John Bartlow Martin

Ray E. Boomhower

Description

Silver Medal, Biography category, 2016 Independent Publisher Book AwardsWinner, 2015 Society of Midland Authors awardsHonorable Mention, 2016 INDIEFAB Awards, Biography

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During the 1940s and 1950s, one name, John Bartlow Martin, dominated the pages of the "big slicks," the Saturday Evening Post, LIFE, Harper's, Look, and Collier's. A former reporter for the Indianapolis Times, Martin was one of a handful of freelance writers able to survive solely on this writing. Over a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his peers lauded him as "the best living reporter," the "ablest crime reporter in America," and "one of America's premier seekers of fact." His deep and abiding concern for the working class, perhaps a result of his upbringing, set him apart from other reporters. Martin was a key speechwriter and adviser to the presidential campaigns of many prominent Democrats from 1950 into the 1970s, including those of Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and George McGovern. He served as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic during the Kennedy administration and earned a small measure of fame when FCC Chairman Newton Minow introduced his description of television as "a vast wasteland" into the nation's vocabulary.

Preface
1. The Responsible Reporter
2. A Mean Street in a Mean City
3. Two Cents a Word
4. The Big Slicks
5. All the Way with Adlai
6. The New America
7. The Honorable Ambassador
8. LBJ and Adlai
9. The Return of the Native
10. As Time Goes By
Bibliography
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Journalists
• Publishers
• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Publishing
• Journalist
• Autobiography
• History
• Editors
• Indiana

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 18 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253016188
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

John Bartlow Martin

John Bartlow Martin
A Voice for the Underdog
Ray E. Boomhower
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Ray E. Boomhower
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boomhower, Ray E., [date]
John Bartlow Martin : a voice for the underdog / Ray E. Boomhower.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01614-0 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01618-8 (ebook) 1. Martin, John Bartlow, 1915-1987. 2. Authors, American - 20th century - Biography. 3. Journalists - United States - Biography 4. Speechwriters - United States - Biography. 5. United States - Politics and government - 1945-1989.
I. Title.
PS 3525. A 7525 Z 59 2015
818 5409 - dc23
[B]
2014036943
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
Dedicated to the memory of my father, Raymond Walter Boomhower, who always believed in me. He is missed .

A professional writer cannot, like a teacher, be dull and be protected in his dullness. He must recapture his audience with every new start. He must be fascinating, bright, or pontifical, he must impress, charm, amuse, inform.
WALLACE STEGNER
The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
ROBERT BENCHLEY

