JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Having no interest in the National Basketball Association, I tried to avoid reading anything about the LeBron James sweepstakes, which culminated last week with the superstar leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers and signing with the  Miami Heat.

The most memorable part of the whole thing for me will be the brilliant front page that editors of the Cleveland Plain Dealer came up with to mark the occasion.

Here it is: 

That’s what greeted the readers of The Plain Dealer (weekday circulation, 268,000) when they opened their papers last Friday morning.

Besides the telling photo, the page consisted of one word in bold print and then a small text block, which you can’t make out here, pointing to James’ finger. The words are: “7 years in Cleveland. No rings.”

In a Poynter Online piece, writer Charles Apple described the front page as “the ultimate salute to the man to whom Cleveland had poured out its collective heart, only to be left hanging.”

If you want to read more about the creative process that led to this one-in-a million front page, you can read Apple’s piece here.

Bravo, Plain Dealer!

Last week, My Ol’ Army Buddy, Corporal Rikard Arthur wrote about his days, many years ago, throwing the Westport Reporter in Midtown neighborhoods.

Now he’s back with another tale from the same era, and it, too, has its roots in his newspaper experience.

Here’s his story….

The Reporter was a source of quite a few friendships during the two or three years that I threw the little paper. When they picked pairs of boys for each route, you rarely worked week-to-week with the same person. There were older guys who threw the paper, and you would see them at school quite often. Eighth graders and freshmen like me rarely mingled with guys above us. So by throwing a three- or four-hour route with a guy, you would often create a rudimentary situation that resembled friendship, even if they didn’t have much use for us guys in the lower ranks. Some of those friendships would later prove to be very valuable.

Westport High had a twice-a-month dance – called Tiger Den (since we were the Westport Tigers, of course) – which was held at the school in the girls’ gym. I rarely missed that event.  Eighth graders and freshmen must have looked like little kids hanging around in that gym with juniors, seniors, and the like. But that didn’t deter me in the least. The gym would just overwhelm you with the aroma of dime-store cologne and bubble bath, and there was simply an electric atmosphere that permeated every square inch of the huge room.

This was a place where you wore your H.I.S. Blades, which were the super narrow slacks with no belt loops, and the pockets were hidden horizontally along the waistband. Pair those up with a candy-stripe, oxford, button-down shirt (ironed and spray starched to total perfection) an inch-wide black tie with fake pearl tie tack (the tie tack absolutely had to have the little chain that hooked into the buttonhole behind it), and your best pointy-toe Flagg Bros. shoes, and you were ready to hit the big time.

Splash on some English Leather, Canoe, Jaguar, or Hai Karate to slay the babes, and carefully tuck away the fresh roll of peppermint Certs for up-close insurance. Put the unbreakable ACE comb in the back pocket and slide on that gold and onyx signet ring like every other guy on earth had. No gum allowed at Tiger Den, and no taps on shoes…gotta protect that nice oak floor in the gym.

There was a Tiger Den Committee, which I later joined, that decorated the gym with copious amounts of crepe paper streamers (blue and gold) and many of the Tiger Den events were themed such as Homecoming, Dream Girl, King and Queen of Hearts, etc. My favorite was Sadie Hawkins Tiger Den, a once-a-year event where the girls asked the boys to dance and sometimes even asked boys to take them to the dance. At this event, the “brutal truth” really became evident.  You might be asked to dance by a girl you never dreamed even knew you existed…wow!  Also, if some girl that you thought might have an interest didn’t ask for a dance or two, you might as well cross her off your hopeful list.

At all Tiger Den events, a disc jockey – usually a parent – played 45 rpm, Top 40 records on a stone-age rollaround setup probably produced in shop class. About every fourth or fifth record was a slow song.  I can still conjure up the tunes of  “Theme from a Summer Place,” “April Love,” “Earth Angel” and “Oh, Donna.” Critical strategy came into play here, because you needed to get into position one song early to ask the girl you wanted to slow dance with, or miss out when some guy who was nearer beat you to the punch…bummer. I perfected this move by the second or third Tiger Den I attended and never shared the secret of the song timing, and it rarely varied.

Anyway, somewhere along the way at one of the Tiger Dens, I got crosswise with a member of the very small hoodlum element that, sadly, populated a very small part of the school. A few words were exchanged and he informed me that we would be seeing each other after the dance outside. This guy was pretty well known as a bully, and his friends were all there egging him on, as if he needed any encouragement.

