 |
| Wilt Chamberlain on the cover of Philadelphia Magazine. |
As it sometimes happens, a sordid basketball story got pushed aside for a sublime one. At least that’s what happened in South Florida, Philadelphia, Portland and a number of other towns where the news of Dr. Jack Ramsay’s death made other sports news seem irrelevant. The sordid story temporarily pushed out of the headlines was the racist stuff involving Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. As a casual NBA fan (our team has to be winning) we did not even know the name of the Clippers’ owner, or most of the rest of the NBA owners for that matter. There are too many of them.
But you can never have enough Jack Ramsays. We like to think we have the distinction of being the only guy who covered that legendary coach on three levels – high school, college and the pros.
The high school was St. James in Chester, Pa. We were a sports writer for the student paper at a different school, but we covered our games against a pretty good St. James team. Then, in 1955, Jack Ramsay moved up to coach St. Joseph’s College, and by now at college at La Salle, we covered our games against his teams for three seasons. The previous season La Salle had won the NCAA championship, and we had beaten St. Joe’s five out of six years. But for the next three years, St. Joe beat us. We began to sense they had a great coach, and we hated him, even as we tried to be fair in covering the games for our school newspaper. Our talent was equal to theirs, if not better. Our guys always played hard, but St. Joe seemed to have more intensity, more organization. We have since been convinced that had Ramsay been our coach, all three of those games would have been La Salle wins.
Skip forward a decade, during which Jack Ramsay became Dr. Jack Ramsay, and established a reputation as one of the best coaches in the country. Then he moved on, seemingly burned out. At one time he had vision problems. He became general manger of the Philadelphia 76ers, where we first actually met him, while working on a magazine piece on the team that had just won the NBA championship with Wilt Chamberlain. The coach we had despised in college quickly won us over with his warmth and cooperative spirit. He was always a good interview.
His burn out soon burned out. He returned to coaching and for 19 years was one of the best in the NBA, winning it all at Portland in 1977. By that time he had influenced many other coaches, several of whom had played under him. In the process he also changed basketball.
“Very few coaches change a game,” said Bill (Speedy) Morris when he was coaching excellent La Salle teams in the late 1980s. “But Jack Ramsay changed basketball. I must have read his book (Pressure Basketball) eleven times.”
Before Ramsay, defense in basketball was a half-court game. Ball handlers could often walk the ball to mid-court. But his teams, beginning at St. Joe, pressed full court, attempting to trap a ball handler into a bad pass, or call an emergency time out. It is a tactic you routinely see today. And it began with Jack Ramsay.
As you see in today’s papers, the basketball world grew to love the man. He was especially admired in South Florida (he spent winters in Naples) where he did color for the Miami Heat broadcasts and then for ESPN. He was as good at that as he was at coaching. For a man who coached with such intensity, his demeanor off court was always gracious and dignified. He helped anybody he could. The comments today from Heat personnel outdid each other in praise for his personal qualities. It was reported that, when coaching, Pat Riley used to glance at Ramsay at the announcer’s table to get his take when Riley thought a ref made a bad call. Ramsay would respond with a subtle nod or shake of his head.
Donald Sterling may be in the basketball news today, but whatever his fate, we doubt anybody will know his name ten years from now. The legend of Dr. Jack Ramsay will endure.
Danny Chichester said, not long before his death, there’s only two guys in this town that if you say “Danny and Wally,” everybody knows who you mean.
“How about Wayne?” we said. “He ain’t in the bar business,” said Danny.
The other half of the team everybody knew by first name died Monday. He was 85. Wally Brewer had been sick for some time, but he goes down with a narrowing list of famous bar-restaurant owners in Gold Coast history.
We are going from memory, but Wally showed up in South Florida in the 1960s. We first met him when he had an active downtown place in the mid-70s. It was razed to make room for what is now Fort Lauderdale’s bus terminal. It was popular with government workers. It was close to the state office building, and federal people were often there.
Wally moved up to north Federal Highway near 26th Street. C. 1988. He ran a popular spot there until the early 90s when, anticipating the opening of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, he opened Wally’s Olde Town Chop House. It was right on the railroad, at 2nd Ave. and 2nd St. At the time it was a distressed neighborhood, a bum in the doorway location. It is now one of the busiest corners in town, across from Tarpon Bend. Wally led the charge to that sector, and we recall him standing outside his place, exclaiming “Bourbon Street, Bourbon Street!” He foresaw that strip becoming a mini-version of the legendary New Orleans entertainment district.
