Bloodless Coup

An Explanation For My Absence.

Charles Hauser; 1929 – 2005

Obituary

New York Times Story

(I haven’t blogged in over a month, and this post is in part an explanation, in part a memorial, and in part just an emotional release. I’ll apologize for the length (but I’m co-owner of this blog, so I’m allowed), and those who want can just skip it.)

In the normal course of events, children bury their parents. One would think, given the normality of this event, I might have been better prepared when it happened to me. I wasn’t. But who is?

My dad died on April 17, 2005. This was not expected, and it was sudden. He was, by all accounts, in very good health for a 76-year-old man. His cholesterol levels were below normal for his age; his blood pressure was (healthily) below normal; his weight was within five pounds of what it was twenty years ago (which, in turn, was within five pounds of what it was as a thirty-year-old man). He had no diseases or conditions. In short, there were no medical reasons for him to have died when he did.

Six days before he died, he gave a lecture at Davidson College (outside Charlotte, North Carolina). While he had supposedly retired some fifteen years before, he kept a fairly busy schedule. Since January, he had been teaching two classes at Davidson College. As part of the contract he had with them, he was required to give a campus-wide lecture on a subject of his choosing. A lifelong newspaperman, he spoke on “Media: Madness, Mergers and Money”. It was not a lecture that held up the modern newspaper, with its focus on revenue and the bottom line, in a good light. It speaks well of Davidson College that the president of the college came to the talk, as well as various faculty members and several students (including some who were not in his classes). I was very, very lucky to have decided at the last minute to drive down, to see the speech, spend the night and have some time with Dad. I almost didn’t go (bad time of the academic year), but will be everlastingly grateful that I did. Dad was not the most polished public speaker (the written word was his forte), and as I can attest, when one attempts to talk (or write) about subjects that one is passionate about, that attempt can sometimes produce prose that is less polished, less concise and less focused than when writing about subjects that are less dear to one’s heart. It was clear he was disappointed in his chosen profession – he felt the field had moved away from its public duty and role to hold a light up to those in power, and instead was more concerned with money. There was, he noted, less reporting and less emphasis on news than in other times, and this reflected badly on the profession. Hence, he explained, the declining readership of newspapers. His point was clear, but the words didn’t ring with the crisp, clear, emotional writing I knew he had done so many times before. I chalked it up to the aforementioned too-much-passion-in-the-subject explanation, and looked forward to asking him specific questions at a later date, when he had more distance. Relaxing after the speech, with a glass of wine in his hand at the apartment Davidson had given him for the semester, he seemed his old self.

Five days before he died, he played golf with his good friend Irwin Smallwood. Irwin and my dad were friends, beginning back when both worked together at the Daily Tar Heel (the student-run newspaper of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Both Irwin and my dad became heavily involved in the student newspaper, both turning to journalism as a profession. At the memorial service, and after, I heard several stories of my dad’s time-management skills at college: his grades were not good, as he was spending most time putting out the newspaper. Irwin was caught up in this circle as well (I won’t speak to Irwin’s time-management skills), and the two were fast and life-long friends. Where my dad went on to newspaper jobs outside of North Carolina, Irwin rose to run the sports section for the Greensboro (North Carolina) Observer. Irwin caught the golf bug (playing and writing), and turned my dad to it as well. I never caught the golf bug. I did golf with him at times, and he golfed like he lived: calmly, with focus and good humor. He tried to teach me, and never complained when my swings pushed balls on to other fairways or into water traps. He was never disappointed when I failed to take up the sport. I never saw him upset at a swing or a game. He just...enjoyed it (I’m incredulous: golf still bores me to tears).

