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Connecting
July 17, 2024
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Colleagues,
Good Wednesday morning on this July 17, 2024,
We’re saddened to bring news of the death of our colleague Kathy Willens, one of the finest photojournalists ever to carry a camera for The Associated Press.
She died Tuesday of ovarian cancer that was diagnosed shortly after her 2021 retirement. She was 74.
In a Connecting profile of the 45-year AP veteran at the time of her retirement, Hal Buell, retired director of AP Photos who headed the department when she was hired, said, “Kathy spent some 45 years on the frontline of AP photo coverage (she was among the first women to join the photo staff) and I cannot recall a single kind of news story that failed to face her lens.
“For the most part she was quiet and unassuming which belied her careful, insight of the pictures made over those years. Many of her photos had an artistic feel, no doubt thanks to her early education in the arts. She is one of the few staffers who can recall spooling film, hypo and 10-minute photo transmissions. Kathy best described herself and her wide interests: ‘Baseball fan, birder, NPR addict.’ Forgot the important one: photographer.”
Buell died a year ago.
Our colleague Bill Sikes shared an AP Images blog released when she retired in June 2021; it's been updated with her death. Click here to view to get an idea of the variety of pictures she made during her career.
In the 2021 Connecting profile, Kathy summarized her career and sadly, was somewhat prophetic:
“There’s no way I would have had these irreplaceable experiences, nor would I have met as many interesting or well-known people without having worked for the Associated Press,” she said. “I’m incredibly fortunate that, for nearly 45 years, being an AP photographer has been my front row seat to history in the making. Although all my retired friends tell me they love it, I fully expect that retirement is going to be a stiff challenge for me. Yet, I’m looking forward to slowing the accelerated pace enough to look for and listen to the birds. This is my equivalent to ‘stopping to smell the flowers’ while I still have the chance to.”
Connecting would welcome your memories of working with Kathy. Please send them along. Photos too.
I hope you have a great day – be safe, stay healthy, live it to your fullest.
Paul
Kathy Willens, pathbreaking Associated Press photographer who captured sports and more, dies at 74
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ABOVE: Kathy Willens at the 2009 Belmont Stakes horse race.
RIGHT: Kathy holding her dad's stereo camera in Detroit in 1953. the dye for a career was cast!
BY JENNIFER PELTZ
NEW YORK (AP) — Kathy Willens, a pathbreaking photojournalist who helped cement women’s place behind the lens everywhere from the Super Bowl to war-torn Somalia during her nearly 45-year career at The Associated Press, died Tuesday. She was 74.
Willens died at her Brooklyn home of ovarian cancer, diagnosed shortly after her 2021 retirement, said her nephew Ben Willens.
A giving colleague but fierce competitor who brooked no interference between her and a picture, Willens was among the AP’s first female staff photographers. She went on to shoot more than 90,000 images — of presidents and Pope John Paul II, protests and war, sports triumphs and human tragedy.
“A stroll through her archive is a stroll through history,” said former AP Director of Photography J. David Ake, who edited many of Willens’ pictures over the last two decades of her career. It could be a challenging task, given her penchant for shooting a lot of frames.
“But in those images, there was always a gem. Something she saw, that no one around her did,” Ake said by email.
Specializing in sports, Willens became a photographer of such stature that the New York Yankees paid tribute to her on the field when she retired. In a pre-game ceremony, manager Aaron Boone gave her a framed print, signed by former pitcher David Cone, of her own photo of him after he threw a perfect game in 1999.
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FILE - New York Yankees pitcher David Cone is lifted onto the shoulders of his teammates by catcher Joe Girardi, left, as manager Joe Torre joins in the celebration after Cone threw a perfect game against the Montreal Expos during “Yogi Berra Day” at New York’s Yankee Stadium, July 18, 1999. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)
It had been a long path from her introduction to photojournalism in the mid-1970s, when there were few women in the business.
“When covering sports, I was almost always the only female on the field,” Willens told Buzzfeed News in 2021. “There were no role models for me.”