He was a bit ahead of his time, but it did turn out that way. The Olde Town Chop House did a great lunch, particularly with the Blockbuster Entertainment crowd – only a block away at that time. Wayne Huizenga liked Wally, and when the Florida Panthers won their first playoff series, Wayne called long distance to ask him to stay open late so he could bring his Panthers gang there for a midnight celebration. Bob Guerin, one of Wayne’s lieutenants at Blockbuster, recalls helping out in the short-handed kitchen that night.
Wally Brewer eventually sold his place (several times; he had to take it back more than once) and then opened a smaller bar in the Galt Ocean Mile area. It was his last hurrah. An obit has not yet made the paper, but according to his friend, Jim O’Connell (a regular at the chop house) a funeral mass will be held at St. John the Baptist Church in Coral Ridge at 11:30 A.M. Friday.
His friend Danny Chichester had it right. Danny and Wally. Names everybody knew.
 |
| Painting by Bob Jenny |
Except, it isn’t that much of a mystery. Not according to the late architect John Evans, who wrote about the subject years back in Gold Coast magazine. Evans had an unusual perspective on the subject. He was almost on the lost flight. As Evans wrote, he was a young gunner on a Grumman TBF Avenger based in Fort Lauderdale. He, like the crewmen who disappeared, was training at the base, and might have been assigned to the ill-fated flight had not he gotten leave when his parents came to visit him.
Evans, who participated until his death in the annual memorial service for the flight, always debunked the theory of the Bermuda Triangle and its curse on aircraft. He says that to those at the base, it was never a great mystery in the first place, and that the flight was a fiasco from the time it took off. He wrote that it never should have flown. Bad weather was moving in and the other nearby Navy air stations closed down. Furthermore, the flight leader did not want to fly. He may have been under the weather from a party the night before.
Compounding the problem was that the planes were not in perfect condition. The war had ended and maintenance may have been lax, for key navigation devices did not work that afternoon, at least not on the flight leader’s plane. Its compass was out. The Avenger was a relatively modern design. It entered service at the battle of Midway in June 1942 and in the next few years pilots flew thousands of missions and relied on instruments to return safely to aircraft carriers over miles of featureless ocean.
On the night of the disaster, radar was following the planes, and ground operators and other aircraft could hear transmissions between members of the flight. But the planes could not hear the ground when operators tried to lead them back to base.
Thus, what should have been a routine, relatively short flight to the Bahamas, turned into a nightmare when the flight leader could not find his way back to Fort Lauderdale. Ground operators could hear some of the pilots telling their skipper the correct heading to home, but he did not agree. As weather closed in and darkness came, the flight zigzagged on a generally northward course. Today, even in poor weather, pilots would see miles of lights along the coast. But in 1945, much of Florida’s coast was empty, and Flight 19 had the bad luck not to pass over populated cities.
Radar tracked the planes as far north as Daytona Beach, using fuel the entire time, and (again, according to John Evans) the last plotting had the planes heading out to sea in total darkness. He is convinced they lie in deep water in the Atlantic. If he were around today, he would be highly skeptical that any of the planes could have wound up far to the south in the Everglades. But he surely would have applauded the try.
 |
|
These downtown
neighborhoods
consider themselves
an endangered species.
|
There seems to be a double standard at work when it comes to transportation in South Florida – depending on whether it’s roads or rail. Roads first. There is an enormous amount of high-rise construction going on – mainly in Fort Lauderdale – that will increase the downtown population dramatically. Nobody seems to know the exact figure. But, anyone who hasn’t driven U.S. 1 in five years would not believe it is the same city. And nobody seems to know how all these new residents, if all the units underway are occupied, are going to get around. People living in or near downtown are already complaining about traffic.
