Father's Day Tribute from a son...

This is Voula, Jim's wife writing on his blog. Our son surprised us with this guest opinion column (see link below) appearing online today in the Duluth News Tribune. Jim deserves this sweet tribute from our son. He is now-and was back when the kids were young-a great dad. 

This Sunday is when we honor dads and those men who have mentored kids everywhere. My own dad was pretty special and his legacy is with me forever. And we notice how giving and supportive our own son and son-in-law are in their roles as dads to our six grandkids. We are surrounded by awesome dads!

I did research in my grad school education on dads who parent kids with special needs and learned through that process the significance of dads in children's lives, whether they are living with them or not. Dads give so much to our kids and we appreciate you all. Kids need you in their lives!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY TO ALL YOU MEN OUT THERE WHO ARE SPECIAL TO KIDS!

Click HERE to read the DNT column: Behind the Wheel With a "Local Celebrity" by Patrick Heffernan.

A visit with St. Nicholas a long time ago...

Written By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTibune/12-2-23

I suppose those wide-eyed kids meeting Santa Claus that long-ago day are in their 50s now. Could be grandparents by now, taking their “young uns” to meet the Jolly Old Elf to express their Christmas wishes. 

 The Santa Claus some of those kids met back then was actually me, all decked out in a red suit, white beard and attempts at jolly demeanor sitting on a festive throne at Duluth’s Miller Hill Mall.

 

It was in the early days of writing a column for this newspaper. I thought it would be a good idea to experience things in the community and then write about them. I wanted to ride an elephant when a visiting circus paraded units down Superior Street, but somebody else at the paper got the nod (and their photo on the front page).

 

But at Christmas time I decided I should see what it was like to be a Santa Claus at Miller Hill Mall, still in its early years and attracting big crowds of shoppers who brought their children to tell Santa their Christmas wishes. It would provide plenty of fodder for a holiday column, my thinking went.

 

Mall management was delighted; we made a date, and I showed up in a preparation area where I climbed into the Santa outfit, beard and all, and suddenly came down with a slight touch of stage fright. Approaching my grand entrance into the mall corridor, I regretted the whole idea, but there I was, dressed in red from head to toe.

 

A line of excited kids, their parents hovering over them, had already formed, awaiting the appointed time for Santa to arrive. So, I arrived.

 

Out I went, mounted the throne, and attempted a few ho-ho-hos, realizing right away that I wasn’t that good at ho-ho-hoing. Whatever else might be lurking in my personal makeup, I just am not the ho-ho-ho type. But there I was forcing ho after ho after ho.

 

Onward. Sitting there, I beckoned the first child, perhaps a four-year-old boy still full of belief and excited to tell St. Nick what he wanted for Christmas. Others followed, boys and girls, sitting on my lap, filled with excitement at meeting the Jolly Old Elf who would be invading their homes on Christmas Eve with a bagful of toys. Yeah, right.

 

As always happens, some of the younger ones were afraid of me, and I don’t blame them. What they didn’t know was I was just as afraid of them.

 

It began to occur to me that many of the kids were hoping for gifts their families couldn’t possibly provide, and I wondered what I should say to them. I didn’t want to promise that I would deliver on their wishes, but I didn’t want to disappoint them by saying that I wouldn’t.

 

I tried to come up with stock answers but I became more and more uncomfortable with the whole scene. It’s hard to be jolly when you’re not, and actually not that good at it in the first place.

 

But the line grew longer, as did the afternoon. I began to feel warm, even hot and sweaty (except for cold feet), as I welcomed child after child to the open arms and hard knee of a fake fake Santa. I can’t recall how long a Santa session I had committed myself to. I supposed the “real” mall Santa had taken the whole afternoon off, the scoundrel.

 

I wondered, too, if he had been using the same white beard that I had strapped on and if it might be full of cold germs or dreaded flu. Can you catch pneumonia from a borrowed beard? Could bubonic plague be far behind? What if my nose starts to run? Still, the kids kept lining up.

 

“Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas,” I kept repeating as kid after kid descended from my knee and another mounted it. “What would you like for Christmas?” I’d open with each one, and many of them would tell me some outlandish thing I knew they wouldn’t get and I felt sorry for them.

 

Finally, the Santa session came to an end and I was able to shed the costume and get the heck out of there. My own children were at the Santa-believing age at that time and, of course, we later took them to see a competing Santa.