Four days before he died, he taught his classes at Davidson. This was a calling he had taken to later in life, and seemed to enjoy more than the running of newspapers, though running newspapers is what he had done for his professional career. Both of these he loved less than writing, which remained his passion (see the extended entry for some recent columns I collected). He had taught a number of courses (writing, editing, ethics, journalism) in a fairly large number of places (University of Rhode Island, the Chautauqua Writer’s Center, Brown University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, others, and finally at Davidson College). He had clearly “taken” to teaching. He was tremendously ethical and passionately concerned that journalists be (first) good writers: teaching allowed him to pass both of those pillars of his professional life onto a next generation. I don’t think he came to teaching for those noble-sounding reasons: I think he came to it because he mostly enjoyed the interaction with bright, young students. They challenged him in the class, and he enjoyed the give and take, back and forth between the students and the teacher. This wasn’t a one-way process: he took from them as well. As he told the president of Davidson, who had come by my dad’s office to mention that several students had passed along that they were enjoying my dad’s classes (it’s a small school, this stuff actually happens), my dad replied that he learned something new from the students every day. He took to teaching like he took to everything he did: calmly, seriously, but with great enjoyment. I don’t think my dad did anything in his life that he didn’t enjoy (he claimed that paying his income taxes was a great personal honor, and he did the tax returns himself), and I believe he took to teaching (and the time it took out of the other parts of his life) with as much, or greater, enjoyment than anything else he had done. I think he was good at teaching, as he was good at writing and being a newspaperman (not so good at golf, however). While I think that every son “sees” his father in a good light, and wants to believe that his father is the best ever, there is supporting evidence in this case: half a dozen of dad’s Davidson students (he only had 30) drove the two-and-a-half hours to his memorial service on a week day. While we have received over 200 condolence cards, some of the most heartfelt are from those young students. This is not normal behavior for college students (likewise the editorial about Dad at the Davidson student newspaper – not available online), and my conclusion is that they liked and respected him enough to expend the effort for the trip and the sentiments. To the end, he excelled at whatever he did, and he excelled not just because he cared, passionately, about what he did, but because he had the ability to share that enthusiasm with students, reporters and writers of all stripes.

Three days before he died, he came home to his wife. Dad was commuting over to Davidson (two-and-a-half hour drive) on Monday nights, teaching, then back to Chapel Hill on Thursday night. Not a prohibitive commute, but fatiguing over twelve weeks. Mom and Dad had just moved into a new house, closer to Chapel Hill, and were still unpacking boxes, hanging pictures and moving things around. So, Dad was off teaching and Mom was at home working on the house. The two had met at Chapel Hill almost fifty years ago (they would have celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2006). He had come back from serving in the Army in the Korean War and was getting the last few credits for his Journalism degree, and Mom was finishing an English major. They were set up on a blind date (a newspaper reporter who liked to party and a sorority-house girl who liked to party; it doesn’t seem so odd). Both shared a background without a geographically stable home: dad’s family was career army, and mom’s was career college football – in both cases there was no hometown or permanent home. Each moved, on average, about every year. Chapel Hill was, for almost the first time, a place they had both lived for an extended period. In this way, when dad retired, they moved back to where they started. The intervening years had taken them to Greensboro (NC), Paris, London, Washington DC, Norfolk (VA), and finally Providence, Rhode Island, before retirement and moving back “home” to North Carolina. They were very different people, but it complimented their relationship very well. He was a steady provider; she was mercurial and spontaneous. She dragged them all about, but always knew he would blunt her excesses. He knew that she introduced him to places and events he never would otherwise have seen, and people he never otherwise would have met. They weathered the ups and downs of a half-century together, and to the end they could make each other laugh. No marriage is perfect, and I won’t claim it here. It did, however, work like it should: they were happier with each other. They loved each other. He enjoyed going home each night. This Thursday trip home from Davidson was no exception. However, this time when he walked through the door Dad went straight to bed. He told Mom he wasn’t feeling well, just a cold.

In the day before he died, and two days before he died, Dad stayed in bed. He had a fever, but no other symptoms. No cough, no pains, no runny nose. Just tired, with a fever. He didn’t eat much. He was reluctant to see a doctor; it’s just a cold, or the flu, he claimed. By the morning of the day he died, he was worse than ever, and Mom finally convinced him to go the emergency room. He protested, and argued, but gave in. He refused to go, however, without a shower first. Dad and Mom walked into the hospital together about 8 am. Even then, he was a newspaperman. On the way to the hospital, he asked mom to “be sure and get a paper, my column ran today.” His last column, for the Chapel Hill News, ran on Sunday, April 17, 2005. He died at 4:01pm, that day.

They still, a month later, don’t know what it was. The death certificate says “sepsis”: a full-body infection. They don’t know what sort of bacteria, where he picked it up, what it attacked, why their antibiotics didn’t work, why the respirator and dialysis machines didn’t keep him alive, or a host of other questions. They did an autopsy, but the results are still pending.