Particularly hard hit are some of Florida’s best neighborhoods, between the heart of the city and the beach. Their attraction, aside from the fact that they are pretty places with beautiful old trees or that they’re expensive waterfront property, is their extraordinary convenience. They surround Las Olas Boulevard’s shopping and entertainment and are near the beach. Throw in an airport that, under the right traffic conditions, is only 15 minutes away, and you have a living environment that has few comparisons to anywhere. Many people could walk to schools and churches, although few do. But down the road that may be the fastest way to get around.
There is a current conflict between commercial and residential interests. The new construction is just part of it. Las Olas Boulevard merchants, a group with clout, want to slow traffic on that busy street. There is a proposal to effectively narrow it to two lanes by permitting on-street parking, extending the median and other changes. But already drivers enroute from the beach to downtown have taken to cutting through residential streets to save time. One objective of the traffic plan is safety. There have been people killed on Las Olas.
But making a busy, four-lane road safer has the effect of making the side streets far less safe. As one who lives there, and has benefitted by a city decision 25 years ago to protect neighborhoods by closing some streets (as has happened all around town), we are eyewitnesses to the fact that drivers cutting through tend to go dangerously fast on narrow streets. They are in a hurry all the time. Cars have been clocked on side streets at 50 mph. These are oak-shaded streets where people jog, stroll with dogs, walk baby carriages and admire the charming old houses, and some spectacular new houses that have been built because the neighborhood is so livable. And these residents wonder what it will be like when so many newcomers are added to the traffic bottleneck; and wonder if those who permit the new building even give the matter a thought. The affected homeowner groups are especially concerned that the people who currently live there have been largely ignored.
Now, to the rails – a totally different situation. The FEC tracks, which go through the heart of cities all along the coast, will soon be used for a fast train from Miami to Orlando. And there is a plan to bring Tri-Rail and possibly even Amtrak to the same tracks, where they should have been all along. But unlike the indifference to street congestion, the papers are full of the problems associated with the rail project. The Palm Beach Post has been particularly sensitive to the consequences associated with increased rail traffic. There is justified concern for the marine industry, as rivers and waterways will be blocked by the railroad’s slow-motion lift bridges more frequently. The problem of numerous grade crossings has also been covered. Some will have to be closed if the trains are to come anywhere near their announced schedule, creating inconvenience for many motorists, and perhaps slowing emergency vehicles.
The federal government has chimed-in, citing standards for fast trains. A government spokesman said 110 mph for All Aboard Florida is unrealistic, even in rural areas to the north. This is no Northeast Corridor, where there are almost no grade crossings from New York to Washington, D.C., and where fences keep people from getting near the speeding Acela trains.
To its credit, the FEC does not seem to be whitewashing these concerns. To the contrary, it seems to invite a dialogue. It knows better than anyone else the challenge it faces to bring an old-fashioned railroad into the 21st century. The various rail entities are cooperating. Eventually the long, slow freight trains will be moved to the western CSX tracks. As we have noted here before, in the long run, the FEC needs to be modernized, with bridges or tunnels at key intersections of main roads and waterways. The cost will be enormous, but so will the benefits.
The fact is that government is not waiting until the rail problems arise to anticipate them, and seek solutions. But that’s not the case with traffic on the roads. Double standard.
Among the modern miracles of technology is the car that drives itself. Once viewed as something out of the Buck Rogers* show, part of the concept is already being sold in new cars. It includes warnings of objects behind you when backing up, and automatic braking when a sensor senses (as sensible sensors will) trouble ahead. It will not be long before people can just get in their cars, program a destination, pull out a six-pack and prepare to sleep for several hundred miles until their seat gently vibrates and a soft alarm tells them they have arrived.
Many people will consider this progress, but not aggressive drivers. We foresee unforeseen consequences, as people who don’t like to obey laws will become infuriated with the lack of control inherent in such a driving environment. They might as well be in a freaking bus. It seems safe to say that programmed cars will obey all traffic rules. They will not be able to weave in and out of traffic and go 90 mph in a 65 mph speed limit. They will not be able to ignore stop signs or accelerate to bust red lights, and if a driver tries to express heartfelt road rage by shooting a bird at some other helpless driver, automatic thongs, or tongs will pop out to lock their arms in place, and gags will appear from the roof if they even try to scream in frustration. These would just be tweaks on the air bag concept.
