It’s Best to Know a Little About Everything
“Journalists have to be prepared to write about anything. I mean anything,” my editor at the Hunterdon County Democrat sternly told his 22-year-old rookie many years ago. “That means you have to know something about everything.”
“Except football and physics,” I whispered under my breath.
And which two assignments in my early career won international attention?
My articles about football and physics, of course.
In the first hour of my first day as media liaison/associate director of communications/publications at Princeton University, Princeton Physicist Val Fitch won the Nobel Prize for Physics. I had exactly 40 minutes to master the Big Bang Theory sufficiently so I could explain the professor’s contributions to media outlets around the world.
Several years later, I arranged to interview Tampa Bay Buccaneers Coach Sam Wyche about his team’s community service work: installing air conditioners in the homes of impoverished seniors. But in the early morning hours before our interview, Bucs owner Hugh Culverhouse died and the nation’s press was clamoring to know what would happen to the organization. “I already have one reporter coming today. She can ask the questions and tell the other reporters my answers,” Wyche said. The only thing I knew about football was how to recognize a touchdown.
Needless to say, I learned Harry Anderson’s valuable lesson the hard way. Since then, I’ve had literary challenges that have ranged through just about every academic and discipline, from investigations of the Mafia in New Jersey’s garbage industry to historic preservation, DNA discoveries, court cases, and the care and feeding of ferrets. My most recent published books are equally varied.
A Family’s Quest: From the Outside Looking In explores a family’s WWII secrets. Eva Tramontin Bailey, daughter of two East German post-war immigrants, had heard whispers about her father avoiding the Nazi draft by enlisting in the Italian army while her mother remained in a tiny village the Russians and American POWs later invaded. Computer technology and Eva’s knowledge of German helped us translate hundreds of pages of military documents relating to Italy’s army organization, Russia’s invasion of East Germany, the Nazi draft process, and POW records.
Added to the drama was her father’s disappearance for four years after Mussolini surrendered; his friendship with a renowned German filmmaker and Germany’s leading actress; a grandmother’s suicide; the Communist takeover of East Berlin; and Eva’s reconnection with German family members. We pored over maps and letters, researched the ebb and flow of armies, interviewed relatives, and discovered horrifying accounts of the Russians’ treatment of German women. The result was a gut-wrenching drama of one family’s WWII ordeals—it reads like a novel.
REACH: Reach Out. Reach Up. Reach Back. is “Meta-Franchisor” John Rotche’s story, interwoven with advice about business and life from his three legendary mentors: University of Michigan Football Coach Bo Schembechler, Domino’s Pizza Founder Tom Monaghan, and Molly Maids/Mr. Handyman franchisor David McKinnon. I spent hundreds of hours taking notes as John recounted tales from a most adventurous life. REACH offers the kind of business advice/life coaching I wish I’d had when I started my career.
Now I’m in the midst of helping a friend write his tale of two murders and one redemption, as seen through the eyes of all those involved. I’m now dividing time between A Tragedy in 360 Degrees, numerous journalism assignments, and my own projects, which take me to distant times and battlefields.
My epistolary novel, Dear Ginny, is on an agent’s desk. Based on more than 130 letters, telegrams, and news articles sent to my college-age aunt during World War II, I’ve met GIs writing on gunstocks in the African desert, on snowy mountaintops in Italy, on Normandy beaches, battleships, and malaria-infested Pacific islands. I discovered a doomed love affair I never knew about, and visited the American home front in a Maine seaport.
My half-written YA novel is based on the extraordinary WWI experiences of a Chelsea, MI soldier in the Red Arrow Division; I was fortunate enough to “meet” him through his journals, a scratchy tape recording, and his daughter’s memories.
And, last but not least, I’ve based my Middle Reader tale on my mother’s wartime experiences in Portland, ME. Beyond the Reach allows me to jump into a child’s shoes and watch WWII unfold before her eyes.
Yes, Harry Anderson was right: a journalist/writer does need to know a little about everything. After investigating the complexity of corporate franchise systems and the Italy army organization during WWII, I am now mastering the care and maintenance of Enfield rifles, the transportation system in WWII-era America, trench warfare in France, the care and feeding of America’s Doughboys, and the induction processes for two world wars. For starters.
Athletes talk about the adrenalin rush they feel during a great game. Writers also work for that same surge of elation when we venture into new frontiers and compose a winning sentence…paragraph…chapter…book.
Thank you, Harry Anderson.
