HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Edward Price Bell reminisces about local journalists
Rob Robbins
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Edward Price Bell reminisces about local journalists
Mike McCormick Special to the Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE — Terre Haute has
been a haven for outstanding journalists but few, if any, attained the
prominence of Edward Price Bell.
A native of Parke County, Bell launched
his newspaper career in 1882, at age 13, with the Terre Haute Evening Gazette,
owned and published by brothers William Creighton Ball and Spencer Fairfax
Ball.
Bell was forever indebted to managing editor Spencer Ball, who
overlooked his obvious youth, inexperience and untamed hair. He even taught Bell
how to spell.
No one could have predicted that Bell would become the
first journalist ever nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Bell’s
behind-the-scenes influence on heads of state resulted in the fruitful 1930
London Naval Armaments summit involving Japanese Foreign Minister Baron Kujuro
Shidehara, President Herbert Hoover and British Prime Minister Ramsay
MacDonald.
In earlier columns, we have reviewed Bell’s career,
particularly his long service as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily
News (1900-1932) where he was known as the “best American newspaperman London
has ever had.”
Besides working for the Chicago Daily News and the Dailey
Gazette, Bell was a reporter and writer for the Indianapolis Democrat, St. Louis
Globe-Democrat. Raccoon Valley Independent, The Rosedale Bee, Terre Haute Daily
News, Evansville Standard, Terre Haute Express, Chicago Recorder, The Literary
Digest, Liberty Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor and the New York
Times.
He also wrote books, including “Creed of the Klansman” (1925),
“Europe’s Economic Sunrise” (1927) and “World Chancelleries” (1929), and
interviewed Adolph Hitler.
When in the U.S., Bell visited Terre Haute
frequently. Terre Haute surgeon William E. “Will” Bell, his older brother, built
and maintained Bell Apartments at 621 Poplar St.
During an peace mission
to China in 1938, he contracted beriberi. Though thereafter chiefly confined to
Merrywood — his estate in Pass Christian, Miss. — he became the political editor
for Terre Haute’s Saturday Spectator on Nov. 16, 1940.
He died Sept. 12,
1943 and was survived by his wife, the former Mary Alice Mills, and three
children: Edward Price Bell, Jr., John Price Bell and Alice Bell
Prindiville.
Bell’s long association with Terre Haute newspapers placed
him in a unique position to reflect upon the accomplishments of local
“journalists of vigor, principle and distinction.” In his partially-published
autobiography and Saturday Spectator columns, he offers distinctive
insight.
As might be expected, Spencer F. Ball earned a special
niche:
“Some great journalists I have known in my day, foreign and
American. But I have never known one who was greater in all essentials of the
profession than Spencer Ball of Terre Haute.
“All I know of writing,
virtually of spelling, he taught me. He labored with me over my wretched copy at
night. But he taught me far higher and better things than how to be a passably
good reporter and how to spell the simplest words of our language. He taught me
the ethics of journalism.
“Spencer Ball I saw for the first time in his
counting room of the Gazette, the evening paper which he and his brother William
made a notable organ of news and opinion not only in Terre Haute but throughout
Indiana. The Gazette office was in a two story brick building on the west side
of Fifth St. near Ohio.”
At 13 years old, Bell purchased his first
tailor-made suit for the interview at the Gazette and he placed “a showy
bouquet” in the left lapel of his coat. Though barely a teenager, he felt as if
he was “a citizen of the world.” After all, he had been to Zimmerman’s Drug
Store at 13th and Wabash and toured its aisles.
Despite the outward
adornments, he could not fool Ball, who smiled, realizing all the time that Bell
was “from Raccoon.” He gave Bell a job anyway.
Bell then identified other
significant Terre Haute journalists from memory.
George Allen “was the
editorial soul of the Terre Haute Express,” succeeding his father, Charles Henry
Allen. “George was a charming man, and a fine journalist, handsome,
large-minded, devoted to his profession, unafraid. Not only his associates but
the city mourned when he died” (in 1901).
Allen’s chief editorial writer,
Charles C. Oakey, was “brilliant and humorous. His managing editor, Bill
Fishback, sour, sarcastic and capable.”
A young reporter with the Terre
Haute Gazette, Douglas Smith — founding editor of the Terre Haute Daily News —
was the “most picturesque … Terre Haute journalist of my day. . . brown-haired,
brown mustached, dark-eyed, angular-faced, muscular, gifted (and)
lovable.”
Bell helped Smith launch the Daily News in June 1880. Smith
then became managing editor of the Evansville Standard and Bell became his city
editor. “For brains and decency in journalism,” Bell wrote, “Smith died long
years too early.”
“Among the really talented writers Frank Parks stood
high,” Bell wrote in April 1942. “He was, and is today, a natural writer. His
nose for the news was as keen as that of anyone who ever trod a reporter’s beat,
and his writings always bore some touch of his own emotion … I salute a great
reporter.” Parks served many years as city controller.
“The joy of my
life,” Bell wrote, “in Terre Haute newspaper work was a weather-beaten man from
Clinton named Mont Casey. Mont’s other name was wit. I doubt if he ever wrote a
dull line in his life.
“You may, or may not, know what police court is
like, especially on Monday morning. I can tell you that, to most eyes, it is a
very drab proposition. To Mont Casey’s eyes it is different. His wit made it
different. As editor of the Vermillion Democrat, he turned pathos into fun. He
made the drab scene sparkle like a racing brook in spring!”
Bell also
gave positive marks to other colleagues from more distant points. He referred to
Charley Reeves as “a nifty city editor;” Herby Jones was a “forceful, pushful,
hard-as-nails reporter;” Shorty Goodridge was a “brilliant drama critic and
all-round newspaper man;” and Curt Shattuck was “half printer, half reporter,
master of crude drolleries, a humorist on his deathbed.”
~Catherine Pulsifer~