COLUMN: Recognizing the rare columnist and remembering Ernie Pyle

Friday was National Columnists Day. I have been writing a local newspaper column for 27 years. Add another 20 if you count my time in the sports department.

There will be no parade on Cherry Street or doorbuster sales at the department stores. If you didn’t send a card, don’t feel guilty. You won’t find them at the Hallmark store. 

There aren’t many of us left. We are an endangered species. There are times when I feel like a Remington typewriter at the antique mall in Payne City, clinging to however many threads are left on that ribbon.

(Appropriately enough, today is also International Juggler’s Day. Column writing requires juggling skills, as well.)

National Columnists Day is observed on April 18, which is the anniversary of the death of Ernie Pyle. He was the famous World War II newspaper reporter who is considered the patron saint of columnists.

 He was killed 80 years ago today – on April 18, 1945 –  by a Japanese sniper on a tiny island in the Pacific. A year earlier, while awaiting the invasion of Normandy, he was awarded the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished correspondence. 

As one of America’s first “embedded” journalists, he wrote about common soldiers on the front lines. He died with his boots on. He was doing what he loved the most.

Veteran newspaper columnists Bill Tammeus and Dave Lieber were the architects of National Columnists Day. The inaugural day was held on April 18, 1995, to mark the 50th anniversary of Pyle’s death.

 A resolution by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists (NSNC) declared the purpose was to “reflect on the way newspaper columnists connect, educate, comfort, encourage, celebrate, outrage and occasionally even amuse readers and a time to express appreciation for them for their hard work.”

(At the NSNC conference in 2010, I had my picture taken in front of Ernie Pyle Hall at Indiana University in Bloomington, where Pyle began his journalism career. But I am too embarrassed to publish the photo. I was wearing a pair of wild-colored shorts my wife bought for me. Not a good look.)

Pyle was a masterful storyteller. He went where others dared not to stick their pen and paper. And his words took his readers there with him. 

Before the war, his byline appeared in articles about everyday folks in America’s heartland.  Then, on a portable Corona typewriter, he filed stories from foxholes in France, desert outposts in North Africa and below the decks of aircraft carriers in the South Pacific. Who needed AI when you had GI?

His friend, author John Steinbeck, once told Time magazine: “There are really two wars, and they haven’t much to do with each other. There is the war of maps and logistics, of campaigns, of ballistics, armies, divisions and regiments. … Then there is the war of the homesick, weary, funny, violent, common men who wash their socks in their helmets, complain about the food, whistle at the Arab girls, or any girls for that matter, and bring themselves through as dirty a business as the world has ever seen and do it with humor and dignity and courage – and that is Ernie Pyle’s war.” 

My writing career has never taken me to the battlefields, but when Winston Churchill said, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating than to be shot at without result,” he could have been referring to the adrenaline of a writer on deadline. 

I have never had to compose a story from a foxhole. The only bullets I put in my copy are typographical marks. I have never been in combat, although I did spend a week in Junior ROTC camp at Fort Benning to write about my experiences as an intern for The Columbus Enquirer.

There have been no major injuries in my journalistic pursuits, unless you count the purple hearts of paper cuts, headaches, angry readers, spell checks, ankle sprains, judging chili contests, falling out of chairs and hitting a deer when I was returning from an assignment in Valdosta.

As a homefront columnist on National Columnists Day, I have written about warriors, the brave men and women who have served our country in the military. I have told stories of others waging courageous battles against illness, injustice and        indifference. 

Life has its share of foot soldiers.  Newspaper columnists should share those stories. 

It’s our call of duty.

Thanks, Ernie. You showed us the front lines.