I had called down to talk to my parents on the day before dad died. I had no idea anything was going on. I talked to dad every weekend – curious about his teaching, mostly, but also just checking in. Mom said everything was fine, but dad had caught something. It didn’t sound serious. I called back the next morning just to check in, and got no answer. I figured he had recovered, and they had gone out to do something fun. Mom called around 1pm, from the hospital. Dad was on a respirator, but the doctors were hopeful (the respirator was just to let him concentrate his energy for fighting off the infection; the doctors thought he’d be off it in 24 hours). This was the first I’d heard that anything was wrong. I left messages for my sister everywhere I could, and my girlfriend and I were packed and out the door in under an hour. We arrived at the hospital at 9pm. Mom was alone in the entryway. He had died a few hours ago. I remember first feeling bad for Mom (she’d known him longest, and best, and the hole his death created would be felt largely by her), and then for my sister (she didn’t get there until late the next night; just unluckily far away). Mom had talked the hospital into leaving dad’s body in the chapel for me to see one last time. It seemed – and still seems – odd. I’m still not sure I wanted to see him there, like that. I was mostly just stunned (clichéd, but accurate). What do you say at this point? What are you supposed to feel? How are you supposed to act?

The day after – and days since – was somewhat of a blur. There were lots of people to call, Irwin Smallwood came down and immediately took on the difficult task of writing the obituary (side note: when Mom called Irwin to tell him dad had died, his first response was “Are you sure?”), a funeral home to line up (How do you find a good one? What is a good one? Should you care at times like this?), more phone calls, plans to make, classes to cancel, etc. The house was quiet the morning after, but became busy and full of people quickly (and stayed that way for most of a week). Family came in from all up and down the east coast.

The obituary ran in many newspapers two days after he died. I never knew you paid to run an obituary – I thought that newspapers ran them as a public service, to let people know who had died. Silly me, they make money out of obituaries, too. We ran the obit in all the papers he had worked at: Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Norfolk (VA), and Providence. On Irwin’s suggestion, we added Charlotte and Raleigh (the major cities in North Carolina): he had been inducted into the University of North Carolina’s Journalism Hall of Fame back in 2000, and Irwin thought there were enough people around the state who might want to know.

I didn’t really figure that his death was “news” – he was a good journalist, but not a Krauthamer, an Ivins or some such. I was clearly wrong. The Raleigh News & Observer (the major paper in North Carolina) put a reporter on the story; the Associated Press put together a story (based on the obit) that went out on the national wires (and was run by newspapers from Alabama to South Dakota); the Washington Post did their own little blurb, as did the LA Times. The New York Times wrote their own story (I remain somewhat stunned by this: the New York Times devoted a not trivial amount of space to this story. I guess he really was a pretty good journalist). The Providence Journal (where he spent most of his career) ran a story, an editorial, and a reporter my dad had mentored wrote a column. (Note: All the Providence Journal links are to pages to buy the whole article; I've copied them into the extended entry.)

I had always known he had done some good things as a journalist, but I really had no idea that he was something approaching a renowned figure. It’s still hard to believe.

While all the press was certainly welcome (who doesn’t want to hear good things said, publicly, about their dad?), it never really penetrated into Mom’s home. We had family around, and once they started to depart, there remained the unknown and daunting task of picking up the pieces. Life, at least for the rest of the world, goes on pretty much as it was. Dad was a remarkably well-organized man: he went so far as to prepare a binder for Mom, listing everything that needed to be done when he died, where it was located, who needed to be notified and whatever else (in one of the many unexplained events, the binder was found on top of his desk: did he get it out? When? Why?). However well organized, there remains the ongoing task for the remaining family of learning to do the things that he did for decades. The past month has seen a steep leaning curve; add to that the fact that the three of us are all strong-willed people who learn and decide in very different ways, and there is a recipe for family stress (on top of the still very raw wound that Dad’s death continues to be). We’re managing it pretty well. Check back with me in six months, and ask me again.

I’m not sure how grief works. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel or supposed to act. I have yet to fall apart, collapse completely, or “lose it” in any conventionally defined way. Should I? Am I obliged? Am I not grieving enough if I don’t? Does it mean I didn’t love him enough? I don’t really feel any better about his death, or less sad, than the week after he died. I haven’t had any sort of transcendent event or emotional release. Mostly it just sneaks up on me. I remember something I had planned to with dad, and realize that I’m not going to do that. I remember a question I wanted to discuss with him, and realize I can’t. I pull a bottle of wine that I had planned to open with him, and realize I won’t. I figure there are a relatively limited number of those “future memories”, and as I run out of those, I’ll get choked up less and less. Is this “healing”?

