Lifeat9200rpms: How Harry Golden Jr. "shot his dog"

       
     This is another in an occasional series of entries made possible by my mechanical circulatory support system, an LVAD.  LVAD stands for left ventricular assist device.  My LVAD was perfected and manufactured to relieve symptoms of end stage congestive heart failure.  My thanks again to Thoratec Corp. for my HeartMate II.  I have owned mine, number 8358, since April 2, 2010.  So far, 10,000 HeartMate II's have been implanted.  

     As background, I worked at the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper beginning in 1963, first as a copy boy and later as an editorial assistant.  I was in college at the time and finished a degree in English literature in 1966.  My intention was to teach high school English.

     As graduation approached, I changed paths and decided I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.  Jim Hoge, the paper's editor said I had two choices:  get some experience on a smaller paper for several years or pursue a master's in journalism.  

      I chose the latter path and applied to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.  I began work on the degree in 1966 and with interruptions obtained an Master of Science in Journalism in 1968.  But half way through I launched as a general assignment reporter in June, 1967.  

     Among my first assignments was to attach myself to beat reporters around the city:  federal building, city hall, criminal courts, State of Illinois building and the like.  I landed first in the press room of City Hall, in the hay days of the first Mayor Daley, Richard J. Daley.

     The Hall was covered for The Sun-Times by Harry Golden Jr.  Golden came from a Detroit paper as the replacement for Frank Sullivan, whom Mayor Daley made into his press agent.  Golden was a colorful (meaning irreverent among other things), experienced reporter with a distinctive New York accent, and two closets full of sport coats.  

      He must have owned more than a hundred coats, ranging from standard Navy blazers to brightly colored numbers that you might see at the race track. He could dress in a different outfit every day for at least six months.  And, while he was small in stature, he strutted like he owned the place.

     From my perspective, Harry was a throwback to the Front Page days of rough and tumble Chicago style reporting of the 1920's.  He was fast, accurate, and always had a story that he held back to blow the competition out of the water.  "Always keep a story in your back pocket," he advised, "for a rainy day." 

     Harry eventually became the dean of the City Hall press room.  When he started, the Hall was covered by the City News Bureau, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Daily News, and Chicago American which was later changed to Chicago Today.   During Harry's tenure some of the faces changed and the Mayor remained the same until he died in 1977.

     I showed up in the Hall press room and listened to the reporters banter for an hour before the Mayor's press conference.  We attended the gathering.  I took notes and Harry asked questions. 

      We returned to the press room and Harry called the city desk to  alert the assistant city editor that he had a Daley story.  Harry used an old Underwood manual typewriter all the time I knew him.  He never transitioned to a computer.  He generally lit a Lucky Strike, inhaled deeply, made a couple of sarcastic comments and poised to write his story, usually the lead paragraph and an outline of the rest of the piece that he would dictate.  His typing style was animated to say the least.  He pounded the typewriter, hands held high, and used a finger or two from each hand.  He talked as he typed.  If it didn't sound right, he kept at it until it sounded right.

    Golden talked as he wrote, sounding out his words, emphasizing some and striking through others that did not have the snap he wanted.  Typically he wrapped one leg around the other and his typing style was two fingered, using his index fingers.  He squinted through a cloud of smoke as he typed.

       He told me that the lead paragraph had to have a teaser that hooked the reader into the story.  "Keep it short--2 1/2 lines--or no more than 20 words," he said more than once during my internship at the Hall.

     This day he finished his Lucky and lit another as he reached back over his shoulder to a lower desk drawer and drew out a brown paper bag containing a pint of whiskey, Jim Beam.  Still talking to himself, he uncapped the bottle and poured a good shot into his coffee cup.  

     Harry was not paying close attention when he returned the bottle to the drawer.  It slipped from his hand and you could hear the bottle breaking inside the brown bag as it hit the tile floor. It was a muffled but unmistakable sound.

     He knew immediately his predicament.  "Goddamn," he said, "shot my dog."

     Without missing a beat he pulled a couple of bills out of his pocket and sent me across the street to a liquor store to replenish his "dog."

      Harry and the other regulars did a story, actually it was a continuing series, on Mayor Daley giving the city's significant insurance business to an Evanston insurance firm that just happened to employ his sons, Bill and the future mayor, Richard M. Daley.  "What's a man to do if he can't help his family?" the Mayor told reporters.

      At one point, in exasperation, the Mayor said that he would make his explanation at "the appropriate time."   

     "Meanwhile, if you don't like it, you can kiss the mistletoe hanging beneath my coat tails,"  his honor said.

     Golden relentlessly pressed the Mayor every chance he got to explain how the millions of dollars in city business went to Heil and Heil in Evanston.   No explanation was ever made.

     After Mayor Daley died of a heart attack, his body was laid out in an open casket in the area of the ground floor of the combined City Hall and Cook County Building.  Tens of thousands of Chicagoans passed by to pay their last respects to Daley.

     The press room crew of reporters came as a group.  My friend, Bob Davis, a Tribune reporter recounted Harry's next steps. Harry, who was Jewish, approached the casket, he knelt, made the sign of the cross and in a stage whisper said, "Is it time Mr. Mayor?  Is it time now?"