Willens developed her interest in cameras from her father, Lionel, a jewelry store owner and hobbyist photographer who kept a darkroom in their Detroit-area home, her nephew said. Her mother, Gertrude, was a dental hygienist, and the parents’ various pursuits would sometimes blend in unexpected ways, such as when the family gathered to view slides from a vacation.
“We’d be looking at pictures of trips, and every now and then, you’d see some molars,” Ben Willens said.
Kathy Willens got her professional start as a freelancer for suburban Detroit newspapers in 1974. She soon landed a job at the now-gone The Miami News as a photo lab technician, then as a staff photographer, racking up front-page and other prominent pictures. The AP hired her in 1976.
Working from Miami, Willens covered the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when nearly 125,000 Cubans came to the U.S. in six months, and the aftermath of deadly rioting that occurred the same year after the acquittal of four police officers charged with fatally beating a Black insurance executive.
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FILE - Waves splash President-elect George Bush as he casts a line while surf-fishing in Gulf Stream, Fla., Nov. 12, 1988, shortly after winning the 1988 Presidential election. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)
She photographed Ronald Reagan campaigning to become president in 1980, George H.W. Bush surf-fishing shortly after winning the office eight years later, and Britain’s late Queen Elizabeth II visiting the Bahamas in 1977. And in one of the images that would build Willens’ sports portfolio, she captured then-world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali at a Miami Beach boxing gym.
“For me, sports has the ability to capture these moments of extreme emotion,” Willens told Buzzfeed. “The joy of it, it’s right there in front of you all the time.”
Over her career, she would cover six Olympics, 11 Super Bowls and countless NBA finals, World Series and other championships. Among her points of pride was seeing a 1977 photo she made of tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King grace the cover of King’s 2021 autobiography” All In.”
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AP photo retirees (and Kathy) at the 25-year dinner at AP headquarters about 5-6 years ago. Among them, retired AP photo Director Hal Buell, front and center, Far left Kathy Willens, retired photographer Ed Bailey, photo editor Sam Heiman, (back row), retired photographer Ron Frehm (back row), Photographer Richard Drew, front row, far right. Retired photo editor Barbara Woike, too. Photo equipment manager Jesus “G” Medina, (photo by Charles Rex Arbogast).
Yet Willens also was drawn to stories about Florida’s Haitian and Cuban immigrants, work that would become part of an exhibition at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in 2004.
After transferring to AP’s New York headquarters in 1993, she was dispatched to Somalia in the throes of its civil war. Some of Willens’ fellow photojournalists were captured and killed covering the country around that time, and Willens told Buzzfeed that after returning to New York, she decided she wanted to shoot more news and sports closer to home.
Her New York coworkers and competitors got to know her as a photographer who could not be kept out of the picture. She would get into position and get her shot, whatever grit, ingenuity, scrum-savvy and know-how it took.
“She just would not be denied a picture. And her photography was just simple and precise, but really exquisite, at the same time,” said AP business photo editor Peter Morgan, who worked with Willens for years while overseeing photo coverage of the New York metro area.
“She was just really good at finding the right moment,” he said. “Sometimes you had to look at her pictures for an extra second to really get them. But once you saw them, you got how brilliant they were.”
She would do plenty of that, plus such projects as an eight-month-long documentary photo series on mothers in New York state prisons. Even during the last six months of her career, Willens put her all into trying to pull off a difficult project, about a high school for struggling students, that ultimately proved impossible.
Willens earned a roster of journalism awards, including an Associated Press Managing Editors Award for Reportorial Excellence and multiple wins in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame photo competitions.
While working at AP, Willens for years taught photojournalism as an adjunct professor at New York University. Even a few months ago, she was meeting with an acquaintance to share her expertise, her nephew said.
She was also a keen birder, often making pictures of her finds in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
Her nephew plans a memorial service there.
Click here for a link to this story.
