COLUMN: A peachy Christmas tale

Whenever I remember the late Chuck Place, I think of trees.

Christmas trees. Dogwoods. Pines. Yoshinos. Redwoods.

And peach trees.

Place was inducted in the Georgia Foresters Hall of Fame in 2007, the year before he died. He once spearheaded efforts to have a plaque placed at the corner of Vineville Avenue and Callaway Drive in the shade of five live oaks, which are the official Georgia state tree and Macon’s oldest trees. George Pierce, the first president of Wesleyan College, planted them from acorns in 1836.

Place was a champion of conservation education and environmental stewardship. He was a native of Brooklyn, New York, who ended up in the land of magnolias. I once suggested to the retired urban forester that he publish his memoirs and call it “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.’’ 

He had a sign at his house in Wimbish Woods that greeted folks by letting them know they were at “Chuck’s Place.’’ He would answer the phone, “This is the Place!”

Place was an avid newspaper reader, and he often passed along articles of  interest he had clipped and saved from magazines and newsletters.  

He once sent me a story called “The Lesson of the Peaches.’’ It carried a timeless message and should be required reading for everyone. The humanitarian side of journalism often gets neglected in the rush of deadlines.

This lesson was retold in 1986 by veteran newspaper columnist Al Martinez, who died 10 years ago after a newspaper career of more than 60 years. 

Martinez was a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. He shared a valuable lesson he learned early in his newspaper career while working as a general assignment reporter on the city desk of the Oakland Tribune.

It was Christmas Eve, and he had been assigned to write about a boy who was dying of leukemia.  The child had a rather unusual Christmas request. He wanted fresh peaches.

“It was a story that, in the tradition of  1950s journalism, would be milked for every sob we could squeeze from it, because everyone loved a good cry on Christmas,’’ Martinez later wrote. “We knew how to play a tear-jerker in those days, and I was full of the kinds of passions that could make a sailor weep.’’

It was late, and his deadline was fast approaching. The phone rang. It was his city editor, Alfredf Reck, a hard-nosed newspaper man who was passionate about his work and a champion of those whose words and deeds should appear in the lines — and not the margins — of the newspaper.

Martinez told Reck about the dying boy’s wish. The story had been targeted for the front page, but there was one catch. There were no fresh peaches in the Bay Area the third week of December.

“How long has he got?” Reck asked.

“Not long,’’ Martinez said. “His doctor says maybe a day or two.”

After a long silence, the boss spoke.

“Get the kid his peaches,’’ Reck said.

Martinez told him it was an impossible request. He had contacted every market that sold produce in the Bay Area. Fresh peaches were out of season.

Reck suggested he call Australia. Martinez hesitated. It was after 11 p.m. He was on deadline.

“Call Australia,” Reck said. Then he hung up. 

Martinez made a flurry of late-night calls, located some fresh peaches and found an airline that could fly them to San Francisco on Christmas Day.

There was a roadblock, however. Agricultural products have to clear customs, and the customs office would be closed for the holiday. The fruit was likely to be impounded for several days.

For Reck, however, such problems were merely opportunities in disguise. Even though it was almost midnight, he told Martinez to contact the state secretary of agriculture at home and have him clear the peaches through customs when they arrived.

After Martinez called the secretary of agriculture, Reck told him to arrange to meet the plane and take the peaches to the boy’s house. Deadline was breathing down his neck.

“If I don’t start writing this now I’ll never get the story in the paper,’’ he said. 

Martinez said he will never forget what happened next.

“I didn’t say get the story,” Reck said. “I said get the kid his peaches.’’

Martinez later called it a “flash point” in an award-winning journalism career in which he contributed to three Pulitzer Prize efforts and received an Emmy nomination for a CBS-TV movie.

“Alfred Pierce Reck had defined for me the importance of what we do, lifting it beyond newsprint and deadline to a level of humanity that transcends job,” Martinez wrote in 1991. “He understood not only what we did but what we were supposed to do. 

 ‘I didn’t say get the story. I said get the kid his peaches.’”