Luckily for me, I had thrown the Reporter several times with a guy named Joey and had always deferred to him on the paper routes and had bought him a few Cokes along the way. He was a good paper thrower and we always finished very early regardless of what route we were given because we worked well as a team and really pushed it along. When I threw routes with him, it raised my performance to much higher levels of speed because I wanted to keep up.

Joey had the “hair” and the dark mood; he was the complete thug package, including sleepy eyes that were truly scary. He lit up a cigarette at any opportunity and carried a hair brush in his back pocket.  I found out later what a horrid life he was living with the deadly combination of an alcoholic mom and dad and every other disadvantage imaginable. Although he was just a sophomore, I could see that he had tons of street sense.

So Tiger Den concludes, they push the crowd out the door, and I’m face-to-face with the guy from the dance who thinks he needs to boost his creds by going after me. I’m trying to concoct some defense or strategy to minimize my injuries that are most certainly going to be administered by this punk, when, with impeccable timing, Joey slides right in there after apparently reading the situation from afar. I’ll never forget the punk’s menacing demeanor fading when this game-changing event took place.

It was almost like something you might see in a movie. The punk immediately gets real friendly and turns into a teddy bear in the presence of Joey. He forgot all about mixing it up with me and concentrates intensely on verbally massaging Joey, who was obviously way above him in the thug pecking order. Joey slipped me the “get-out-of-here” look with those sleepy eyes, and I didn’t need a second clue. I was gone in a flash, and escaped certain death!

We threw the Reporter several times after that, but neither of us ever mentioned the Tiger Den incident. I’m sure that to him, it was just business as usual. Joey quit school on the first possible day that he could sign himself out, and I later heard that he caught a good job with KCPL or the Water Department, or some utility. I always hoped that he did well, and I’ll never forget how a fellow paper thrower saved my ass that night at Tiger Den.

Man, buddy, can I ramble on, or what???

I read with pleasure and pride last week that Rick Armstrong, who had held a variety of leadership positions with the Kansas City, Kan., police department had been named police chief at age 50.  

To many area residents, the name probably won’t mean anything, but he is well known in law enforcement circles, and he served patiently and steadfastly while keeping an eye on the top spot.  

I first met Armstrong in the mid-1990s, not long after I took over as editor in The Star’s Kansas City, Kan., bureau. Our office was in the Security Bank building at Seventh and Minnesota, a block away from police headquarters, which then was in the basement of City Hall, on Seventh Street. (Police headquarters later moved to the old BPU building on the northwest corner of Seventh and Minnesota.)  

At the time, Armstrong was a captain, working closely with then-chief James Swofford, whom I rarely dealt with. It was one of those deals where, if you had questions, Armstrong was the guy to go to.  

Rick Armstrong

Another reason I got to know Armstrong is that his wife, Allison Armstrong, did some freelance work for the bureau, writing feature stories. 

I always liked Armstrong because he was thoroughly professional, straight up and didn’t seem like he wasn’t trying to hide anything. He was in his late 30s at the time and wore a serious expression. I got the impression even then that I was talking to the future chief.  

One case in particular cemented my impression of Armstrong as an officer who cared and wanted to do the right thing. It was the Pamela Butler case – the awful, almost unspeakable case of the totally innocent 10-year-old who was abducted on Oct. 12, 1999, by 24-year-old Keith D. Nelson while roller skating near her Armourdale home. Before racing away, Nelson taunted friends and relatives of Butler by shouting out the window of his truck, “You’ll never see her alive again.”   

Nelson drove Pamela to a field in Grain Valley, where he raped her and killed her by strangling her with speaker wire. Three days later, police fished Nelson out of the Kansas River, alive, near the 12th Street Bridge.  

He later pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murder in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., and was sentenced to death. He remains on death row in federal custody.  

There were several maddening aspects to the case: First, a man named Paul Wilt, who was close by the abduction scene, pursued Nelson along the streets of southern Kansas City, Kan., in his own vehicle but lost track of him near Rosedale Park. Second, Wilt called police with the truck’s license number — and presumably its location at that point — but KCK police didn’t apprehend him. And, finally, it took KCK police about 20 minutes to call KCMO police to tell them to be on the lookout for a white Ford F-250 pickup.   

A month after the murder, I wrote a column suggesting that the KCK police department had not been on its toes that night and that faster action and smarter decisions could have averted the rape and murder.   

