the afternoon. And it turned out he was available because he was first city editor, and then editor of The Evening Tribune, which was an afternoon paper, and therefore he was finished with work at about two in the afternoon, he’d come and give us lessons. Well, at the end of my senior year in high school, I went to Fred and I said, “Fred, I think I’m going to major in journalism. My teachers tell me I can write pretty well.” He immediately said, “You will be our campus correspondent at San Diego State.” Well, if you think about this, the first John Martin, 9/26/17, Draft 1, Page 5 job is always the most difficult to get.