HISTORY

50 Years of Louisville SDX-SPJ Chapter

Editor’s Note: This brief history of the Louisville professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (formerly Sigma Delta Chi) was written in three separate installments. The authors, all former chapter presidents, were John G. Dietrich, with the assistance of Floyd B. Edwards, both deceased, and Don Towles. Dietrich and Edwards chronicled the chapter’s history twice – in 1965 and 1985. Towles updated their histories through the current time. The histories were compiled by Ed Staats, also a former chapter president.

The Louisville Professional Chapter sprang to life Feb. 6, 1953, when 39 members of the society met at the River Valley Club for dinner and installation ceremonies led by national president Lee Hills, executive editor of The Detroit Free Press and The Miami Herald. The charter listed 14 names. Edgar E. Easterly was elected first president and, sporting a homemade bow tie, accepted the charter from Hills. Subsequently, Easterly was re-elected to a second term as president and represented the new Louisville chapter at the national convention.

A great deal of the impetus, support and groundwork had come from publisher Barry Bingham Sr. and his top-line editors – Mark Ethridge, Jim Pope and Norman E. Isaacs, and from Easterly, who was Associated Press Kentucky bureau chief. Bingham had been active in the national organization; Isaacs and Easterly had been members of professional chapters elsewhere.

Over the years from the 1920s on, the newspapers in Louisville, and later, too, the electronic media, employed staffers who had been SDX members in college. Once in a while, also, a journalist from some professional chapter showed up.

By the early 1950s enough were around to justify considering a professional chapter here. The idea was warmly welcomed and Bingham had quickly given his encouragement.

The new chapter attracted, in addition to local journalists, members from Indiana University, led by the journalism head, John Stemple, and Niel Plummer from the University of Kentucky.

The ensuing one-third of a century had seen both broad and deep changes in both the chapter and the national society. A campus-oriented, basically undergraduate honorary fraternity with a few professional extensions becomes a large and vigorous professional alliance that speaks strongly for members of the profession on issues vital to it and the nation.

Such fraternal folderol as initiation rites with flaming torches, symbol-laded tables and lofty words that were often Greek to most members, have disappeared. Membership rolls have been opened to women, and even our name has evolved in recognition of our altered status and goals.

The Louisville chapter was healthy from birth and has been active and vigorous for most of its life. Easterly was succeeded as president by Floyd Edwards, Gordon Englehart, Sam Adkins, Bill Small, John Dietrich and Jay Crouse. Chapter membership grew rapidly, bolstered by the induction of many active journalists from other places in Kentucky and southern Indiana — from Ashland to Paducah, from Middlesboro to Bowling Green and from the journalism faculties at the University of Kentucky and Indiana University. In recent years this “territory” has tended to shrink a bit, with the creation of new chapters, but membership has stabilized for many years at about 120 to 140.

By 1956 the chapter was strong enough to play host to the national convention, with the help of the Bingham-owned newspapers. Edwards was chapter president and Neil Dalton was convention chairman. Sessions were held at the Brown Hotel, mostly in the Roof Garden. The convention proved a keen stimulus for journalism interest here. Pope was elected to the organization’s national council.

The national officers had wanted to meet in Louisville several years earlier, but the locals, with the assistance of publisher Bingham, had held off until the chapter had enough manpower to handle it.

The chapter has always held frequent meetings, with a wide variety of programs and venues. They included the top floor of the old Seelbach Hotel and the basement of the new Seelbach; Earl Ruby’s backyard; a cave in eastern Jefferson County; a Frankfort distillery; poolside at the Marriott Inn; Dante’s Inferno; Backstage at the Kentucky Center for the Arts, and Bernie’s Back Room.

Perhaps the most dramatic, as it turned out, was Joe’s Palm Room at 18th and West Jefferson, where in May 1968, president Don Bliss was just starting the after-dinner program when a few members received phone calls and slipped out. Soon Bliss announced that there was racial rioting at 28th and Greenwood, with teargas and shots fired. Members and guests were advised to depart as quickly and quietly as possible.