Contents
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 The Responsible Reporter
2 A Mean Street in a Mean City
3 Two Cents a Word
4 The Big Slicks
5 All the Way with Adlai
6 The New America
7 The Honorable Ambassador
8 LBJ and Adlai
9 The Return of the Native
10 As Time Goes By
NOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Preface
COLONEL ROBERT R. MCCORMICK OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND Eleanor Cissy Patterson of the Washington Times-Herald were not only cousins, but publishers that held enormous sway as isolationists warning against American involvement in World War II. In 1979 their stories were told in separate biographies, McCormick by Joseph Gies and Patterson by Ralph G. Martin. Considering the books, a reviewer in the September 30, 1979, issue of the Tribune used the opportunity to muse on the endless difficulties involved in writing a biography. Too much detail will bore the reader, too little will disappoint him. To what extent should the author act as an advocate of his subject? To what extent a critic? the reviewer asked. How is he to make his subject come alive, to breathe? How can he answer the terrible question: What made him the man he was? How much of his private life as well as his public life to include? What, aside from the laws of libel and invasion of privacy, sets limits? Taste? But whose taste? The biographer s obviously; but this is a grave responsibility.
The reviewer, John Bartlow Martin, was no stranger to the field, as just a few years before he had produced the definitive two-volume biography of former Illinois governor and two-time Democratic presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson. To Martin, the authors of the McCormick and Patterson biographies had failed to make their subjects come alive for their readers. The works on the newspaper titans paled in comparison to writers he believed had admirably surmounted the difficulties he had posed for crafting a biography - Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in Robert Kennedy and His Times and William Manchester in his biography of General Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar (both favorites of this author as well).
I came across Martin s questions for biographers early on in my research for the biography that follows, and kept them in mind as I wrote the book, realizing the grave responsibility any biographer has in detailing the life of his subject. My introduction to Martin happened early in my career at the Indiana Historical Society, where I have worked since 1987. His classic Indiana: An Interpretation , originally published in 1947 and republished in 1992 by Indiana University Press, greatly influenced my thinking about the state s past and future. As a former reporter turned historian, as Martin had been, I aspired to reach and inspire an audience as well as he had done during his heyday, and promised myself that one day I would write his biography. I took tentative steps at fulfilling this promise with an article on Martin in the spring 1997 issue of the IHS s popular history magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History , and with detailing his prominent role in Robert F. Kennedy s run for the Democratic presidential nomination in my book Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary , published by Indiana University Press in 2008.
It has been quite a journey. Along the way I received helpful guidance from such dedicated professionals as the staff at the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; Janet C. Olson at the Northwestern University Archives in Evanston, Illinois; Marcus Robyns and and Glenda Ward at the Central Upper Michigan Peninsula and Northern Michigan University Archives, Marquette, Michigan; and Susan L. S. Sutton at the Indiana Historical Society William Henry Smith Memorial Library in Indianapolis, Indiana. In addition, Jasminn Winters at the Library of Congress proved invaluable when it came to obtaining reproductions of images from Martin s papers for use in the book.
Dan Carpenter, former columnist for the Indianapolis Star , provided helpful suggestions for improving the book both early on and late in the process. At Indiana University Press, Linda Oblack, Sarah Jacobi, and Michelle Sybert provided patience and understanding, both sorely needed whenever a book is shepherded into print.
Although not an authorized biography, this book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of Martin s three children - Cindy, Dan, and Fred. They were tireless in answering questions I had about their parents lives, and they corrected errors without interfering with my interpretations of what happened. Cindy served as an indefatigable tour guide of Martin s haunts in Michigan s Upper Peninsula, taking me to her family s former cabin at Three Lakes and allowing me to visit the camp at Smith Lake. She also shared family photographs and made sure I saw Martin s portable Remington Rand typewriter as well as the rubber stamps he had made for use in commenting on his student s papers while teaching at Northwestern University s Medill School of Journalism.
In talking with Cindy, Dan, and Fred, I was delighted to learn how much of a role their mother, Fran, played in Martin s writing career. It was another connection between subject and author, as my wife, Megan McKee, has been a part of every book I have written, offering wise counsel and invaluable editing. She has always been, to borrow a statement Martin made about Fran, just wonderful.

Acknowledgments
PORTIONS OF THIS BOOK PREVIOUSLY APPEARED IN THE SPRING 1997 issue of the Indiana Historical Society publication Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History and in my book Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary ( IUP , 2008).
John Bartlow Martin

ONE
The Responsible Reporter
THE BODIES BEGAN COMING UP FROM DEEP WITHIN THE BOWELS of the earth days after the first explosion at the Centralia coal mine on March 25, 1947. Members of the Illinois prairie community of Centralia began hearing about how an explosive charge meant to dislodge coal had ignited the unstable coal dust permeating the air more than five hundred feet below ground at the mine south of town in Wamac. The wives of the miners whose fate was not yet known gathered at the washhouse - the place where during the workweek their husbands changed out of their grimy, coal-streaked clothes at the end of their shifts. Avoiding the rescue teams wearing their oxygen tanks and other awkward paraphernalia of disaster, the women gravitated toward sitting beneath their loved ones clothing, settling in for the long wait to learn about their men s fate. 1
Friends and relatives of the trapped men gathered outside in the cold near the mouth of the mine hoping to hear any news. One was a young Illinois college student named Bill Niepoetter, who worried about his father, Henry, and three other relatives. One rescue worker would come up and say, It s bad, there are not going to be any survivors, Niepoetter said. The next one would come up and say, It s not going to be as bad. We had no notion. Helplessness set in as Niepoetter viewed rescue workers emerging from the mine without any survivors. They d come up and you could see from their faces that this was not going to be a good week, he said. Those miners not killed outright by the blast were poisoned by the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide left behind in the atmosphere. Ambulances from Centralia and nearby towns idled their engines in the cold night air in an attempt by the men inside to keep warm as they waited to be called upon to transport the deceased to the local Greyhound bus station, which officials had converted into a temporary mor