Witness to Columbus history for 37 years reflects
I never thought that I’d say I had done anything for 45 years.
It was that long ago that I got a driver’s license and began chasing breaking news.
This memory flooded back on Wednesday as I prepared to tell the Dispatch staff that I will retire at the end of this year from the newspaper I have loved and proudly served for more than 37 years.
With a hand-me-down Pontiac and a second-hand Pentax film camera, and with a well of passion for news that propelled me beyond my inexperience as a news reporter and photographer, I documented house fires and car crashes in my hometown of Orrville.
I would sleep with a police and fire scanner and pants rolled down over a pair of boots next to the bed, so that when the alarm sounded in the night, I could jump into my boots like a fireman and get to the latest news scene.
Then I’d rush home, where my dad, a photographer and reporter who went on to a successful career in public relations, had a photo darkroom in the basement. I’d soup the film, print photos, write captions and run back downtown to slide the photos under the front door of our hometown weekly newspaper, The Courier-crescent, and I’d pray that they would publish them.
And they did!
I was hooked.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Ken Blum of Orrville for putting up with a pesky kid and giving me that opportunity. He hired me during summer breaks in high school and college to work as a reporter and photographer in newsrooms in Wayne and Holmes counties, where I grew up.
I followed Dad’s footsteps after college, working first for The Daily Record in Wooster and then The Repository in Canton. And then Frank Hinchey, state editor at The Dispatch at the time, called and offered me a job in Columbus.
I’ve worked with some greats in the business, starting with my dad, Larry Miller, and my mom, Carol Kallberg, who wrote a weekly newspaper column for more than 50 years.
I learned investigative journalism in the early 1990s by sitting next to and watching Mike Berens, whose tenacity and journalistic skills in watchdog reporting revealed injustices, brought much-needed reforms to the justice system here, and accolades for him and The Dispatch. I knew he would win a Pulitzer Prize one day, and he did. He was a Pulitzer finalist while at The Dispatch in 1995, and he won a Pulitzer in 2012.
I have worked with many other great journalists, and I am most proud of the current staff of The Dispatch for their passion and dedication to local journalism during a time of challenges and great change in the industry. Their work has never been more important, and they rise to those challenges each day.
I was blessed to cover Columbus City Hall and the higher education beats when two of God’s gifts to journalism were in office: Dana G. “Buck” Rinehart as mayor and E. Gordon Gee as president of Ohio State University.
Both of them had unbridled enthusiasm, a gift for theatrics and the ability to produce remarkable quotes.
One of the most memorable was on the day that Rinehart held a news conference to announce that he had secured a lease for the old Ohio State Penitentiary on Spring Street. The longempty and decrepit hulk overlooked the Scioto River across from what is now North Bank Park.
Rinehart had visions of a stadium or arena on the 20-plus acres of land within the tall stone walls that surrounded the prison site. State and local historians thought otherwise and wanted to preserve site where Southern Civil War General John Hunt Morgan and the author O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) had been imprisoned.
Rinehart was thrilled that he had secured a lease for the property and could work toward some sort of development for the betterment of Downtown.
I showed up at the prison site on the morning of the news conference to find Rinehart standing next to a wrecking crane.
I said, “Buck, what are you doing with the wrecking crane?”
“Alan, I have a lease that says I’m responsible for maintenance, and demolition is a part of maintenance,” he said, bounding into the cab of the crane to sit with the operator as he knocked several big holes in the historic façade. Reporters stood in shocked silence. There was some momentary pain for Rinehart when officials at the state Administrative Services Department, which owned the building, told him he had to fix the holes and put a fence around the site. And local historians took him to task for wrecking a landmark.
But his vision was profound, and to his credit and that of many others who shared the vision, it became real. Nationwide Arena and all the development around it eventually rose up from the ruins of that old prison.
I’ve been a witness to and helped write the history of Columbus for 37 years, and I thank you for your support for local journalism and the opportunity to serve this community in a job that I love.
Alan D. Miller is editor of The Dispatch. amiller@dispatch.com @dispatcheditor