 

He’s great, I determined as I stood and analyzed his Santa style, cheerfully greeting my daughter and son and handling the promises just right. I started believing in him again myself.

 

It was the only time I attempted such a thing, but it instilled in me a deep admiration for the men (and I think there are some women too) who take on the job of Santa Claus each year. It ain’t easy.

 

With that, I sign off for 2023. So, I wish everyone a joyful holiday and a happy new year.

 

Ho-ho-ho, and all that that implies.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

My first 60 years at this newspaper...

Written By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/11-04-23

So, they’ve sold the Duluth News Tribune building — an edifice where I spent my entire journalism career. And the deal closed almost 60 years to the day after I started working there in October 1963.

There are so many memorable moments and hours and days of practicing journalism out of that building. It has been a lengthy career followed by free-lancing in retirement. Let me capsule it all in three words: It’s been interesting.

I was fresh out of college with no particular career ambition and recently completed Army active duty when I gave the newspaper a shot. An intrepid executive editor hired me, probably on speculation since I hadn’t majored in journalism in college. But I knew how to touch-type. That might have gotten me in.

Oh, and I was willing to accept 75 bucks a week — a princely sum for a pauper.

There wasn’t much touch-typing at all in the newsroom of the morning Duluth News Tribune and evening Duluth Herald in those days. Many of the men — the reporting, sports and editing staff was all male except for a pair of female “society” writers — were veterans of World War II who used the hunt-and-peck system of typing. But they could be fast.

I was assigned to work as a reporter afternoons and evenings on the morning News Tribune. My first night on the job the city editor, my new boss, took me to “lunch” (our lunch break was from 9:30 to 10 p.m.) in a little cafe next to the old Lyceum Theater and asked me if I knew how to type. When I said I did, he said, “You’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t so sure. My start date in October 1963 turned out to be pretty significant. One month later President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and I got to take part in the local coverage.  He had visited Duluth just two months before. My assignment was to telephone town mayors in what we called the Upper Tri-State Region for statements on the Kennedy assassination.

I managed to reach a dozen or so, and they all said essentially the same thing: “This is a terrible tragedy.” Over and over the same response. I did cobble together a story that made it into the paper, though, and I was quite proud to have been a small part of localizing what was one of the most significant news stories of the 20th Century. My first month on the job.

As the years went by, I had many different roles at the papers. They were, and are, called “beats.” I had the education beat for a while, then the city government beat, some crime and courts coverage and even the arts and entertainment beat when I started writing my own column in 1972.

But looking back today I think my favorite beat was my first, called “general assignment.” You’d go to work every day not knowing what you would be covering, you’d be assigned to cover some event or occurrence — it could be anything from a major fire to a boring speech — and when you turned in your story you were done. Well, maybe check with the cops for newsy items or log in the visiting and departing ore boats and pound out a couple of obits on a manual typewriter before going home.

We used to rush, accompanied by a photographer, to the scenes of fatal automobile accidents, which could be heart-rending. One time I dashed to a late-night explosion of a house in the East Hillside that, we learned at the fiery scene, was being rented by several members of the UMD Bulldog hockey team. They weren’t home; the team was playing on the road. The house collapsed on its foundation, damaging two others adjacent to it.

Over my active years I met every Minnesota governor, congressmen and senators, area legislators, local mayors, city, county and state officials, school superintendents, college administrators, police chiefs, sheriffs, local judges, business leaders (including one bonafide local tycoon) and, as they used to say on old radio, the innocent, the vagrant, the thief, the murderer.

Assignments were wide-ranging. I interviewed Walter Mondale in the News Tribune building when he was vice president of the United States (Secret Service lurking all around) and once tried to interview an untalkative groundhog in Northern Wisconsin who refused to say if he’d seen his shadow one chilly Feb. 3. Throw in a lot of ordinary people who were somehow involved in the news, and it all added up to being a newshound, as a cop once called me.

I spent much of one decade — the 1970s — handling the entertainment and arts beat. That involved reviewing all theater productions, college and civic, together with shows by visiting entertainers (Elvis among them), symphony concerts and other musical presentations. Even opera.