It’s been about a month now. Time for me to begin doing the things I was doing before he died; blogging is one of those things. I’m never going to go into journalism; I know this. I’m not going to attempt to follow in his footsteps. I will make no grand life-changing decisions, or grandiose rededicate-my-life pronouncements. He was, however, fiercely protective about the role of the press as watchdog over the people in power: that defined, for him, political journalism. This blog, in its own small way, like thousands of others around, fulfils some of those same purposes. I don’t know what my dad really thought about Bloodless Coup, beyond generally encouraging me. To my knowledge, he never wrote a comment. He did read it (I found it on the recent history in his web browser). It isn’t his journalism, however, it is journalism in its own way. Not conventionally defined, but it does its own share of raising hell (as dad declared the role of journalists to be at Davidson this past semester). For those, however, who want to appreciate a real journalist, click on any of the links above, and read about my dad. He learned his journalism in a different era, complete with a higher set of values that spoke of public service; his was the generation of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. He never achieved that level of publicity (though his newspaper did uncover financial ties between the Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and the mafia, and his US Supreme Court case is taught in journalism schools here and there), but that was unnecessary. It was the attitude, the calling, the morals that made him the reporter, editor, writer and father he was (he always had it: one of the earliest outings he and Mom went on was to a KKK rally in near Chapel Hill; he had her hold the flashlight on the license plates of the KKK member’s cars while he wrote down the numbers.)

It wasn’t that the profession made him honorable; it was that an honorable man choose the profession. The profession got the benefits of having him write, report and edit; given the extent of the coverage when he died, I have to believe (of course, I want to believe) that the profession recognized how good he really was at being a journalist. That was never really clear to me, until he was gone. I got the benefits of that same honorable, ethical, generous, and kind journalist as a father. He was pretty good at that, too.

Chuck Hauser was my dad; I’ll miss him.

I've collected the weblinks to several of the monthly columns that dad was doing for the local newspaper, the Chapel Hill News. The link to the last column he wrote is in the main entry. Here are a few more, listed in the order I liked them.

A Minor Medical Miracle (September 17, 2004)

The untold stories of Choo-Choo and Cooley (November 14, 2003)

A coach catches the bridal bouquet (February 13, 2004)

Message in a bottle: The welcome mat is not out (August 13, 2004)

'Big Time' equals bad news for the university (December 19, 2003)

Delayed graduation walk triggers exhilaration, nostalgia (May 14, 2004)

Carolina query: Which beach do you go to? (July 18, 2004)

Christmas in Paris and some shameful episodes at home (January 14, 2005)

You're located where? Your policy is what? (March 19, 2004)

Witch hunt in classrooms (April 16, 2004)

Reckless red-light runners (January 16, 2004)

Poking around Carolina's nooks and crannies (October 15, 2004)

I have also included the text of some of the Providence Journal links that are now paid links. This first is the editorial the Providence Journal ran on Sunday, April 24th:

Charles McCorkle Hauser, The Journal's executive editor from 1973 to 1989, was a journalist so devoted to his trade that he was willing to go to jail for it.

That was in the '80s, when he, backed by his publisher, the late Michael Metcalf, defied a federal judge's gag order and printed a story based on the illegal FBI bugging of mobster Raymond L.S. Patriarca. The Journal eventually won that case, which ended in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case was heavily cited in most obituaries of Chuck Hauser, almost to a fault, along with the obligatory reference to the Pulitzer Prize and six Pulitzer finalist positions won by The Journal during his tenure.

For Mr. Hauser's career was long, distinguished and varied. It started in the late '40s, at his college paper, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and included writing and editing jobs in North Carolina and Virginia; the general managership of The Virginia-Pilot, in Norfolk; and a stint as a foreign correspondent for United Press International in London and Paris. (His former boss in Paris once told us that Chuck Hauser was an indefatigable and very reliable reporter.)

Chuck also served time as an Army officer in the Korean War, in which he was wounded. He complained, in his low-key mordant way, about how little Americans knew about that war.

Later in life, he taught journalism, first at the University of Rhode Island, and then, after moving back to North Carolina, at UNC, Duke and Davidson College. Chuck was by all accounts a dedicated teacher, who conveyed his love of reporting and writing to students, and persuaded more than a few to devote their careers to it. (He told us some years ago that he had been working on a novel, some of it set in Rhode Island. We sure would like to read it.)

