All: This is My Last Day - chapter 1

All: This Is My Last Day ...
By Henry David Rosso
CHAPTER 1

August 19, 1999, was a gut-wrenching day in the basement radio studio of United Press International. On that day, shortly after noon in Washington, D.C., UPI Radio sent the following to its radio clients:
One final story. This is the last broadcast from UPI Radio. United Press International is getting out of the radio business and has sold its contracts to Associated Press Radio. For those of us suddenly out of work, it has been fun. We feel UPI Radio has done its job well over all, even as we struggled with fewer and fewer resources. So, we sign off now with smiles, memories, a few tears, but no regrets. I’m Craig Smith.
Many believe that broadcast was the final nail in UPI’s coffin, closing the lid to a once-great news service that saw the likes of Walter Cronkite, Helen Thomas, Merriman Smith, Gail Collins, Joseph Galloway, Brit Hume and many, many more.
That year was also my last year with UPI after 27 years – almost every day of which I looked forward to going to work. I left UPI twice. Once I was invited to leave – abruptly. The second time I left – abruptly.
The year I left for good was also the year of the death of my father, who I believe passed journalistic fervor into my genes. When he was a 15-year-old Princeton High School student he interviewed Albert Einstein. When he was 17, he became the editor and reporter for the Princeton, N.J., Local Express.
When my father died, I found a letter he had written to me, "his son
who is just beginning his freshman year at Syracuse University."
He began by telling me what it was like at press time in the Gazette office
where he was working. "'Old Bill' is anxiously puttering over the forms
before he puts them to bed, Duke is busy picking up the mattrices that
'Betsy,' the linotype, has been spewing all over the floor, and I am
relaxing at your desk, a victim of that
'Thursday-afternoon-and-all-my-work-is-done' languor."
He took a moment to remember his days at Syracuse University. "Perhaps you
have felt, as I once did, that surge of printer's ink in your blood as you
walked through the Castle, and you have glanced with scorn at that towering
monstrosity, the Hall of Languages. All in all, you should be well adjusted
to college life and to the campus."
Then there was the college advice:
"Dave, you are not in college to absorb a lot of impractical knowledge; you
are there to gain wisdom. There is a difference. Knowledge can be found in
an encyclopedia. Wisdom is the effective and practical use of that
knowledge."
Finally, my dad's hopes came out:
"I can picture you when you return from Syracuse, Dave. It will be a
reflection of me when I graduated. What a reporter you will make! Instead of
describing a slight delay in the city council as such, you will refer to it
as 'unconscionable dilatoriness promulgated by a group of insignificant,
procrastinating octogenarians."
That letter had been written in 1946. I was 3 years old.
Fast forward to my real college days -- at Marin Junior College in Marin
County, across the bay from San Francisco. Much to my father's chagrin, I
was majoring in music.
"What are you going to do with a music major?" he asked.
"Teach music," I answered.
One day, my choir director and composition professor, Dr. Drummond S. Wolff,
approached me after class with one of my compositions. It was filled with
red circles, exclamation points and comments. He showed it to me, looked up
into my face, and said, "Why don't you go into journalism?"
I don't think it was a question.
I took a break from college in 1962 and traveled to Europe. I had seen an ad
in the school paper that offered: "Earn and learn in Europe." It promised to
set me up with a summer job in a country of my choice. I chose Germany and
went to work in a spool factory in the small town of Reutlingen. After a
month, I wrote the mayor of Munich, explained that I was a college student
working in Germany and did he have a job in Munich. He set me up with a job
at the Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) factory there. At that time, in the '60s, many non-Germans worked in Germany’s factories. While in Germany, I wrote first person accounts of my
days in Europe, which stretched beyond the original summer job to nine
months. I wrote four articles for the Marin Independent Journal. I think the
remuneration was 11 cents an inch.
Fast forward to 1968. I was fresh out of the Air Force and attending
American University in Washington, D.C., and working at the Washington Daily
News, one of three dailies in Washington. The other two were The Washington
Post and The Washington Star. At the News I measured art for advertising.
Not exactly what I had in mind for a career, but it got me in the door and I
got to rub shoulders with reporters.

One day, I passed by the Associated Press offices and, out of curiosity, walked in.
I was amazed. I entered a room filled with teletype machines that made such
a racket I could barely hear the gentleman who was patiently answering my
questions. I knew nothing about wire services and was fascinated to learn
that those machines were sending news around the world.

It was not much later that I met Cyndy Cockrill at a party and started dating her.
She worked at United Press International and introduced me to Grant Dillman,
the Washington bureau chief. Dillman and I talked for a bit, he read some of
my writing and hired me with the words, "You'll never get rich in this
business."

I didn't, and I did.

I began my career with UPI in December 1969 as a switchboard operator and
dictationist. On the switchboard, I learned to manage the spaghetti of cords
that connected -- and oftentimes erroneously disconnected -- the incoming and outgoing
calls. Elsie Holecko taught me the ropes, so to speak, along with Susan
Fogg, whose father, Sam, was a correspondent for UPI. Elsie taught me who
was who and where they were. Susan taught me not to take any crap from
anybody.

While on the switchboard, I learned what a flash was -- or, more precisely,
was not. I answered the phone and a male voice on the other end said: "This
is the FBI. I've got a flash."
Dillman was walking by the switchboard as I pulled over the microphone and
announced, "FBI, flash."

Dillman stopped in his tracks and turned white, his lower jaw dropped open.
He grabbed the phone I had connected, talked for a while and then passed it
on to whoever was running the news desk. He then educated me. The call was
to inform us that the FBI had made an arrest for the murder of labor leader
Joseph "Jock" Yablonski and his family. This may have been an urgent, but
certainly not a flash. Flashes were for the death of a president or
declaration of war or something equally as momentous. I was no longer to
take the word of the FBI.

That night I was taught that there are flashes, which triggered 10 bells on teletype machines; bulletins, which sounded five bells, and urgents, three bells.

UPI was noisy what with the bells and the teletype machines and yelling reporters and editors.
The newsroom was open. No cubicles. And there was constant give and take of varying degrees of intensity. A television in the center of the room was always on.

But it was the teletype machines that were possibly responsible for the ringing I experience in my ears to this day. The room was filled with large black boxes that banged out the news on various wires -- A wire for primary national and world news, B wire for news of lesser importance and transcripts, financial wire, regional wire, local and state wire -- all banging at once. Occasionally, we would have a power outage and when all the machines stopped at once, the silence was deafening.