Over the years I interviewed many then-well-known actors and entertainers — comedian Jack Benny, musician Louis Armstrong, actors Maurice Chevalier and Gregory Peck, a couple of Metropolitan Opera sopranos and others whose names probably aren’t recognized by Millennials and Generation Z. Some literary readers might find it interesting that I interviewed esteemed writer Vladimir Nabokov’s son, Dmitri, a singer, when he came here to perform with the symphony. We didn’t discuss “Lolita.”

I chatted with Jane Pauley, who at the time co-hosted the Today Show on NBC, when she gave a talk here to the Rotary Club or some other service organization. I got the impression she wasn’t happy to be here and wasn’t that nuts about being interviewed by me either. It happens sometimes.

The newspapers went from two — morning and evening — to just one in the morning in the early 1980s. We went from 13 editions each week — seven with the morning News Tribune and six in the Herald — to just seven. The Herald died.

Showing the press to interns, circa 1972

At the peak there were probably 200 people working in various departments of the papers. Hundreds of “paper boys” delivered the papers house to house in Duluth-Superior, the Iron Range and Northern Wisconsin. Yes, they were called paper boys, but there were some girls too, and the newspaper referred to them as carrier salesmen. I covered the tragic murder of one of them as he delivered our Sunday edition in Superior, his wagon stacked with undelivered papers left on the sidewalk.

My final 20 or so active years were spent working on the opinion pages, writing editorials and selecting columns, cartoons and letters from readers for publication. That’s when I met many of the politicians; leaders like Sen. Paul Wellstone (who missed a scheduled interview with us when he was killed that day in an airplane crash) and Gov. Jesse Ventura. Wellstone was always affable and Ventura was always gruff. Former Gov. Arne Carlson was cheerful and his predecessor Rudy Perpich, sometimes called Governor Goofy, was not goofy at all, but incisive and brilliant. Very supportive of Duluth and the Iron Range, as was long-serving congressman Jim Oberstar.

Now the building where all of that was based has been sold to the Duluth School District for educational purposes. As far as I’m concerned, it’s been used for educational purposes for a long time. I learned a lot there helping to write a sizable chunk of the first draft of our history.

And it’s been interesting.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

 

 

  

Meet the man who never was...

The Man Who Never Was

Written by Jim Heffernan for The Duluth NewsTribune/Saturday, November 27

 Today I was going to discuss issues of vital concern to Americans, such as the end of Britney Spears’ conservatorship and Taylor Swift’s split with Jake Glyllenhaal, but decided instead to feature The Man Who Never Was — me. Yours truly. Moi.

 

So let me begin at the beginning. I am born. My parents don’t have a name yet so they put “Baby Boy” on my birth certificate. I, of course, did not know this. My folks always had said I was named after both my paternal grandfather and a recently departed uncle and that was that. I figured it would say my full name on my birth certificate if I ever saw it.

 

Let’s jump ahead now to something over half a century later when, planning a European trip, I applied for my first passport. I needed to prove that I am who I am, so I got my birth certificate proudly proclaiming the arrival of…“Baby Boy?” Oh for crying out loud! What happened to James?

 

Not good enough, decree the passport people reviewing my birth certificate; got to have some other proof of your existence. They suggest that old school report cards would be acceptable. Well, I have some of those from my earliest years at Duluth’s old Lincoln Elementary.

 

So I fished a few early report cards from a family history file and was astonished to see my “marks” and teacher comments. The comments are highly complimentary of my singing ability (soprano at the time) but that I spend too much time dreamily staring out the window and not paying attention to learning such things as reading, writing and arithmetic that you might need later in life. Who knew that?

 

Of course I’m humiliated to show this to the passport guy but I went ahead with it, chagrined at such revealing (if true) traits attributed to me. It worked. The U.S. State Department, which issues passports, apparently accepts Americans who stared out the window in school.

 

Onward. Well, actually, backward. Facing the military draft after completing my education in the 1960s (I gazed out the window a lot in college too), I joined the U.S. Army National Guard, which didn’t care what you did in school as long as you could spit-shine boots.

 

Many of the men I served with recalled being “sworn in” when they enlisted in the Army. Sworn in? Oops! They forgot so swear me in when I joined. I hadn’t promised to uphold the Constitution or defend America from enemies real or imagined or whatever they say when you raise your right hand, but there I was in boot camp conning other recruits into spit-shining my boots in exchange for me ghost-writing love letters to their girlfriends. Several got married right after they got out, I learned.

