Friends, family and colleagues of former journalism professor Ed Guthman gathered this month at the Newseum in Washington D.C. to express their final farewells with remembrances of him as a military hero, beloved press secretary, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and long-time lecturer at USC Annenberg.
John Carroll, the former editor of the Los Angeles Times, who with Jack Nelson, the former bureau chief of the Times' Washington bureau, organized what was described as "A Gathering of Friends." In addition to them, nine other speakers reminisced about Guthman. The other speakers were Les and Diane Guthman, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Gene Roberts, the former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer who hired Guthman away from the Times, Acel Moore, the one-time editorial page editor of the Inquirer and Tony Auth, its renowned editorial cartoonist.
Guthman had been suffering from complications of amyloidosis, a rare disease with which he had been diagnosed last year. He died Aug. 31 at the age of 89.
Below is the transcript of journalism professor emeritus Murray Fromson's (pictured, right) remarks about his friend and colleague Guthman at the Newseum:
I first met Ed when Otis Chandler hired him away from Bob Kennedy to set up national bureaus for the Times in 1965. Otis wanted to make the Times a great newspaper and Ed was instrumental in making that happen.
Ed joined the faculty at USC in 1987. That was, five years after me. As director of the School of Journalism, I considered him not only a friend but a trusted counselor to whom I could turn to for advice. We shared a mutual contempt for faculty meetings. He quickly made the transition from the newsroom to the classroom. He taught two classes a semester and also took on the role of advisor to the campus newspaper. His investigative journalism classes were the most popular in the school’s curriculum. Year after year, the students chose him as their favorite professor.
He often dispatched his students downtown to the County Hall of Records to check the bonafides of a controversial fire chief or the integrity of a sleazy real estate mogul. He pored over every student’s paper for hours. The truly gifted ones were the beneficiaries of a Guthman recommendation for an internship at the Times, the Inquirer or some other major news organization. Ed’s mantra during 20 years of teaching was quite simple: tell the truth , respect accuracy and uphold the First Amendment. As a founder of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, I always found common ground with him.
At a football game one day, I asked him why he, as a University of Washington graduate, was rooting so strongly for the Trojans. He came up with a reason that I quickly adopted as my own. Said Ed: “My boy, I root for the team that pays me.” His passion often got out of hand. He swore at the referees. He curdled the ears of the Trojans’ opponents. He used language that shocked the blue blood alumni sitting around us and I was forever tugging at his sleeve, saying “Sh…sh…control yourself!”
Whether it was bemoaning the fate of the Dodgers or cheering on the Trojans at the Coliseum; gathering at each other’s homes or commuting to campus, we always found time to trade war stories; he about North Africa and Italy, me about Korea and Vietnam.
He described the battle for Monte Cassino so often that I could recite it from memory. Yes Ed, No Ed, I would say, after hearing how he led the first American patrol into Rome in 1944. He came home with a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. What was clear to me was that Ed truly loved this country. Journalism was his calling of course, but the years in uniform were the defining moments of his life. Ed flew the American flag outside his home regularly; not just on holidays.
His respect and affection for the Kennedy family was of course boundless. He wore a PT 109 tie pin almost every day in his classes and he was never short of stories about working for Bobby in his crackdown on racketeering and the defense of black children trying to attend school in Alabama and Mississippi. In between classes, he found time to serve on the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, eventually becoming its chairman. Ben Bycel, his predecessor, sat next to him at endless meetings and remembers how scornful Ed was of witnesses who stonewalled the commission. Bycel said that the two words that Ed always whispered in his ear, reacting to flawed testimony were: “That’s bull----."
My wife Dodi and I spent days at Ed’s home in the Palisades when it was clear that his health was failing. Dozens of old friends, including many of you here today, descended on him even when he was too weak to climb out of bed. But he was both grateful and astonished by those visits. Despite his weakness, he never complained. He was mystified about his illness. “Why am I so tired,” he asked me over and over again. But not until the very end was he in any perceptible pain.
Fortunately, his loving family knew it was time to have a birthday party when Ed turned 89 last summer. Many of his friends participated in a great celebration that would be his last. But when his body finally gave out, I truly was relieved for Ed. I know that he never would have wanted to live to see the closure of the Times’ Washington bureau, which he had done so much to create. I can hear it now. His choice words for Sam Zell would have made that bastard blush!
