The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
So long and thanks a lot; it’s been really good to know you
On a January morning in 1977 a cub reporter walked nervously into the New Haven Register and Journal-Courier newsroom on the second floor of the Jackson Newspapers headquarters on Orange Street.
The room was filled with the rat-a-tats of typewriter keys and animated telephone conversations of reporters working on their stories.
One of the veteran reporters, Jack Millea, looked up from his work and saw me standing there in the middle of that big room. Sensing how lost I was, he came up to me and said: “Hi, can I help you?” I told him who Iwas and that I was reporting for duty.
Jack found my editor, who showed me to the desk where I would begin my career at the New Haven Register by filing stories on the Branford beat.
My battered, old, metal desk stank of cigar smoke. I opened the front drawer and beheld a stogie. I would soon learn that I was sharing the desk with the Rev. John Noble, who smoked cigars throughout the late afternoon and evening as he worked. In those days Register and Journal-Courier reporters worked different shifts but at the same
desk.
That newsroom contained a cast of characters that could have come out of a Damon Runyon novel: Gus Seder, a curmudgeon who insisted on riding his bicycle all over Greater New Haven to cover his assignments; Walter Dudar, the business editor who never learned to drive but knew everything that was happening because he walked around downtown seven days a week; and wisecracking sportswriters Tom McCormack and George Wadley. After work we would head over to the nearby bars. Malone’s! The Jury Box!
Over the next three years I grew to know and love New Haven and its people while enjoying my bachelor pad in a brownstone on Trumbull Street around the corner from the “Register-JC” building.
I read both newspapers carefully every day and noticed in particular the work of Bill Ryan, who had a local column called “Roamin.’” He wrote well and with attitude, apparently about anything he wanted and he appeared to be having a free-wheeling good time.
In those years I was also reading and admiring the output of other columnists such as Russell Baker and Red Smith of the New York Times, Jimmy Breslin of the New York Daily News and Bob Greene of the Chicago Tribune. The thought grew in me: “I really want to have my own column.”
In 1980 when Ryan left, I saw my chance.
I approached the editors with a proposal that in addition to my daily reporting (by then I had been promoted to a general assignment city beat) I write a weekly column about local people. I knew better than to ask for any extra pay.
The editors thought it over and said: “Sure, kid, give it a shot.”
That was 40 years ago. It’s a good bet those editors had no idea what they were unleashing, how far I would take it, and for how long.
I knew right away who I would write about for my first column: Gerald Forde, a well-dressed old gent I had seen around town and who regularly watched the trials in the New Haven Superior Court building.
“I like the drama,” he told me. “Anything can happen.”
Forde had talked about his remarkable life, starting with his youth in Ireland, where he witnessed the Irish Civil War in the 1920s.
This was my lead of that first column on Nov. 15, 1980: “While Americans his age were learning reading, writing and arithmetic and playing cowboys and Indians, 12-year-old Gerald Forde was learning how to throw hand grenades, fire a revolver and ambush British soldiers.”
In the months and years that followed this debut, I wrote about a bartender on Dixwell Avenue named “Six Fingers” because he really did have that many on one hand; “the human torch” who set himself on fire at the North Haven Fair; the proprietor of a “dirty shoe” diner in Guilford where customers played the piano in a cluttered back room; Elvis impersonator Johnny Romano; a New Haven homeless woman who called herself “Queen Joy”; and the piano player at The Old Barge Café on Front Street in Fair Haven.
One of my wise guy colleagues at the Register dubbed my column “creep of the week.” But “At Large” was really the column’s name and what I sought to do was give those often unknown characters recognition and dignity. Much later I wrote several columns in appreciation of Margaret Holloway, “the Shakespeare lady,” who died earlier this year.
There were some interruptions during my time here. In 1984, after I met and fell in love with Jennifer Kaylin, another reporter at the Register, we lit out for Boston and got married. But I always felt the Elm City drawing me back like a magnet. I returned and wrote three columns per week from 1987-89.
My final tour of duty commenced in 1997 and soon afterward I got the green light to resume writing this column. I have continued to do so through this past week. According to my calculations, I have logged a total of 32 years here.
People sometimes have told me I have a “fun job.” On most days that was true; you might remember I wrote plenty of columns about doughnuts! But my work also included writing about terrible and depressing subjects, such as the day my wife and I escaped injury or death at the Boston Marathon bombings; standing with the people of Newtown after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School; and covering every day of the two trials for the men who murdered Michaela and Hayley Petit and Jennifer HawkePetit at their home in Cheshire.
Why am I leaving now? The timing makes sense for me. Earlier this year I turned 70 and this line of work, now more than ever, is a young person’s game. I was pondering the timing of making my move when Hearst Newspapers a few weeks ago offered its employees a voluntary separation program with solid financial incentives. I decided to accept the offer.
This cursed pandemic is also a factor in my departure. Over the past eight months I increased my output of columns, trying to focus on positive topics as my way of cheering people up. I hope it helped.
But working “remotely” out of my home is not nearly as fulfilling as operating out of the newsroom alongside my colleagues. Our office has been closed since March 12. The person-to-person journalism I have always practiced is harder to do in a time when many people are afraid to meet face-to-face. And the trials I used to cover in New Haven Superior Court are no longer happening. They can be heartbreaking but I miss “the drama” that Forde also loved.
“What will you do now?” That’s what people who have heard about my departure are asking me. I am co-writing a book about the history of Toad’s Place, New Haven’s legendary music club. I might also someday put together a collection of my favorite columns.
Another question that was frequently put to me during these past decades was: “Where do you get all your ideas for your columns?” The answer is simple: the ideas came from you, dear reader. This is my thanks to all of you who gave me those tips through these many years. I would have been lost without you.
We can still maintain our communications if you like. I can always be reached at my home in New Haven: rbeach8@yahoo.com.
Be well, be safe, be happy, my friends. It’s been a fun ride.