We need to get the National Rifle Association involved with this, because sooner or later it will involve itself, as inevitably, the aggregate anger of the crazies among us will boil over in some kind of murderous event. And we need an organization that routinely elects low IQ rednecks through campaign contributions, to make this some kind of second amendment issue that will have the support of legislators everywhere. As long as they get their campaign contributions, and have the support of their low IQ redneck voters.
We need the NRA to support legislation to make it legal for drivers who endure hours of maddening frustration by not being able to violate traffic laws, to all get together at the end of their trips and shoot each other. That would be one way of releasing tension. Otherwise these people might head for the nearest bar or take a snort of a dangerous substance. However, we must be realistic. Even with NRA support, it is likely the Supreme Court would ultimately rule that shooting people for the fun of it is unconstitutional. And that could ruin the whole concept of driverless driving, and in the process waste all of this great technology we have developed.
But wait. Can we not put this great technology to some related use? Yes, we can. We can give a blessing, and possibly income, to all people who hate the way other people drive. We can equip cars with devices that lock onto the license plates of cars that cut us off, or speed by at 100 mph, or weave in and out of I-95 traffic, and no matter where they go they can be tracked. The owners will be fined $1,000 for the first offense, and have their cars blown up by drones for a second.
Now, here is the beautiful part. Everyone who reports another driver for crazy driving, and that will be everyone, will get 15 percent of the fine (a standard agency commission), directly deposited into one’s account, that very minute when we use the voice activated lock-on device. The command would be like your ATM password. Something like, “You S.O.B!” Imagine driving to Orlando and making a few grand in the process – in a car that uses no gas because it is powered by a combination of solar electricity and a windmill mounted on the roof. The faster you go, the more juice you get. We would all be traffic cops, very rich ones. But then, as cops wouldn’t we all need to carry guns? Of course, we would. And carrying guns, wouldn’t we be entitled to use them the next time we see somebody we don’t like, especially if they prove a threat? Gun sales would go crazy. The NRA would be so happy. A perfect world.
*Buck Rogers is a fictional character, allegedly dating to 1928, who specialized in wild futuristic Buck Rogers ideas, most of which can be found in new cars.
Christensen is a former Miami Herald reporter, who saw newspapers cut their staffs four years ago, and in the process lose some of their investigative ability. He decided to fill that void and has been supported by a number of prominent ex-newsmen. His board of directors includes Gene Cryer (Sun-Sentinel), Doug Clifton (The Miami Herald) and Kevin Boyd (all of the above, plus the long gone Hollywood Sun-Tattler). And the editorial contributors are all experienced and trusted reporters. Financial support comes from contributions, notably by popular crime novelist Michael Connelly, a former Sun-Sentinel reporter.
Broward Bulldog has more than fulfilled its stated mission: “We believe journalism is a public service that is essential to a free and democratic society. We are committed to bridging the gap by delivering more of the original, local, issue-oriented news and information our community needs.”
Much of Broward Bulldog’s content is online, but some stories are important enough to be picked up by major papers. Just recently, for example, was the report that Gov. Rick Scott’s “blind trust” can see pretty well. Although it is designed to detach a public figure from his or her investments, it was reported that Scott’s trust is run by a former crony and that Scott has made millions during his term as governor.
An even more recent example is today’s news that U.S. District Judge William Zloch of Fort Lauderdale ruled yesterday against the FBI’s attempt to throw out a lawsuit filed by Broward Bulldog and others seeking the bureau’s records on a mysterious Saudi figure who left the country in a great hurry shortly before Sept. 11.
This is a story that reaches far beyond the Broward borders. It was originally broken in 2011 by Christensen and Anthony Summers, an Irish reporter whose work includes a much admired book on the Kennedy assassination. They discovered that the highly connected Saudi man was visited at his Sarasota area home by some of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Just before the World Trade Center attack, he and his family left Sarasota in such a hurry that they left behind cars and household furnishings. Initially, the FBI denied having any pertinent information on the Saudi man, but after Broward Bulldog’s Freedom of Information lawsuit, it produced documents showing the opposite. The documents revealed numerous contacts between the Saudi and the terrorists. But pages were excised or blacked out.
This greatly disturbed former governor and senator Bob Graham, co-chair of the Sept. 11 Commission, who accused the FBI of impeding the commission’s investigation by withholding such important information – information that established a link between the Saudi Arabian government and the terrorists.
