Great editors remembered

Fifty years ago I was enjoying myself immensely. And a bit nervous. I had accepted a new job, and a completely different role, moving from being newspaper chain's writing bureau chief to an editor at a newspaper. After more than ten years of reporting and writing stories and loving it, I was taking the chance that being an editor -- stuck inside the building instead of pounding the streets -- would hold personal and professional satisfaction. It worked out well. I was asked to move from Tallahassee, Florida, where I was the bureau chief for the six Gannett newspapers in the state, to the Southwest Florida community of Fort Myers and it's daily newspaper the News-Press. My job description was initially vague -- I was a "senior editor" despite being 32 years old-- which corporate Gannett's way of saying I might end up in charge if I didn't fail.

My boss was the Managing Editor Bob Bentley, (pictured above with daughter Reid) in charge of the news operations and sent in by corporate to build the paper into something great. I had worked for Bob at TODAY, where he was in charge of the newspaper's coverage in the late 1960s. When I asked him about the Fort Myers publisher, a conservative holdover near 70 from the old ownership whose claim to fame was that he was commodore of the local yacht club, Bentley said "Ignore him. We can do what we need to do." And we did. Bentley had corporate's blessings and money to increase the staff, be more aggressive in coverage, and look for exceptional talents among young journalists coming out of colleges or wherever he could find them. He already had significant success at Florida's TODAY newspaper earlier, leading the staff through the Apollo moon landing years, and building that paper into a significant force in Florida.

He was 33, a star in Florida journalism. The first person Bob introduced me to was Joe Workman, then city editor, and the very best of a local staff that had struggled for several years. He was, a Bentley said, a great city editor who simply needed editors who did not get in his way and reporters willing to learn. He fit into the "Lou Grant" model: tough, smart, skilled, hard drinking and he knew where all the bodies were buried. He was a West Virginia native, who relished in pretending he was just a poor country boy. Years later he made a post-retirement fortune in Florida beach real estate, outsmarting lots of city slickers. Bentley and Workman each decided that sharing what they knew about newspapering, was the most important thing they could do. The dividends came to me. Joe taught me how to deal with all kinds of people, from irritating car dealers to crooked politicians. Bentley taught me how to spot and develop talent in young people, hiring only the best from good schools and smaller newspapers, selling them on the idea that living on the beach and working for a good newspaper in Florida was worth accepting the low wages we could offer. He also encouraged people to move outward and upoward when their chances came along. Bentley's particular skills were as an editor who controlled the design and stucture of the paper, skills he learned earlier at The Miami Herlad and TODAY. He was always open to good ideas, even if crazy, and knew how to put the right people in the right spot. When there were failures, and some happened, he knew how to cut his losses. He once convinced the advertising department to take a news photographer (who had zero news photo sense) into the ad staff where he was happy for years. He was also willing to tell people who struggled unsuccesfully that they would be happier elsewhere, and they usually were. He rarely fired anyone, usually just pointed them in a better diretion and they left.

He could spot talent. He always claimed that he spotted the talent of Randy Wayne White, pictured above with Joe and me at a reunion, while Randy was working climbing power poles -- a kid from the mid-west who could not find a job. Randy has since written more than 60 novels. Working at the News-Press was a crazy experience in many ways. Many of us worked very long hours, from 9 a.m. to midnight. Once the presses started rolling we would adjourn together to our favorite local bar Pate's for a few drinks and food. Once he warmed up Bentley would take over the piano and start leading the singing: "Delta Dawn" was a favorite. Workman would tell West Virginia stories, tall tales we never knew if trhey were true. It was true he had one glass eye, which he occasionally would put on the bar to provoke a reactio. Other nights he would bet some younger staffer he would eat a light bulb, which they could not believe until they witnessed it and paid Joe. Sometimes as many as a dozen people would close the bar at 2 a.m. and move elsewhere to drink till dawn. We all worked very hard. The paper got better every year, began winning awards and gaining circulation and profits. Despite the differences between the staff's generation and that of the local population -- even then mostly elderly retirees from the Mid-West -- we were honest and fearless, and it succeeded with readers. Old-time elected officials, who once had there way in the community, were being watched closely and their activities exposed, which they did not like. A county commission chairman scolded a News-Press reporter during a meeting because he thought her skirt was too short. Bentley called him up and scolded him for abusing his power. A note about the culture of the early 70s, and Fort Myers in particular. Most of the staff was under 30, single and socially -- what should I say -- unrestrained. With the college hires came some drugs, most of which I knew nothing about, but pot smoking was known to happen and a few of the younger staffers ended up living together. Bentley was divorced by that time and the local ladies responded to his movie star good looks. He delighted in living in a "singles apartment complex" where naked swim parties we known to happen. I was something of an exception-- though not the only one -- being happily married and with two young children at home. I simply could not keep up the pace of late-night drinking. Our mutual friend at corporate, who had been instrumental in both Bob and I coming to the News-Press, once suggested subtly that I was right for the job because I was more normal, less "colorful" than Bob.