In these three decades few political figures have been elected to, or even run for, high office in Kentucky, Jefferson County or Louisville without appearing singly or in a panel session before the chapter. Some of them even said something newsworthy. The most serious controversy, however, arose when U.S. Dist. Judge Stanley Gordon, apparently unaware that all chapter meetings are considered open to press and public, found his 1973 remarks in the local newspapers. The ensuing flap resulted in adoption of a chapter by-law stating that all meetings are open, and that all speakers must be so informed in advance. The best-attended (about 200 were there), liveliest and surely most-remembered meeting, took place at Mastersons in September 1972 when Pauline, long-time madam of a famed Bowling Green bordello, went well beyond the memoirs she had recently published.

Through the years the chapter has actively furthered the society’s work and aspirations. Besides the national convention being held in Louisville, the chapter was host to the 1966 Regional 5 conference, at Kentucky Dam Village State Resort Park. Its members were among the moving figures in re-establishing the undergraduate chapter at the University of Kentucky after World War II, and in establishing the Western Kentucky University undergraduate chapter. It has actively supported the rights of campus publications threatened with suppression. A team from the chapter conducted the ceremonies marking establishment of the Tri-State Cardinal professional chapter at Evansville, Ind. We also were successful in obtaining the placing of a historical-site plaque honoring Henry Watterson, in the lobby of The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Building.

An outstanding project since 1981 has been the annual Metro Louisville Journalism Awards, under the initial leadership of John Long, and the banquets honoring the winners. A highlight of this program was awarding in 1984 of “The First” Prize to Barry Bingham Sr. Not to be forgotten, either, is the major role played by the Louisville chapter in the 1970s in gaining for Kentucky a model “sunshine” statute requiring that public business be publicly conducted.

All in all, it seems fitting that in 1985 the Louisville Professional Chapter won the “Fiver Award” as the outstanding chapter in SPJ’s Region Five.

In 1982 the Louisville chapter celebrated James Madison’s birthday in a program that was transmitted to PBS stations nationwide for broadcast during the nationwide First Amendment observance. The national SDX office promoted the program.

A year later the statue of George Dennison Prentice in front of the Louisville Free Public Library was designated as a historic site in journalism by the organizations’ national committee. Prentice was one of the South’s most powerful editorialists before the Civil War as founder of the Louisville Daily Journal from 1830-68.

Also in 1983 the chapter sponsored a gubernatorial candidate forum prior to the election which resulted in making Martha Layne Collins Kentucky’s first woman governor. Just before he left office, Gov. John Y. Brown graded the press in an interesting appearance before chapter members. Most flunked.

Former chapter president Bill Small recalled a party the group had at a distillery in Frankfort when several members, including the then-publisher of The Courier-Journal, Mark Ethridge, consumed an ample amount of the distillery’s product. The decision was made to rent a bus to take the group back to Louisville. Ethridge had to be restrained from driving the bus. At the same event, some members undertook to move a piano from the stage and proceeded to drop the instrument and broke one of its legs. The chapter paid for repairs.

Small also recalled introducing VIPs at a head table during a luncheon meeting. There was one present who did not qualify as a VIP or chapter officer. He was Harold Davis, chief color photographer for The Courier-Journal. Small introduced him, saying, “Harold is here because he never got to sit at a head table before.”

In 1990, the Louisville chapter took on its largest challenge since 1956 – organizing a national convention. In addition to enlisting support from numerous chapter members, they turned to the one person remaining who had been closely involved with the 1956 national meeting in Louisville of Sigma Delta Chi – Donald B. Towles of The Courier-Journal. He had prepared the convention magazine and much of the printed program and had handled many of the details of the 1956 convention. The latter included keeping a hospitality room open 24 hours a day for three days so that Mark Ethridge and his cronies could bellow out the strains of the Battle Hymn of the Republic until 5 or 6 a.m. and then wobble off to breakfast. Barry Bingham Sr. had been named honorary president of the national organization. In 1990 Towles was the convention chairman and George N. Gill, Courier-Journal publisher, was the honorary chairman. U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle, grandson of Sigma Delta Chi founder Eugene Pulliam of Indianapolis, spoke at the conference. The meeting was one of the most highly attended conferences in history and made a respectable profit for the national office.