 

But what about me?  I’m the man who never was…sworn in.

 

Oh well. I muddled through it all anyway, Army boot camp, six years of weekend warrior duty and released. So, a couple of years ago, reading about all the benefits veterans qualify for, I checked with the local veterans office to see my status. “You are not a veteran,” I was told, because I hadn’t served enough time on active duty.

 

Well, well. The soldier who never was.

 

And now, at long last, let us move to the present. A few weeks ago, to be precise, I was informed by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety that my driver’s license had to be renewed by my birthday. (You remember my birth described above. Name? Baby Boy.)

 

While I was at it, I decided to apply for one of the new super-duper licenses that can get you through domestic airports to the satisfaction of customs officials who never smile and confiscate pocket penknives from innocent travelers. The licenses are called “REAL ID compliant” and require applicants to submit all kinds of proof that they exist (take that, man who never was) and that you are a real American (take that, non veteran who served six years in the military).

 

No problem.  I was able to submit certain personal identification documents, the main one being my hard-earned passport.

 

Weeks pass and then a letter arrives from the Department of Public Safety. In essence, I was informed there was some problem with my passport and they wouldn’t issue my REAL ID driver’s license without other identification.

 

Whew. The man who never was again. Getting used to it.

 

So, with trepidation I went to the St. Louis County courthouse to obtain my birth certificate, terrified that it might ID me as “Baby Boy.” I guess I had fixed that back when I applied for a passport, because the certificate was perfect, with my full name and the great seal of St. Louis County. They only cost 26 bucks. Frame not provided.

 

Now I’ve been informed that I will receive my new super-duper driver’s license in a couple of weeks. We’ll see.

 

And to think Britney Spears and Taylor Swift think they’ve got problems.

 

As the man who never was, though, I do want to add briefly that they forgot to include the wedding vows when I got married. You know: “Do you, Baby Boy, take…” and so on and so forth.  But now I’m going to look in a mirror and see if I’m there.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

Memories of Mondale include Piedmont Heights 'attack' ...

Walter Mondale,1977 (Wikipedia)

Written by Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune on April 20, 2021

"I was, in a sense, present at the creation of Mondale as a nationally significant political leader."  

Like every other high-level Minnesota politician, Walter Mondale visited Duluth quite often during his active years, almost always calling on the state’s third-largest newspaper here in Duluth.

 

In my various newsroom roles at the News Tribune (and Duluth Herald before it was discontinued), I met him many times, causing me to reflect on those times this week when the former vice president, past Minnesota U.S. senator, ex-Minnesota attorney general and affable human being died at age 93.

 

I was, in a sense, present at the creation of Mondale as a nationally significant political leader when he was appointed in 1964 to the U.S. Senate.

 

Hubert Humphrey had resigned from the Senate when he accepted President Lyndon Johnson’s offer to be his running mate in the 1964 election. It was up to then Minnesota Gov. Karl Rolvaag to appoint a successor to Humphrey and he chose Mondale, Minnesota’s attorney general.

 

Humphrey, Rolvaag, Mondale and several others, such as Eugene McCarthy and Orville Freeman, were the stalwarts of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party at the time.

 

Upon being appointed, Mondale, as was often the case for politicians, made a quick flying trip around the state, visiting Duluth and other major cities. Rolvaag accompanied him. If memory serves, it occurred on a Saturday and I was working weekends as a reporter early in my career.

 

Mondale’s retinue set up a media conference in a room off the ballroom in Hotel Duluth (now Greysolon Plaza) and we were all there — the television reporters and photographers, maybe a radio journalist or two and me. It was the first time I’d met Mondale.

 

The future senator was seated behind a desk, waiting as the TV crews set up their lights and got their bulky equipment situated. It was a complicated process in those pre-digital days. Finally they were ready, the bright lights went on and suddenly Mondale called a halt and waved to an aide to dash over and put makeup on his face, in those days needed for appearing healthy on TV. It’s my most vivid memory from that encounter.

 

All I carried was a pen and reporter’s notebook, and after talking briefly to Mondale I stood back to let the broadcasters do their thing. Glancing around the room I noted Gov. Rolvaag standing alone in a corner taking it all in, being ignored. Press all around, he the state’s governor in their midst, and no one was paying attention to him, Mondale being the star of the day.