This is investigative reporting at its best and next week a very funny guy will help keep it going.
When he invented the game, Dr. James Naismith was looking for a sport that could be played indoor during cold weather (he was in Massachusetts). He also wanted one that wasn't as rough as outdoor sports, but still had more aerobic value than, say, chess. Presumably, to avoid injuries, he slowed the game down by making players bounce the ball before they took a shot. We suspect that rules against fouling were an afterthought, to make sure players did not grab an opponent as they shot.
We wonder if the man would recognize basketball today? While he would probably be satisfied that his little winter diversion has turned into March Madness, keeping bookies in shoes, we think it would blow his whistle to see the perversions that have altered the game over the years – many of them in the last few decades. A few changes he would likely applaud, such as the 3-point shot that rewards long distance accuracy, and the rule against giants camping out under the basket. He might actually find dunking exciting, because it is, and because it's something he probably thought was impossible living in a time when anybody more than six feet was considered tall.
And we are confident he would blow his whistle 10 times as often as the refs do today. It seems to get worse every year. Ball handlers routinely do what used to be illegal "palming" the ball, as they swing wildly from side to side, and "discontinue" as they hesitate in their dribble while navigating the court. But the thing that would probably pain him the most is players speeding up the floor, almost passing the ball to themselves and then forgetting the bounce altogether as they drive to the basket. Back in the '50s and '60s you were allowed one step after picking up your dribble. Today, it is routine to take at least two steps, and more often three and four – including a jump step – and knocking over anybody who happens to be in the way.
We used to call it traveling, but not once during the many NCAA tournament games have we seen it called on a player racing to the basket. There were a few calls against big guys posted up who moved their pivot foot, which hardly seems as serious an infraction as a guy taking multiple steps to build speed for a slam dunk. What would surely appall Naismith is the amount of contact permitted in his game, especially on the offense. For decades after its invention, offensive players had to go around defenders, not through them. This point is especially offensive, pun intended, because one of the Philly teams we root for lost a game after its best big man fouled out, simply because he did not get out of the way of a man blasting through him toward the basket. At one time, that call was an obvious charge. Today, unless the defensive man has been absolutely still for at least a week, the call usually favors the offense. That type of contact ought to be either charging or a no-call. It must be exactly the opposite of what Naismith conceived as fouling.
Even announcers recognize contact as the God-given right of offensive players. They note when a player driving to the basket fails to make sufficient contact to draw a foul. It has gotten so bad that we have seen defensive players in the tournament step aside, literally giving their man a free shot rather than risk a foul. We can almost hear the man who designed a “safe” winter game watching its current version,with the best player of our times wearing a protective face mask, and mumbling, “Madness. Madness.”
On such an interesting news day there are several options for comment. The first: the landmark Rustic Inn in Fort Lauderdale has new ownership, leaving control of the Oreal family estate. The famous crab place dates to 1955, one of only a handful of restaurants with such longevity. We will save that story, and others like it, for our 50th anniversary issue next winter.
Then, there is the latest wrinkle in the polo enthusiast’s DUI retrial, in which the judge denied a request to drop the case because the wrecked, expensive car had been destroyed after it was turned over to an insurance company, after numerous requests to have it turned over. It turns out that those requests may have come not from the insurance company, but from unknown sources. The state suspects those sources were the defense team, by way of setting up grounds for an appeal. Since there are lawyers involved, the state deserves sympathy. This is the one where the first trial, which resulted in a guilty verdict, was nixed because of juror misconduct, and is being delayed right now with an argument of the validity of the blood tests. The fatal accident happened four years ago. Maybe it is time to change lawyers (for the second time) in order to buy more time, or perhaps argue that this is a case of identity theft and the defendant is not the defendant. Does a multimillionaire shop at Target?
However, these stories fail to meet the standard of The Miami Herald’s Fred Grimm, who has today’s winning entry with a column detailing the imminent demise of a North Florida town called Hampton, known as the champion of speed traps on U.S. 301. Grimm reports that the town of less than 500 people (and 17 cops at one time) took in $616,960 in fines in two years. That involved 12,698 tickets. The money, incidentally, seems to be missing. The town made the mistake of giving a ticket to a state legislator, who is leading the charge to exterminate it.