In 1991, the chapter honored former Louisville mayor and Kentucky lieutenant governor Wilson Wyatt with The First Prize for his contributions to the advancement of freedom of the press under the First Amendment. John Seigenthaler, chairman and publisher of The Nashville Tennessean, made the presentation to Wyatt. Former Gov. Bert T. Combs, with whom Wyatt served as lieutenant governor, was scheduled to speak but was killed in an automobile accident just days before the event. Others who have received the award in addition to Barry Bingham Sr. are John S. Palmore, former chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court; Barry Bingham Jr., former editor and publisher of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times; and George N. Gill, former president and publisher of The Courier-Journal.

The years of 1992 and 1993 were busy ones for the growing chapter. The First Mike Award was given to WHAS’ Fred Wiche, and the Distinguished Kentucky Journalist Award was presented to Richard Harwood, editorial columnist for The Washington Post and former political writer for The Louisville Times.

A joint session was held with the Louisville Association of Black Journalists on the subject of “loaded language.” Gov. Brereton Jones spoke to the organization, as did NPR host Bob Edwards. The chapter passed a resolution condemning the state’s proposed use of $100,000 in tax funds to explore formation of a Kentucky News Council, and played host to its first job fair for students.

In 1994 a freelance writing seminar was conducted, attended by 56 people. A year later a session on journalism ethics was sponsored with discussion centered on the O.J. Simpson trial. In February 1995, a meeting was held to hear from federal officials relative to investigating public corruption in the state, including Operation BOPTROT, which resulted in the punishment of several legislators.

In April, a breakfast meeting featured Terry Anderson, the Associated Press reporter who spent 2,545 days as a hostage in the Middle East. Anderson had formerly worked for the AP in Louisville.

Other monthly seminars that year included talks by Michael Wines, a former Louisville newsman, who was then an editor for The New York Times. He discussed his book about mental illness. Another program focused on the relationship between physicians and the news media.

A roast-toast was held to honor Bill Mootz, longtime Courier-Journal drama critic, and was attended by more than 100 people. A diversity seminar was conducted for minority students in college and high school.

Newly elected Gov. Paul Patton came in December 1995, to discuss changes planned during his administration. Later, in the new year, both of Kentucky’s U.S. Senators – Wendell Ford and Mitch McConnell – held forth from opposite sides of the political fence.

On the subject of diversity, the chapter met with foreign journalists to discuss the newsgathering profession in general and the SPJ organization in particular.

In 1996, Hugh Haynie, longtime editorial cartoonist for The Courier-Journal, was awarded The First Prize for his contributions to freedom of the press. Fellow national cartoonists and columnists toasted Haynie.

Membership in the Louisville chapter surpassed 100 as a result of Kit Millay-Fullenlove’s hard work. She won a regional SPJ award for her membership activities.

SPJ’s Region Five conference was held in Louisville in 1998, and chapter president Larry Muhammad recruited CBS news legend Mike Wallace to participate. The conference was part of a three-day event, culminating in a black-tie charity benefiting Bridgehaven, a local halfway house for the severely mentally ill. The event raised $200,000 to help Bridgehaven build a new facility.

Over its 50-year history the Louisville chapter has attracted some of the nation’s best-known and most-respected journalists as guest speakers. They include Turner Catledge, The New York Times; Katherine Graham, The Washington Post; Carl Lindstrom, The Hartford Courant; broadcasters Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Bob Edwards and Cokie Roberts; columnist George Will; John Seigenthaler, The Tennessean of Nashville and USA Today; Howard Fineman, Newsweek; Jim Hagerty, President Eisenhower’s press secretary; Herb Klein, President Nixon’s; and Fred Friendly, Ed Murrow’s TV producer.

This brief history does not include every single event of the past 50 years, nor was it intended to. Its purpose is to give the reader an idea of what kind of organization the Society of Professional Journalists tries to be and to list only some of its many accomplishments.

Most of Kentucky’s governors, senators and other high officials, including many who wanted to be, have appeared on SDX/SPJ programs in the past half century.

The Louisville chapter has given more awards for support of the journalism profession than can be counted and have received a few from national headquarters for its members’ efforts.

It has had lean years ands bountiful years in terms of membership and finances. Most programs have been decently attended and a few haven’t. The one constant that runs through the 50 years of telling the story of journalism and supporting its efforts is dedication. We expect that will continue for the next 50 years