Category: Newspapering

Who ARE You?

When I was a newspaperman I got to know Sam Garrison, the warden of Central Prison in Raleigh, a maximum security institution that housed many of the state’s most dangerous criminals.

Central Prison was only a mile or so from The News & Observer, where I worked, and sometimes I’d go by and see Sam about something and then hang around and shoot the breeze.  I liked him.

One day he told me this story:

He said he grew up in a little town near Raleigh, Garner maybe, I can’t remember. Anyway, he said that when he was a teenager he and his buddies would drive to Raleigh occasionally looking for a little excitement.

North Carolina state capitol
North Carolina’s state capitol

On this occasion they were in a convertible, with the top down.  Sam said he was sitting on the back of the rear seat, with his feet in the seat, having fun with pedestrians. Sam said they were on Morgan Street, next to the capitol, when he yelled at this young guy  and said, “We need directions to the capitol.”

The capitol, of course, was right there, in plain sight.  But the guy said, “Sure, turn right on Fayetteville Street, go three blocks and hang a left. You can’t miss it.”

Sam, who was a good size boy, bigger than the boy who had turned his little joke around, said he hopped out of the car and took the first swing. That turned out to be a mistake.

“I had to crawl under the bushes there by the sidewalk to get away from him, to get him to stop hitting me,” the warden said. When the boy stopped Sam said he crawled out of the bushes and introduced himself.

Warden Sam Garrison
Warden Sam Garrison

“I’m Sam Garrison,” he said. “Who are you?”

And he said the boy told him, “I’m the middle weight Golden Gloves champion of North Carolina.”

Warden Garrison told me that incident put him on the straight and narrow, took away any desire he had to pick fights with strangers.

NOTE1: Garrison, who worked his way up from prison guard, was the warden at Central for 14 years.

NOTE2:   Sam tried to tell me how things worked in prison and one day he showed me. He pointed toward a Styrofoam cup, attached to a string, being pulled rapidly up the tiers of cells.   That was one way, Sam said, that the most powerful inmates — the most feared — distinguished themselves from everyone else: they had hot coffee, and a newspaper, delivered to their cells every morning.

Coming Friday: Devastated

My Free Pass

Melanie Sill was honest, smart, hard working, and ambitious for herself and for others. She had excellent news judgment, too.

Melanie Sill
Melanie Sill

She was the investigation editor at The News & Observer and although she had never done any investigative work herself, she was proof that you don’t have to hang somebody to know how to build a gallows. I was an investigative reporter at The N&O and for years she and I made music together.  In the mid-90’s  Melanie; Joby Warrick, my reporting partner; and I teamed up to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Do you sense a “however” coming?

Well, here it is: When Melanie became executive editor of The N&O and, at my request, made me editor of the North Carolina Desk, I spent the most miserable 18 months of my newspaper life working for her.  She was, in a word, overbearing.

In the middle of those dark days, Melanie gave a most wonderful gift to me and other graduates of an in-house school for editors: a piece of paper, a pass that entitled each of us to one day free of criticism.

She may have meant it as a joke but it was no joke to me. I put my pass in my wallet to save for one of those perfectly horrible days that came along just about every week.

I didn’t use it right away. I endured some bad days, but no horrible days, and I had no intention of using my pass on a run-of-the-mill bad day.

At last, my patience was rewarded.

In theory, three editors and 18 reporters worked for me. In reality, however, the North Carolina desk was set up so that I had no control over two of the editors and their reporters. I was just there to take the heat when they failed to produce.

On the day I decided to use my pass the 21 people for whom I was responsible had no stories to pitch for the front page. That was a capital offense and I knew Melanie would be extremely unhappy. I got my pass ready.

She was sitting right beside me at the 10:30 editors’ meeting when I reported that the North Carolina Desk didn’t have any  stories good enough to put on 1A the next day.  She swiveled in her chair and was about to unload when I held up her gift and said, “Melanie, I’m going to use my free pass today.”

She swallowed all that venom without uttering a single word and turn back around.

What a blessing! Hallelujah! HALLELUJAH!

But when the meeting ended a few minutes later, Melanie swiveled back around.

“I want to talk to you,” she said, sternly.

“Melanie,” I said, “I used my free pass.”

And she said, “It’s not good for all day.” 

Postscript: Sill, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC, has held a series of top executive positions, at The N&O; The Sacramento Bee, McClatchy’s flagship paper; and at Southern California Public Radio.  More recently she has been a journalism and organizational consultant and independent editor.  Next semester she will teach journalism at Davidson College.

Coming Friday:  Deal Me Out