 

I recall feeling kind of sorry for Rolvaag, so I went over to him, notebook in hand, and interviewed him. I don’t recall if Rolvaag made my story.

 

But as we all are reminded this week, Mondale went on to become a distinguished senator, vice president in the Jimmy Carter administration, unsuccessful candidate for president in1984, ambassador to Japan in the 1990s and revered pundit in recent years.

 

Mondale visited Duluth quite often as vice president, and this anecdote involving him was told me. I did not witness it. Mondale was a close friend of the late Duluth attorney Harry Munger, a long-time DFL activist and younger brother of the legendary Willard Munger, “Mr. Environment” in the Minnesota Legislature for decades. Mondale and Harry Munger were fishing partners.

 

Harry Munger told me this story: Mondale was visiting Munger’s Piedmont Heights home one bitterly cold winter night during his vice presidency. Several other guests were invited, all arriving by car. Of course, as vice president, Mondale had Secret Service protection.

 

As the guests and Mondale gathered inside, Secret Service agents were outside on alert when they were startled by the sudden starting of vehicles and rumbling of engines in cars parked near them. They were unaware of those once-popular devices that would automatically warm up an unoccupied car in cold weather. The agents thought something was amiss, until it was explained that the cars started automatically and that they were not under attack.

 

Welcome to northern Minnesota in winter, Secret Service.

 

Finally, I had a gratifying remote contact with Mondale at the time of my retirement from active employment at the News Tribune in 2005. A colleague quietly contacted Mondale and asked him to record a message of good wishes upon my retirement. I didn’t know the former vice president THAT well, but Mondale took the time to do it, and the recording was played at a retirement gathering.

 

I doubt that Mondale recalled that I was the young Duluth journalist who reported on his appointment to the Senate 41 years earlier, but I’ll never forget that he was kind enough to wish me well as I moved on with my life.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer who still writes a column. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

When Tums for the Tummy is not enough...

   

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune, September 5, 2020

Let me tell you about my tummy. It ached. Oh how it ached upon awakening one morning a little over a week ago. By the end of that day, it had sent me on a journey that resulted in the first overnight stay (not counting birth) in a hospital in my ever-lengthening life.

Why should you care? You might not, I suppose, but take one lesson from all this: Never ignore a persistent abdominal pain that (A) doesn’t go away the way ordinary tummy aches do, and (B) keeps getting worse as the hours of wondering stretch on.

You could be having an appendicitis attack. I was, that day, but it took awhile to figure out. Tums for the Tummy might be fine under certain circumstances, but not when your appendix is about to burst.

Many of you probably know this. I hardly know anyone who hasn’t had their appendix taken out at one time or another. Well, actually one time, not another. It had better be.

Still, there’s the tendency to think the upset is nothing serious. Maybe spicy food consumed the night before acting up the morning after. Maybe not.

So I reclined in a recliner all day waiting for it to pass, and it didn’t. The pain kept getting more intense. (Not looking for sympathy here; people go through this every day. But I never had.)

Finally, after close to 12 hours of misery, we went to a well-known local hospital emergency department — my wife drove, avoiding potholes and bumps, the jolting of which made the pain worse. The emergency personnel were very nice, making sure I had a normal temperature and asking a lot of questions because there’s some kind of global pandemic going on.

They passed me on to an affable young evening-duty resident physician, his first week on the job, who wanted to know my “history.”

“Well, I was born in a trunk in the Lyceum Theater in du Lhut, Minnesota,” I began.

“Not that far back,” said the good doctor.

What he was interested in was my medical history, which is pretty sparse, I’m happy to say. Still have my tonsils, adenoids, appendix, fingers, toes, the usual stuff. Had to admit to two hernia operations a long time ago, “way back in the 20th Century.” Only time I was ever under a knife, I reported.

Still, the pain in my abdomen persisted, and kept getting worse. A CT scan was ordered; they’re often called “cat” scans. Later I told the surgeon I saw next that I do not like cats. She responded that she has two, and we stared blankly at each other.

By now I’m on a bed with wheels, wearing nothing but one of those flimsy hospital gowns that are open in the back and hard to tie. How often do we see on TV hospital shows patients being wheeled down hospital corridors always looking either miserable or unconscious. I chose to look miserable as I made my personal appearance en route to the cat scan, ambulatory pedestrians passing by looking sympathetically at me to see if they were looking at someone who might be about to expire. Fortunately, only my driver’s license is about to expire.