In an interview in his office, Armstrong fielded all my questions and provided me with a lot of details about the department’s response, including that dispatchers had notified the Roeland Park Police Department at 5:54 p.m., about 10 minutes after the abduction, and that it had begun calling Missouri law enforcement agencies at 6:08 p.m.  

Unfortunately, KCMO did not get notified until sometime between 6:30 and 7, by which time Nelson probably had been in an out of Kansas City on Interstate 70.  

Armstrong did not argue that Kansas City should not have been contacted sooner, but he took some of the wind out of my second-guessing by saying that “you always have to look at what (information) is available at the time.”  

And what was available at the time, he said, was ambiguous. “The truck was lost in southern Kansas City, Kan., ” he said. From there, he added, Nelson could have stayed in Wyandotte County or gone into Jackson County or Johnson County in a matter of minutes.  

What struck me most about Armstrong that day, however, was his heartfelt regret that Nelson got away. His attitude wasn’t, “Those are the facts, let’s close the book on it.” He felt deep remorse. He said that many times he had replayed the events of that evening in his mind, working out various scenarios where Nelson would have been apprehended.   

In one of those scenarios, Armstrong envisioned himself pursuing Nelson at high speeds, never letting the truck out of his sight. “The only thing that would have stopped me would have been if I’d wrecked,” he said.  

***  

Congratulations, chief, I believe you will be very good for Kansas City, Kan.

Maybe you saw a comment on the home page yesterday from my friend Gus Buttice, a St. Louis resident, about an Associated Press story he read in the St. Louis-Post Dispatch.

The story, Gus said, essentially was about how the Kansas City suburbs were growing and how Kansas City seemed to be turning into a giant suburb.

I was able to track down that story, and while it’s interesting, it’s a bit misleading. It’s true that Kansas City, like many metropolitan areas, is becoming more and more suburban, but, fortunately, the city itself continues to grow.

Last week, Yael Abouhalkah of The Star’s editorial board wrote a column in which he laid out the population trends for our area. While some suburban cities, such as Shawnee, enjoyed the sharpest growth rates between July 1, 2000, and July 1, 2009, Kansas City’s numbers were impressive. According to the Census bureau, the city’s population went from 441,612 residents in 2000 to 482,299 last year — a 9.2 percent increase.

I would love to see us hit 500,000 in the 2010 Census, but that’s probably not realistic. However, I think the recession and its aftermath are prompting some people considering a move to think twice about moving farther out. If Kansas City can figure out a way to reduce its expenses — such as bloated pensions to retirees — and put more money toward improved city services, our future would be quite promising.

Oh, and by the way, a key element of the AP story was that some Johnson County folks are planning — well, maybe talking about — a “National Museum of Suburban History.” They contend that with more than 50 percent of the country living in places like Shawnee, “it’s past time to take the suburbs seriously.”

Perfect. The National Museum of Suburban History right here in suburban Kansas City. I wonder how big of a convention and visitors draw that would be. Do you think it a couple of caravans from Liberty and Lone Jack would hazard the westward journey?

*****

Like most journalists, current and former, I love a good quote. Here’s one I think you’ll enjoy.

In Sunday’s New York Times, reporter Jeff Sommer wrote about a stock market forecaster named Robert Prechter, who said he is convinced that “we have entered a market decline of staggering proportions — perhaps the biggest of the last 300 years.”

His advice to individual investors is move completely out of the market and hold cash and cash equivalents, like Treasury bills, for years to come.

To balance out the story, Sommer interviewed another market analyst, a man named Ralph Acampora, who has more than 40 years experience in the market. When Sommer asked Acampora if he agreed with Prechter’s long-term theory, Acampora said he did not and added: 

“I don’t want to agree with him, because if he’s right, we’ve basically got to go to the mountains with a gun and some soup cans, because it’s all over.”

I know I don’t have a corner on the market of fascinating stories about newspaper experiences. But I was surprised to hear recently from My Ol’ Army Buddy – Corporal Rikard L. Arthur (retd.) — whom I’ve known for 40 years but never realized had the printer’s ink seeped in his hands.

Before we begin his story, let me put Cpl. Arthur in context for you. He grew up in Midtown – lived with his family off Knickerbocker Place — and attended Westport High. He later graduated from Friends University. He has sold cars and motorcycles, run a baseball card/comic book shop and now works for the state of Missouri, helping military veterans. He lives in Lee’s Summit.