Connecting mailbox
The barbarians have broken through the gates
Adolphe Bernotas - The virus of rogue letters continues to infect political discourse. Recently, tenets began to be sounded as “tenents.” This morning a member of Congress, while speaking from a panel of pundits, told millions of TV viewers about “pundints.”
Have these American English speakers no respect for their native tongue? Please be aware that innocent impressionable children, and adults, might be listening of your transmogrification of English as she is spoke.
1976 Nashville classmates
John Nolan – Class of 1976, Nashville - Yeah, Richard Lowe and I joined AP in the Music City within a few months of each other.
We became buddies, and we've stayed in touch during recent years. Among other things, I remember Richard as a big fan of Jimmy Buffett and his beach sound. That isn't surprising, since both guys spent a lot of years in south Florida. One day, coincidentally, Richard and I were in a Nashville bar and we saw Jimmy Buffett there. He apparently was in town to do some recording, to take advantage of Nashville's fine Music Row sound studios.
Thanks again for keeping all us old AP geezers in touch with each other.
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A homework assignment
David Morris - I have a homework assignment for my Connecting Colleagues:
Please check your fire extinguishers today. Make sure you know how to use them. (And if you don’t have any, buy a few today).
We had a fire in late June at the dream house we built three years ago in the Pennsylvania woods. We’re fine. The house will be in a few months. But it easily could have been a different story.
The closest fire stations are 8 miles away and storm-downed trees blocked both ends of our gravel road. That's where the extinguishers came in. It was my wife, Jodie, our nephew Alex, and me against the fire for 20 minutes until help arrived. We were able to safely and quickly knock down flames that reached the kitchen through an air vent from the basement.
Without working extinguishers, the fire chief told us, we would have lost the house and the memories inside. Instead, we only need to replace some furniture, food from the pantry and some small appliances.
It will take several months to repair the fire and smoke damage. New fire extinguishers will be in place on all three levels when we move back this fall.
(David Morris is a retired journalist. He spent 13 years with the AP in Harrisburg, Sacramento and Washington, DC.)
Jody Calendar: force of nature, friend of AP
Mark Mittelstadt - The Associated Press and journalism in general lost a good friend Sunday with the death of Jody Calendar. She was 74.
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Former deputy executive editor of the Asbury Park Press and then managing editor of The Record of Hackensack, N.J., Jody played an active role in AP's member editors organization, the Associated Press Managing Editors. She served on the group's board of directors and added the job of planning and organizing the 2001 annual conference, that year being held in Milwaukee. When she completed her time on the board, she became a contractor for the association's grant-funded projects including NewsTrain and Credibility Roundtables, where she made presentations in many U.S. newsrooms.
Besides her work at newspapers and with APME, Jody also frequently taught or spoke at various journalism events, including workshops of the American Press Institute. She was an adjunct instructor at Rutgers University and at Brookdale Community College, where she also served on the BCC foundation board. She did journalism-related work for the U.S. State Department.
Jody's close friend, Joanne Dinero, reported Jody had been ill for months. It was found that cancer had spread to her brain. She spent the last month at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. The family moved her to Care One in Holmdel, N.J., a week ago and she died in hospice care.
E. Don Lass, former president and CEO of New Jersey Press and editor and publisher of the Asbury Park Press, commented: "Editor, reporter, teacher, team builder, passionate about her work, compassionate among her colleagues, all this and more mirrors Jody Calendar. A journalist who spread the word of good journalism around the world and helped the Press become a major publication at a time when newspapers were at their peak of influence. Her loss is hard to take but her energy and skills will be remembered. We love you Jody!"
Kathleen Carroll, former AP executive editor, said she was sorry to learn of her passing. "Jody was a force and a Jersey Girl from start to finish," she said.
I met Jody after being becoming AP chief of bureau for New Jersey in 1990. Jody had connections with other editors around the state. We decided she should serve as president of the moribund New Jersey APME group. We held a series of local meetings to discuss common issues and the need to work together. Her efforts helped build a more cohesive corps of newspaper editors in a largely competitive and often parochial state.
