You learn from your friends.
Sometimes in ways neither of you particularly intended.
And often don’t realize what you have learned until much later.
From The (Toledo) Blade’s longtime executive editor Kurt Franck, who died last week, I learned enthusiasm.
He was, first, a newsman – an old- fashioned newspaperman who loved the story and chasing the story, though he knew as well as anyone that the form and delivery system needed to be reinvented.
He was, last, and most deeply, a family man.
Kurt was justly proud of his part in “Tiger Force,” The Blade’s Pulitzer Prize winning expose of atrocities committed against civilians during the Vietnam War. But he really loved breaking news and local news. These he believed in and taught me about, by and with enthusiasm.
Breaking news and local news are the bread and butter of newspapers, just as local editorials are the power and special responsibility of newspapers. To serve the community you have to be rooted in it.
Kurt was rooted.
He put great stock in the straight, no chaser recording of the event itself. The story. Not “analysis.” A good story can stand without help. Let the reader decide what it means.
He disliked overwriting; flaccid, directionless writing; dead puppies in the snow writing.
But he was a great fan and supporter of good writing. All good editors and publishers are, above all, fans – enthusiasts. And they tell colleagues when they think the work is fine. Kurt would say: “I salute you.”
High praise that was.
He cast a cold, irreverent eye on pretension and blather. But he never lost his almost schoolboy enthusiasm for a good story, well rendered.
The New York Times humorist Russell Baker once told of going to lunch with legendary columnist James Reston. Senators, Cabinet members, and presidential candidates chased after Reston. But that day, the day of his lunch date with Baker, James Reston was interested in a fire. Walking to the restaurant in Washington, D.C. the two men passed a firetruck. It made no impression on Baker. What the great James Reston wanted to know was, “where’s the fire?”
That’s how Kurt was. Even after he moved into the business side of the paper, and his mission became sustainability, his passion was the story – the tip, getting it fast, getting it right and breaking it first.
I don’t think Kurt regarded gossip as “the devil’s radio,” I think he saw it as potential news.
In the years we worked together we talked every day, sometimes several times a day. We didn’t speak of ideas, or “journalism,” in any high sense. It was, “what do you hear?” “what’s going on?”
And kids. We always talked about our kids. He was one of the few men I have known who asked me about my children and was actually interested in hearing about them, and my portrayals and worries. He was militantly devoted to his own clan – Kurt III, Sophia and Lynn – and protective of them, their home, their pets, and their privacy. That was his core, and what gave him the strength for battle.
His last battle was a hard one. Cancer has no conscience or remorse.
But he didn’t care. He and Lynn, he told all of us who asked, had decided “we will beat this,” and for many bouts, they did.
He wanted to keep working at his craft, ever the enthusiast – the young reporter covering NASA, the restless newsman who always wanted to know what was shaking.
And he did keep working. To the end.
In college and high school, he had been an exceptional, record-breaking swimmer. And his athletic nature never left him. He was competitive, loyal, and undaunted. And he could talk trash.
I should also note that he loved and served Toledo – he became a town father. That he was one of the funniest people I have ever met. And that he was one of the physically bravest.
We met at a Toledo Rotary session a few months ago and I got to tell him some of that. (Toledo, Ohio has one of the largest and most active Rotary Clubs in the world.) We walked together for a time after the event and sat for a moment, too. And I am grateful for that sunny afternoon.
He was in remission. Winning. But I suppose we were both old enough to know that all victories and all defeats, like all differences between friends and family, are temporary.
That was last September. In enthusiasm, he was undiminished. I watched him walk back to The Blade and thought, as I think now: Sail on, Kurt. I salute you.
You did Kurt proud. Well done.
Very nice tribute. Made me feel like I knew him.