Hampton is one of three speed traps in the area, the others being Lawtey and Waldo. Therein lies the reason for today’s priority coverage. Flash back to 1994. We were coming back from the mother-in-law’s funeral in Philadelphia. Having battled I-95 fast traffic for a thousand miles, we decided to take a slower, more relaxed route from Jacksonville. We cruised an uncrowded U.S. 301, and were doing 55 mph on speed control when we saw a red light in the distance. We tapped the brake and cruised to the light, where a cop with radar hit us with a ticket. The speed limit had dropped dramatically in a short distance. Classic speed trap. The wife complained, playing for sympathy that we had just come from her mother’s funeral. The cop did not care. Speed trappers never do. Having gone out of our way to choose a slower, safer ride, we were instead victimized.
We wrote about Lawtey, calling the police state there a form of organized crime that should be illegal. We contacted Attorney General Bob Butterworth’s office and, probably because we were writing about it, were treated with respect. A spokesman said the state knew about these towns and their deplorable speed traps, and would like to do something about them. That was 20 years ago and despite considerable national publicity, they still exist. Although, Hampton’s appears doomed.
The 1994 incident led to complications. We protested the ticket and wound up with a suspended license, which we did not know until after the fact. We called Lawtey one day and a clerk in the police station (about the size of a phone booth) had to get off the call because of an altercation that we could hear over the phone. Somebody was shouting. Likely an irate driver threatening to kill someone. We understand. We did not keep records of everything involved in the incident. But we sure kept a grudge. Consider Hampton partial retribution. But it’s not enough. It’s not even close.
It was a crazy dream, as most dreams are. Jimmy Breslin was there and I had just read something he had written. I told him I did not understand a word of it, but I had to do some work of my own. I awoke. It was 4:30 a.m. The work I had to do was now obvious. Tuesday is the day this blog goes out, and it was on my dreaming mind. I went to the computer and Googled Jimmy Breslin. No news there. Then, I went to Philly.com to see what the Philadelphia college basketball teams were up to. I read that Joe McGinniss had died, and then, I saw myself quoted. The Holy Spirit works in strange ways.
The quotes were from a 1983 piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. One of the quotes was a retread of something from a prior article for Philadelphia magazine, written when McGinniss hit the big time with The Selling of the President 1968. I had followed him around New York, including a radio interview and lunch with the highly quotable sports journalist, Howard Cosell.
McGinniss was barely out of college (Holy Cross). He had given up a great job as an Inquirer columnist, in which he slavishly but effectively imitated Jimmy Breslin's style, to follow Richard Nixon's presidential campaign. His best seller savaged Nixon's cynical campaign, which carefully protected the candidate from serious reporters. It also put Roger Ailes on the map. He was a key player for the Nixon election team, and McGinniss manipulated the hell out of Ailes with candid behind-the-scenes quotes, which Ailes never expected to see in print. Nixon won, however, and hired Ailes – a big step toward Ailes’ current position as chairman of Fox News. And Joe McGinniss, at 26, was famous.
Today’s Philadelphia Daily News story took quotes from something written when Joe McGinniss' other big book, Fatal Vision, was hitting bookstores. McGinniss had several disappointing books after his first success. One of them was embarrassing. It was filled with personal confessions and self-pity about a sad childhood with heavy drinking parents, the breakup of his marriage and guilt over leaving his family, etc. Another book, about Alaska, was a good read, but had the bad luck to appear shortly after John McPhee’s classic Coming into the Country on the same subject. Fatal Vision promised to restore McGinniss’s reputation. It was a behind-the-scenes report on the sensational trial of Army Capt. Jeffrey MacDonald, found guilty of murdering his pregnant wife and two children. McGinniss had been approached by MacDonald to write the book, and McGinniss pretended to sympathize with an officer who was unjustly accused. He was given extraordinary access to MacDonald’s personal records, and an insider’s view of the defense team, which was wildly over-confident. But he soon was convinced the man was guilty, and so he wrote. It was big-time stuff and a perfect subject for Philadelphia, where he had first won fame. That was the point of “rising from the ashes of fame.” Joe McGinniss was back.