Regardless of our differences, we shared a love for the work and particularly the people. As always happens, things changed over a few years. Bentley was promoted and moved to run the ElPaso paper in Texas, and a few staffers followed him there. (A local car dealer called me the day after Bob left to tell me his much-younger wife had left for Texas with Bob and when he caught up with them he was going to shoot Bob. The wife came home, and the guy never shot anyone.) Bob moved from Texas to Atlanta to California and back to his native South Carolina, happily married before cancer caught up with him. He lived his life with passion and was an honest journalist. Joe Workman stayed on at the News-Press, never quite fitting in with the corporate style of Gannett, but becoming a polular local columnist, living out his life in his beloved Fort Myers Beach with his beloved wife Grace, daughter of an Episcopal priest. We remained friends for 40 years. Before my time in Fort Myers came toward the end, I was promoted to be the editor, replacing Bob. The old publisher retired and a new corporate-appointed publisher came to town. He was a classic Gannett publisher from that era, driven by ambition, a desire to always look good to corporate, and in his case -- dishonest. We immediately came into conflict when he continually tried to influence the newsroom staff to be "more business friendly." I ended up leaving within about a year, taking a graceful exit to a Humanities Fellowship at Michigan with John Quinn's support, in 1977. (I left Gannett in 1980, moving to The Bee in California.) But the years in Fort Myers and the people there were among the best and the brightest I have ever worked with, and together we did good work. We sent reporter/photographer teams to big rock festivals in New Orleans, another team to Central America to cover an earthquake, people to the Olympics and always sent people to the nation political conventions. No one ever told us we could not do that, and readers loved it. I learned a lot of about how to be an editor from both Bentley and Workman, and have always felt they are among the very best journalists I have encountered in 45 working years. Newspapers have changed so much in the past 20 years, it is hard to imagine such transformative journalism happening again. But I remind myself that a few dedicated people brought together by common ideals, can make change for the better. Bob and Joe did that for me, and I am forever grateful.

Florida Before Mickey Mouse

Sunrise off Cocoa Beach


I miss a Florida that—maybe—never was. But I have distinct memories of days before the state was swallowed by Mickey Mouse, when the Keys were a place to get away from it all, and no one knew what a condominium was.
My family’s Florida roots go deep. My grandfather discovered Florida’s beaches and fishing around 1900. The family had a place, more of a camp than a home, on Perdido Bay where Florida meets Alabama. His photo albums reflect men with their pants rolled up to the knees with very long strings of large trout.
He loved Florida, and started a weekly newspaper out of a print shop in Molina, near Pensacola. It didn’t last, but he stuck with Florida for the rest of his life.
As a young adult my father visited him, almost always for the fishing and the interesting people who hung out in the bays and bayous. One of his old photos shows him standing on the pier at Pensacola looking at a bay filled with working sailing vessels.
He told stories of a beachcomber who wore dresses. People thought it odd at the time, but he was just one of the local beach characters. The year was 1910.
He had to take a boat to get to Pensacola Beach, as there were no bridges then.
Later, when a massive hurricane destroyed the railroad bridge into the keys in the 1920s, my father went down on a rescue boat. He saw a man’s body impaled on a telephone pole and never forgot it.
By the 1920s my grandfather moved to Miami to work for the Herald as a proofreader. He had a heart attack there and died, and is buried in a cemetery just off the TaMiami Trail—back then the only road to the west coast.
My first visits came in the 1940s as a child to the Gulf Coast beaches, and then to central Florida where my aunt and uncle lived in an old farm house in a citrus grove near Ocala. It was the year Hank Williams’ record “Honky Tonkin’” was a big hit. There was a packing house on the railroad and a general store.
I accompanied my father as he traveled Florida on business. He would reward me for not being a pest by taking me to any tourist attraction we passed on our way to his appointments. I became an expert on Silver Springs, then the biggest attraction in the state, and particularly on Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute where I watched amazed as the man milked rattlesnakes and water moccasins, and the Seminoles wrestled alligators. I loved the mermaids at Weeki Watchie Springs.