The CAT scan machine looks like a huge doughnut and you are pushed through the hole so the rumbling machine can take a picture of your stomach. The most interesting aspect of that is they have taught the machine to speak English. “Take a deep breath and hold it,” the machine says in a manly, authoritarian way, followed by “You can breathe now.” There’s a relief.

Somewhere in my absence the machine told the medical personnel that, “This guy is suffering an acute appendicitis attack,” and surgery was scheduled. First they had to finish operating on another unfortunate bloke who had the same problem.

In the meantime, a Covid 19 test must be given. With a chopstick size poker a kindly nurse told me to be prepared for the poker to go through my nose “all the way back to your brain.” So I opened my mouth. I just wasn’t myself, but she corrected me and did poke it through my nose all the way back to my brain, which I was pleased to know, was still there. I didn’t know it was in my nose, although that wouldn’t surprise some people I have known.

Ninety minutes later, after testing negative for Covid, I was being rolled through the corridor once again to the brightly lighted operating room where a friendly anesthesiologist greeted me and introduced me to his assistant. They would put me “out like a light.”

“You guys still use whiskey, right?” I inquired. I’ve seen a lot of Western movies in my day.

Suddenly, adios. The next thing I knew I was back in a regular hospital room, the operation long over, and a bright new day had dawned. Felt pretty good under the circumstances with pain medicine being pumped into my arm through an IV. Bless the registered nurses… and register the blessed nurses.

Since my wife couldn’t accompany me through the corridors before the operation due to that pesky pandemic, she was sent home with the promise that the surgeon would telephone her when it was over and report how it had gone.

She — the surgeon — called our home at 4 a.m. and told my wife the operation had gone well, all was expected to be fine and that my late appendix was “one of the three largest I have ever seen.”

Well, how do you like that. Lived all these years with a prize appendix and never had bragging rights. I returned home later that day, although I wouldn’t say none the worse for wear.

That is how the only overnight I have ever spent as an adult in a hospital went. And I didn’t even sleep…the regular way.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.  

A look back at newspaper, city history...

DNT City Editors, Jim Heffernan & Bob Knaus
& summer interns posing by printing press. 1972

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune, DNT Extra edition Inside Scoop: Memorable Northland events as told by the News Tribune Journalists who covered them, in print on Wednesday, August 27, 2020 

October 1963: John F. Kennedy was president–but wouldn’t be for long. Queen Elizabeth was on the throne of England–had been for about a decade. Fidel Castro was roiling the Caribbean. Closer to home, downtown Duluth was the center of local commerce–there was no Miller Hill Mall. Oh, and I began a job as a reporter for this newspaper.

 

This newspaper at the time was really two newspapers under the same roof–the morning Duluth News Tribune and the evening Duluth Herald. (A widely shared joke in those days called them The Morning Liar and the Evening Repeater). It amounted to the publication of 13 newspapers a week–seven News Tribunes and six Heralds–delivered to the doorsteps of tens of thousands of Northland subscribers by school kids eager to make a few bucks. 

Now, back to the present, in a couple of weeks, daily home delivery of this one remaining newspaper ends; publication scales back to two papers a week–Wednesdays and Saturdays–arriving in the mail. Of course the newspaper’s coverage continues daily–even hourly–on line. Times change.

 

Jim Heffernan in DNT newsroom
circa mid 60's

Back in 1963 when I walked into the newspaper building (currently for sale) it was a pretty big operation, employing hundreds in the plant, a couple dozen in the news and sports departments. I was totally unprepared. I hadn’t majored in journalism in college nor had I worked on school papers. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life, so actually being hired someplace was welcome. So was the 75 bucks a week.

 

About a month before I showed up at the paper, having recently returned from active Army duty, my Duluth National Guard unit was involved in “guarding” President Kennedy on his visit here. About a month after I began my job at this paper as a general assignment reporter, I was involved in local coverage of Kennedy’s assassination. Things were moving real fast.

 

They were moving real fast throughout Duluth too. When I began my journalism career the newspaper was located where it is now, Fifth Avenue West and First Street. The back of our building, where they loaded our delivery trucks, was across the alley from the back of the magnificent old Lyceum Theater in its last days in a run that had begun in 1891. Across Superior Street from the Lyceum’s imposing facade the stately Spalding Hotel, a contemporary of the Lyceum, still stood, but had recently closed.

