We're less than two weeks from Election Day when hopefully we'll learn who will be the next President of the United States. Certain news stories have reported that a number of Americans will vote for the first time.
Of course, every election has first time voters but this year the articles report that some of the first time voters are not just those becoming old enough to vote for the first time. There long has been a certain element in the American population that didn't register to vote for one reason or another. I have a story to tell, a true story, about a first time voter in 1932. It also is a story about an old newspaper editor who on the whole was an excellent journalist and a fine boss...most of the time.
The legal voting age back then was 21. My mother was 32 by then but had never even been registered to vote. Verne Marshall was the editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette and never pulled a punch in his daily front page "Current Comments" column. In 1935 he won the Pulitzer Prize after getting 31 officials indicted for graft when he exposed a mob-run slot machine racket.
Because of the expose of the mob operation, there were threats against the paper. The press was in the basement of the Gazette Building. In those days of one-car families my mother often drove down to pick up my dad and this allowed me and others to watch the hypnotizing sight of newsprint racing through the giant machine and coming out all printed and folded. One day, though, we found iron bars over the windows through which we could watch the press run. There had been a threat against the paper because of the mob operation causing the fear of a bomb being tossed into the press.
Most of the time Verne Marshall did good investigating before he shot, but once or twice he had to explain in a later column why he had "changed positions." One time he went out to play golf at the Municipal Ellis Park Course. His caddy failed to replace a divot and Marshall dutifully picked up the divot and placed sod and put it back. The next day an article on the front page of the Gazette proclaimed that Ellis Park caddies did not replace divots.
He occasionally was a bit quick on his personal announcements which leads us back to why my mother voted for first time in her life at age 32 in 1932. My dad had been a Republican all his life but though he had a good job paying $30 (442.83 of today's dollars) a week in 1932, it was evident that there were problems in the country. And he liked that guy the Democrats had nominated in their convention, a man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Shortly after FDR was nominated and started campaigning, Verne Marshall went through the building announcing that any Gazette employee voting for Roosevelt would be fired. One must remember that in 1932 one might be much more concerned about making a decision between a $30 a week job and voting one's personal choice.
In the end my dad did not vote for FDR in 1932. He didn't vote at all, but my mother had gone down, registered and voted. The fact that her father, also a life-long Republican, also liked FDR may have helped convince her to register and vote.
As election day drew near it became evident Verne Marshall had over-spoken bit in his immediate anger at the national attention Roosevelt was getting and it became more and more evident that Iowa born conservative Herbert Hoover was going to be a one-term president. But Verne Marshall didn't like it and he over-spoke in the office again. He announced that if Roosevelt won on Election Day the Gazette would shut down the next day.
Franklin Roosevelt did win and the Gazette never missed an edition and is still an excellent newspaper. It is one of the few remaining family-owned newspapers in the country.
Verne Marshall remained the editor though the 1930s but in 1939 his nationalistic philosophy got him mixed up with the extremist "No Foreign Wars" movement and in 1940 he relinquished his active role in the paper under duress, though he maintained some ownership.
Trivia Time
A record 89 percent of registered voters voted in the 2004 election. What percent of eligible citizens were registered for that election? Answer to last question. After 51 years as the St. Louis Browns, that team became the present Baltimore Orioles in 1954.
George Frasher, an independent columnist, is a retired editor and may be contacted at 337-238-3433, E-mail frasher@cebridge.net.