Cpl. Arthur and I met in the Army Reserve, in about 1970. We were “Weekend Warriors” in a petroleum supply unit in Kansas City, Kan., and our mandatory two-week “summer camps” took us to such exotic places as Fort Lee, Virginia, and Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.
  
But, like I say, Cpl. Arthur has deep Midtown roots, which led to his entry into the newspaper business. And with that, Cpl. Arthur’s story begins…

“My one and only foray into the newspaper biz was with a publication called the Westport Reporter. It was the only job a sub-16-year-old kid could get back in the day. The paper, which had its offices at 39th and Walnut, was basically an advertising rag for local merchants and apartment-rental postings, but did carry a bit of news and a photo or two in every issue.

“We threw the paper on Thursday, after school. When Westport High dismissed, the first 20 guys who ran the two blocks to the Reporter office were “hired” to throw the paper that day. I always made that group. During the summer vacations, we just showed up about a half hour early to ensure employment, normally travelling to the paper office by Schwinn.

“We carried those big shoulder bags and walked every step of the route with a giant wad of red rubber bands in our cheeks like Nellie Fox with his chaw. At each residence, you rolled the paper, banded it and tossed it within a few feet of the front door.  For lengthy shots in big yards, we cheated by rolling two papers together for the weight needed to make the long throw. Throwing two papers to a single residence was a serious violation of policy and cause for instant dismissal, but we were rule breakers, of course.

“The routes were covered by teams of two paper boys, and to get the due respect of your fellow route man, you needed the occasional “direct hit” sound of a double-rolled paper hitting squarely – and loudly — on the shiny aluminum panel at the base of somebody’s front storm door, which usually carried the family’s last name initial. I’m sure you remember those doors. Everybody had ’em.

“It was a very rewarding sound, and I’m sure it irritated anyone who happened to be home. The noise was about twice as loud if the door behind the storm door was open, so we looked for that situation at all times, keeping a nice double roller right in the front of the bag for immediate use. The double roller was also there for any dog who might challenge, and I smacked more than one right on the nose with a Westport Reporter, which changes their mind in a big hurry. This was in the days long before anyone knew about Mace or protective chemical sprays.

“It took us about three hours to deliver the paper, which was 12-to-20 pages, depending on advertising. We covered the area from 31st Street down to the Plaza, from Troost on the east to a couple blocks past State Line (Adams, Eaton, and I forget the rest). After finishing, we got as little as $2.50 or as much as $4, depending on the length of the route we had thrown.

“Don’t forget, by today’s standards that pay scale equated to roughly 10 to 16 gallons of gas, or about $25 to $40 dollars! In the early 60s, a young man could do a lot of things with that kind of money. A hamburger, fries and thick malt at Joe’s at 39th & Wyandotte (right on my way home) didn’t total a buck and would provide a welcome treat and recovery from the labor just performed. Next stop would usually be Crown Drug or Parkview Drug for a couple comic books (Army at War or Fighting Forces) and perhaps the current issue of MAD, and then back home with my reading materials.

“While I have you reading this ramble, I’ll tell you about the big deal that happened with the Westport Reporter at the end of the school year in 1962, I think. Some of the “chosen” paper throwers (I guess I was one) were secretly told by the staff that “something big” was going to happen right after the last week of school, and to be available if the call came. Well, that’s the summer that the Landing Shopping Center opened at 63rd and Troost, and the paper produced a 15-page special edition, full of coupons and merchant news to promote the grand opening of this major shopping venue.

“The Reporter was contracted to deliver the special paper all over KC. This involved a full week of work for us the first week of summer vacation. We threw the special landing edition more than eight hours a day Monday through Wednesday, the Westport Reporter and the Landing special together on Thursday, and finished up delivering the Landing special on Friday.

“I got sixty-five bucks on Friday and thought I should have a police escort home with that kind of money!  Most of that loot lasted all the way through the summer as my “stash money” for fireworks (which were outlawed in KC, and we rode 10 miles each way to Merriam, Kan., on bicycles to smuggle them back) and other things of great importance, like 45 rpm records and swimming at Fairyland.

“It was truly a dream come true, financially. I don’t think I even told my Mom and Dad how much they had paid me because it was so much, and I didn’t want word to get out. By my standard of $2.50 per gallon gas, that was equal in today’s money to about 260 gallons of gas, or $650 dollars!!!!

“How about those apples, buddy?”