 

Across Fifth Avenue West stood the Holland Hotel, still in operation but its days were numbered too, along with the Fifth Avenue Hotel, across Superior Street from the Holland. The Radisson is now where the Holland was and the Duluth Public Library is on the Fifth Avenue Hotel site, in a block considered the city’s “bowery,” locus of the oxymoronic Classy Lumberjack tavern.

 

A few blocks east on Superior Street there were several department stores, the most prominent being the Glass Block. Across the street was Wahl’s and kitty-corner Montgomery Ward had a sizable store. A little farther east was Oreck’s and Sears operated in a building that is now a casino. In between were myriad specialty stops offering everything from sports equipment to clothing for women and men, to shoes only, luggage–anything anybody might need.

 

There were also several movie theaters, and we can’t overlook various bars and restaurants nestled in among everything else. One, called The Flame, was operating on the bayfront at the foot of Fifth Avenue West, site of the aquarium today. It was Duluth’s classiest eatery, always with entertainment–dining and dancing, as they used to put it. Across the avenue, also on the waterfront, site preparation for the Duluth Arena Auditorium was getting under way. It opened in 1966.

 

And towering over all this were the banking facilities, business and medical offices, some of them where they are today but with different names. What is now Miller Hill Mall was a golf driving range, which went up in the 1950s on undeveloped land.

 

That’s not all. There were major bustling industries, including the Duluth Works of United States Steel, called American Steel and Wire, employing thousands at its Morgan Park location. Clyde Iron in the West End was multi-decades away from becoming a restaurant. Up over the hill, the U.S. Air Force had established a major air base to ward off enemy attacks from the Soviet Union (now Russia) during the Cold War. Many Air Force personnel from warmer climates found out in Duluth just how cold the war could be.

 

The University of Minnesota Duluth (known then as the Duluth Branch of the University of Minnesota) had around 2,000 students, maybe 1,999 after I left the previous year. There are upwards of 10,000 now.

 

That was Duluth in 1963 when I became a reporter and where I have continued an association with the daily newspaper in one form or another to this day.

 

Not in our wildest imagination at that time could we ever foresee the newspaper business changing nationally the way it has. Here and elsewhere it was an institution, like the seats of government across the street from our building in the Duluth Civic Center.

 

When I showed up in the newsroom, many, if not most, of the other men–yes, men–had served in World War II. What about women? There were two: the “society” editor and her assistant. They worked during the day; those of us on the morning Tribune worked evenings and nights. Evening Herald workers were leaving as we arrived.

 

We wrote our stories using manual Royal typewriters on leftover newsprint from the press downstairs. Electric typewriters had been invented, of course, but the newspaper management at the time was not quick to upgrade. I could recognize my desk in old newspapering movies from the 1930s.

 

Those World War II vets used the hunt and peck system of typing, but they were fast. I had taken typing in high school and the first night on the job I was asked by the city editor if I could type. When I said I could he said I had half the battle won. I didn’t, but it was encouraging.

 

Yup, things change. About all I can think of that hasn’t, for the purposes of this column, are I am still here, and Elizabeth is still queen.

 

It’s been quite a ride for both of us.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

 

Telephone Trevails; Behold a Black Horse; & Past Crises affected kids' lives too

Duluth News Tribune Column for today, May 3, 2020.
  Read   HERE. Telephone trevails

Duluth News Tribune Column for April 19, 2020
 Read HERE.  Behold a black horse



A Letter to my Grandchildren: Past crises affected kids’ lives too   

Written By: Jim Heffernan, For the News Tribune | Apr 5th 2020 

This is a letter to my grandchildren, but you’re welcome to read it if you’re so inclined.

Dear Kids,

Long time no see, and it might be a lot longer. So I thought I’d record in this letter some thoughts I’ve been having about the coronavirus crisis; how it is affecting you and recalling some crises in the past and how they affected me when I was a kid.

One of you asked a parent the other day, “Isn’t there any good news?” Great question, and the answer is all too clear. Right now the answer is no. It pains me to tell you that, but you already know. All six of you — as you know you siblings and cousins range in age from 10 to 15 — are unable to go to school, for who knows how long, and you aren’t free to move about and associate with friends in the way you’d like to. I’m sorry you have to go through this. It never got to that point with me.