My mother father in the 1930s near Daytona Beach
We took day-long drives down very straight two-lane roads, often surrounded by orange groves. On hot days (this was before air conditioning) we would stop at the Suwanee River and take a swim. In fact, any good creek crossing was an excuse to stop and get wet in rural interior Florida in the summer.
Eventually my father moved to Coral Gables and I would spend every summer there. Hanging out with my father in the early 1950's at Crandon Park in Miami
Our idea of a big deal vacation was to go to North Miami Beach and spend the Fourth of July in a cheap motel right on the ocean. If my dad had a few more days off he would take me down to Islamorada and we would fish off the bridges, hanging over the side and being careful not to step back into the path of the few automobiles that passed us by.
Coral Gables was a great place for a twelve-year-old. I could ride a city bus to the best swimming pool in the state—the Venetian Pool—or walk to the Coliseum where I learned to ice skate.
I finally moved to Florida to live as an adult, to work for the same newspaper my grandfather had worked for four decades earlier, but assigned to a bureau office in Cocoa.
The highway from Orlando still had oyster shell shoulders in 1965, but the space program was booming and it was an exciting time to live on the beach and watch the world change.
Cocoa Beach was a party town, just suited to an ex-Army guy looking for a good time with late dinners at Wolfie’s and dancing to the bands at the Carnival Club.
I found a treasure on the beach, married her, and started a family from our first home—three bedrooms on a canal on Merritt Island purchased at a premium price of $21,000.
Once the bridge was built across Sebastian Inlet I would take off at night to fish with friends, hanging from the bumpers as the tide ripped along underneath us, trying to catch a snook, any snook. Never did.
We were there when Walt Disney began to build his dream in the Palmetto scrub, changing the state forever.
Our Florida days were numbered, but we managed to stay a few more years, moving from Cape Canaveral to Tallahassee, a different kind of Florida, and then to Fort Myers. At that time there was one condo on the beach, and lots of small motels and rental cottages.
We left the state when new opportunities came up, and have returned periodically to see how the place manages to survive.
Most of the things we enjoyed are gone.
The funky beach towns now are polished and expensive.
The Florida Keys have been so urbanized you can’t tell where Miami stops.
Cocoa Beach has been through so many boom and bust cycles no one remembers where the astronauts used to drink late at night, or which car dealer loaned them red, white and blue Corvettes when they were assigned to fly into space.
The beaches no longer allow driving, which is probably a good thing.
The manatees are making a comeback which is definitely a good thing.
The broad expanse of open beaches has been walled off by condominiums that sit empty most of the time.
Tingley’s Fish Camp on the Intra Coastal Waterway no longer is a hangout for fishermen, and doesn’t serve great seafood the way it once did. The mega-yachts have taken over.
But the old fish camp in the mangrove along the Indian River just south of Melbourne Beach is still there, with the weird chickens and the dog that retrieves conch shells from deep in the water.
And if you take a long enough walk along the beach after high tide near Sebastian Inlet you can still smell Florida as it once was, and feel the wind blow, and not hear anything but the cry of the gulls.
In Florida Bay off the Everglades in 2005

(Credit for this article, and the editing that helped it, go to Florence Poor of Melbourne, Florida, who publishes "The Contributor" a quarterly. She recently celebrated a big birthday among friends, and threatens to retire. I hope she won't.)