I had been given a chance to read the pre-publication proofs in New York and had spent a day with McGinniss at his home in Massachusetts. He emphasized how personally painful the book had been to write. At first, I did not realize why, but I would learn soon enough. My story appeared to be well-received. The Inquirer’s editors liked it, and the reaction from other newspaper people was excellent. I sent a copy to McGinniss, confident he would appreciate the great publicity in an important market. The book got good reviews and was quickly on the best-seller list. But the controversy surrounding the book continued for years. It involved highly publicized legal action and resulted in some condemnation of McGinniss for journalistically unethical conduct. But that was down the road.
What happened quickly was a near-frantic phone call from an Inquirer editor that interrupted a Saturday night dinner party. The paper had received a furious, rambling letter from McGinniss. It was crudely fashioned, as if the work of a madman, or a drunk. He accused me of multiple factual errors, particularly with regard to his personal life, including the drinking problems of his parents. It sounded like the prelude to a lawsuit. The editor needed to see me as soon as possible. Early the next Monday morning I was at the newspaper office, bringing the books that McGinniss himself had written that said so much of the stuff that now seemed to upset him. The editor was much relieved, and added, “What’s wrong with this man?”
What was wrong with him was that I had recognized what made the book so “painful” for him. He had identified with the man who murdered his family. I had written:
“At the time of the killings, MacDonald and McGinniss were almost the same age, married for about the same time. Both had two daughters, who were very close in age. MacDonald’s wife was recently pregnant with, the autopsy revealed, a boy. February 1970, the month of the crime, was the time McGinniss’s wife became pregnant with his son. It was also the month that McGinniss realized that he must leave his wife and children.”
McGinniss never said that was what set him off, but he calmed down, probably when Philadelphia turned out to be the only market where his book was a No. 1 best-seller. A few weeks after publication, he did a book signing in Philadelphia. My aunt attended, identified herself and said how much she enjoyed my Inquirer article.
“Great,” Joe McGinniss said cheerfully. “Say hello to Bernie.”
Money changes everything. And the Holy Spirit works in strange ways.
A few years ago we did a profile for Gold
Coast magazine on Ted Bell, a Palm Beach writer of adventure novels. It was a second career for Bell, who had previously been president of the giant Leo Burnett advertising agency, and later vice chairman and Worldwide creative director at Young & Rubicam. He was doing well with his series of Alexander Hawke spy novels, and had made The New York Times best seller list. But it was apparent during our interview and research of his background that Ted Bell was more than a successful advertising executive with a flair for writing.
Coast magazine on Ted Bell, a Palm Beach writer of adventure novels. It was a second career for Bell, who had previously been president of the giant Leo Burnett advertising agency, and later vice chairman and Worldwide creative director at Young & Rubicam. He was doing well with his series of Alexander Hawke spy novels, and had made The New York Times best seller list. But it was apparent during our interview and research of his background that Ted Bell was more than a successful advertising executive with a flair for writing.He had studied international matters in England, and had extensive experience in foreign affairs, serving on various U.S. defense committees and as an advisor to the U.S. State Department. One of his books dealt with the rise of the “new Russia” and the return of the KGB.
In the course of our conversation, he said much of interest, including the fact that he was a great F. Scott Fitzgerald fan. He had even visited Fitzgerald's childhood home in St. Paul, Minn. He said whenever he wanted to relax he would read something by Fitzgerald. It did not matter what. Our kind of guy.
He also cited his background as a source for some of his fiction. All those European and U.S. government contacts gave him a rare perception into the geopolitical world. It occurred to us at the time that he likely had CIA contacts, knowingly or unknowingly, and may well have been a source for the agency. We did not mention that hunch in the piece, but we did mention a startling observation he made about Russia. He said his sources seemed certain that Russia would soon attempt to rebuild its former Soviet Union, dominating the countries adjacent to it in eastern Europe. He said the first target would be Estonia.
We say startling, because at the time it appeared the Cold War was history, and that the satellite nations once controlled by Russia had taken a decided lean toward western democracy. The new power man, Vladimir Putin, was viewed with suspicion, because of his KGB background and indications that he did not tolerate dissent. But nobody thought he would go back to the days when Russia cracked down brutally on Hungary in the 1950s. Nobody but Ted Bell.
It turns out he had the right information, just the wrong country.