But to him and his colleagues and friends, the core of Chuck Hauser's career was the 16 years he spent running the news department at The Journal. (He briefly served as Journal general manager, but hated that business role, and could hardly wait to get back to devoting all his working hours to journalism -- even in as fractious and exasperating a place as a newsroom.)

Like his courage in pursuing tough stories, his success in nurturing writers was nationally known. The writers and editors he hired and trained now hold key journalistic positions across America. "He was a writer's editor," said Irwin Smallwood, a former deputy executive editor of The Daily News & Record, of Greensboro, N.C., who had been a college friend of Chuck's. "He knew the difference between editing and fiddling."

Chuck Hauser's shyness was sometimes taken as arrogance and coldness. But in different settings, he showed himself funny, companionable, and possessing a surprisingly wide array of interests. He was also modest. He knew many famous people, but never dropped a name; he had had many dramatic, even dangerous, moments, but it was almost impossible to drag the stories out of him. Indeed, one sometimes had the feeling that he had seen many things about which he could never speak.

Mr. Hauser always seemed about 20 years younger than his chronological age. His death last week, at 76, after a brief illness, was therefore a great shock -- and a big loss to journalism.

Finally, here is the column that Mark Patinkin wrote. Dad hired Mark as a reporter, then moved him over to writing columns. They had a very long and cordial professional relationship. This column also ran on Sunday, April 24.

Mark Patinkin: Chuck Hauser helped kick-start a columnist.

At first, I wasn't going to write about Chuck Hauser.

He died last week at age 76, and yes, he was the top editor at The Providence Journal for 16 years, but he left in 1988. That's a long time ago.

Then something occurred to me.

Have you ever tried asking yourself who, besides family, has had the greatest impact on your life?

If I had to pick two or three, one of them would be Chuck.

He wasn't my closest friend or colleague. He was the big boss, and I was among hundreds who reported to him.

But his decisions shaped my adult life.

I was 24 and a reporter at a small upstate New York paper when I applied to The Providence Journal. They rejected me, but I drove down and showed up anyway, managing to get a brief meeting with Chuck.

He offered me a job as copy editor, a key position, but I wanted to write, so I turned him down. I figured that ended my chances at The Providence Journal.

Two weeks later, The Journal called and told me Chuck had decided to give me a chance.

After a few years as a general reporter, a columnist's job opened up, and Chuck decided to give me another chance. At the time, it was four columns a week. I said yes, but panicked. Four seemed like a lot.

I told him I definitely wanted the job, but added, "I don't know. Four a week?"

Chuck shrugged. Well, he said, if I was able to do five, that would be fine, too.

To this day, I don't know if he was kidding, but it told me he believed in me, and that helped me believe in myself.

As head editor, Chuck brought an interesting personality to The Providence Journal. He was a writer at heart, and turned The Journal into a writer's paper, encouraging great storytelling. That's the kind of paper I wanted to be a part of. Without that, I might have moved on in time, but because of Chuck, I realized this was the place. And it still is.

It often takes a bigger-than-life personality to rise to the top of a news operation, but if anything, Chuck was shy, bad at small talk. Sometimes, that made you think he wasn't fully engaged. In truth, he may have been quiet, but he was always watching.

After a half-dozen years as columnist, he took me to lunch and asked how I was doing. I told him fine, but perhaps could use a new challenge. I mentioned recent headlines about a famine in Africa, not that The Providence Journal would cover that, but it was all I could think of. The next day, an editor came up and told me Chuck wanted me to plan a trip to Africa.

He later had me do other foreign assignments, as a columnist. Those trips became part of me.

One day, he asked if I wanted to play racquetball, a new game for him. I was 35 or so and Chuck was 60ish. It was intimidating playing against the big boss. I struggled with whether to let him win, or if that would make him feel patronized. But he wasn't a bad player. And it showed me that despite his position, he wasn't above wanting to connect on a casual level.

In 1988, he retired to his native North Carolina, but continued writing and stayed in touch, occasionally sending me a note if he thought I had done something exceptional. I saved those notes. I also saved the earlier ones he wrote when I was in slumps that began, "It's time to kick you in the rear." Only he didn't say "rear."

In truth, I've had plenty of other influential colleagues and bosses.

But I'm doing the job I do because of Chuck. I'm in this town because of him. And his shaping influence is one reason why The Journal, despite its flaws, is a good paper.

I will miss him.

And I couldn't be more grateful that he came this way.

Posted by baltar at May 26, 2005 02:29 PM | TrackBack | Posted to SiteNotes