As you know I’ve been around a long time and I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell you about some of the things my generation went through when we were around your age. Every so often, very bad things happen in our world and as you grow into adulthood you’ll likely see more. But first we’ve got to get through this one.

Looking all the way back to my earliest days, I actually have recollections of World War II. I was born right when it started and was almost six at the end. This was a terrible time for America and the world and children were not always shielded from the horrors the war wrought, even though the actual fighting never came to America.

I was younger than any of you are now, but I can remember there was rationing of goods and food during the war. My parents had ration books that were used to buy common things like meat, butter and cheese and even jams and jellies because sugar was rationed. I remember longing for jam on toast, and the time a neighborhood dog sneaked into another neighbor’s garage and ate food stored where it was cool. Tempers flared.

Gasoline was rationed and tires were hard to get. My father sold our car mid-war because he couldn’t get tires. We didn’t have a family car for more than two years.

Word would come through about soldiers whose families we knew being killed on Europe or Asia battlefields. When the son of one of our neighbors was killed, I remember my mother rushing to his mother’s home to console her. The fathers of some of the kids I knew were in the military and away until war’s end. My father didn’t have to go; he had served during World War I.

Small square blue banners with gold stars hung in the living room windows of many homes, signifying that someone in that family was serving in the armed forces. Other banners signified that someone in that family had been killed in the war.

Then, suddenly, it ended. Very suddenly. We children were mesmerized by news of the atomic bomb being dropped on Japan. The idea of such a “big” bomb was frightening to me but also fascinating. One of the breakfast cereal producers — Kellogs or General Mills — offered kids “atomic bomb rings” for 25 cents and a box top. If you held the bomb-shaped ring close to your eye, you could see sparkling inside, supposedly simulating an atomic bomb explosion. I got one.

Today’s coronavirus crisis is so huge it is being compared to World War II in its impact on America. Impact is right. But while we couldn’t get jams and jellies, couldn’t buy new cars (Detroit quit manufacturing cars in 1941 to make warplanes, jeeps and tanks), and experienced other depravations, unlike today, the schools remained open.

There’s a lot more to tell about World War II but it’s time to move on to the next crisis. The immediate post-war years seemed wonderful. America was coming back. No rationing. New cars driving by. Everybody seemed happy. Armed services personnel returned home. But it was brief.

When I was still in elementary school along came another war. I had to ask my older brother where Korea was. I’d never heard of it. A lot of Duluth Marine reservists found out quickly enough. Many lost their lives in the early months of that war along with others as it dragged on for three years.

Still, life here went on more normally than during World War II. But there were other concerns on the home front, the biggest one a disease called poliomyelitis, usually called just polio or, more frighteningly, “infantile paralysis.” It was a disease affecting children and young adults that could render their limbs useless and even affect their ability to breathe. Many sufferers didn’t make it. Others were crippled for life.

My parents were extremely concerned. I got constant questions from my mother about polio symptoms she had heard about such as a stiff neck. I wasn’t allowed to drink from public drinking fountains or swim in Miller Creek not far from our home. Later I came to know some people my age who did contract it, their ability to walk severely impaired. The vaccine that eventually wiped it out in the mid-1950s arrived too late for them.

Throughout the years of my childhood, including in the war years, we dealt with childhood diseases that no longer are as serious a problem due to vaccinations. When I got mumps and measles, the health department nailed a quarantine sign next to our front door and I couldn’t go to school for two weeks. When my brother came down with a disease called scarlet fever, our family was quarantined for six weeks with my father moving in with our next-door neighbor so he could continue to work.

Tough times in many ways, but unlike today, school-age kids continued to go to school and people could assemble anywhere, in church, in theaters, at concerts, in restaurants. Jobs were plentiful around here. During the war they built ships in both Duluth and Superior, employing thousands of workers. Of course the atomic bomb dropping on Japan ended that too.

Today’s coronavirus crisis has been described by some as causing “the biggest seismic change since World War II.” I’ve lived through World War II, everything in between and now this. There will come a day when you too will describe what things were like in America when you were young. You will talk about this the way I’ve written about historic events in my early years.

We can only hope it comes to an end soon. In the meantime, always remember, kids, that you’re living through a historic time. I know you’ll never forget. But, more importantly, know that these crises come to an end, and better times lie ahead. They always do.

With love for all,

Grandpa

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.