Delivered at funeral service, September 5, 2008
Considering than I stand before you less than 14 months from my 100th birthday, even if I make it I will not be able to spend as much time in mourning the loss of Ed Guthman as most of you in this room, but spend it I will, for Ed was a longtime friend and a treasured colleague in the teaching ranks at the University of Southern California.
Ed’s working credo throughout his life was a simple one involving justice, expressed in 2 words – BE FAIR – a standard urged upon him by a newspaper editor in Seattle when Ed, a young reporter, was assigned to investigate the persecution of a Washington professor during the heyday of the sinister Senator Joe McCarthy. Ed’s spirited investigation, which vindicated the professor, was honored by a Pulitzer Prize in journalism — incidentally, the first Pulitzer ever awarded to any person in the Northwest.
Being fair was indeed the hallmark of Ed’s whole life. coloring his national editorship of the Los Angeles Times, his close association with President John and his brother Robert Kennedy, his managing editorship of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and his long and fruitful influence on two of the greatest political cartoonists in American history, Paul Conrad of Palos Verdes. and Tony Auth, in Philadelphia.
Ed was a family man – and what a family – his wife, Jo, buried nearby here at Hillside; and their adventuresome son Les, who has produced a series of brilliant documentary films about the planet Venus, and the ascent of Mt. Everest by a blind climber, and the descent of the same haughty Everest by a skier who survived a colossal tumble on the way down, and a bumpy ride on the wild river Mekong all the way to Ankor Wat; and a second son, Jerry, who is an accomplished labor organizer; and a third son, Eddy, a multiple-instrument musician; and a daughter Diane, who was for years special events-organizer for USC, and who recently became mother of Ed’s newest granddaughter Joanna, who will no doubt win the long-established Ed Guthman Scholarship Award on a Commencement Day later in this century at the Annenberg environs downtown.
Thanks for listening.