A month before the 2001 APME conference Jody and I boarded a Midwest Express flight for a final planning meeting. We flew out of Newark on a bright early fall morning. It was not until we had landed at General Mitchell International Airport and were in a cab on our way to the Milwaukee hotel that we learned terrorists had flown planes into the World Trade Center. While we were checking in, we heard news reports a third plane had struck the Pentagon.
We immediately went to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newsroom a block away and began figuring out next steps. Some APME leaders felt the group shouldn't continue with the conference, a sentiment shared in some quarters at AP. But Jody pushed forward. Among other things we ripped up the conference program and started over with presentations by AP staff who had covered the collapse of the Manhattan towers and aftermath, programs on terrorism and disasters, maintaining journalists' health during times of crisis. One week after 9/11, anthrax attacks began to be reported at various spots around the country. The Journal Sentinel helped us line up a live feed during the conference with their former governor, Tommy Thompson, then serving as US Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Chris Peck, former editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane and the 2001 APME president, said Jody's passing is "a loss to our world. She brought a spark to journalism and to those around her. I will always be grateful for her tireless effort to make the 2001 APME convention a rousing success."
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Joe Strupp, former senior editor of trade publication Editor & Publisher, wrote that Jody was "a wonderful woman and also former Bergen Record managing editor and great voice for the news world through APME and others. Prayers."
Bob Haiman, who continued his involvement with APME well after his 1982 presidency in several capacities, said Jody was "a very strong APME player and contributor in so many ways. RIP Jody!"
Survivors include her husband, Carl, and a son, Shane, and grandchildren. Another son, Bart, died in 2022 in France.
Her funeral service is scheduled for 11 a.m. EDT Sunday at John E. Day Funeral Home in Red Bank, N.J., with a visitation an hour before. According to Carl, a "Jody-worthy party" will follow at a restaurant.
| Connecting wishes Happy Birthday |  | |
Stories of interest
On an unusually busy news day, did the assassination attempt’s aftermath change the media tone? (AP)
By DAVID BAUDER
If this were a typical presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate on the Republican ticket would have likely dominated media discussions for a week or two.
This is not a typical presidential campaign.
On Monday, that choice was just part of the mix. On the opening day of the Republican convention two days after an assassination attempt on Trump, news organizations juggled several major stories and grappled with the uncertainty of whether political violence would change the tone of their coverage.
Would a lowering of volume on political combat that some, including President Joe Biden, had called for in the wake of Saturday’s shooting be evident at news outlets that many say live for the fight?
Digging into seismic events, hoping for some wisdom
Coming from a man known for his understanding of political theater, Trump’s rollout of his Vance selection on Monday afternoon was understated. First, news organizations were fed word that two men thought to be on his short list — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — had been told they had not been chosen.
Read more here.
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How the media’s wait for the facts in Trump shooting fed a backlash (Washington Post)
By Paul Farhi
In the frantic moments after a would-be assassin fired shots at Donald Trump, news organizations reported cautiously about what had occurred. As with many breaking stories, it wasn’t immediately clear what was unfolding.
But being right rather than first with the news wasn’t good enough for many readers. With the benefit of ample hindsight, some critics on social media trashed the early, uncertain reports as inadequate or worse.
USA Today, for example, published its first story just 19 minutes after shots rang out with an initial headline of: “Trump removed from stage by Secret Service after loud noises startles former president, crowd.” In a social media post minutes later, it said “popping noises rattled the crowd in Pennsylvania.”
Despite continuous updates to the story, some who encountered USA Today’s preliminary reports were dismissive and contemptuous.
Read more here.
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How reporters pieced together details about the Trump assassination attempt (Poynter)
By: Angela Fu
When former President Donald Trump stepped onstage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday, The Washington Post had just two journalists on the ground to cover the moment. An additional 30 to 40 were watching remotely, waiting to jump in if something newsworthy — like a vice president pick announcement — happened.
Not even 10 minutes later, gunshots rang out. Secret Service agents rushed Trump, who had been struck in the ear by a bullet, off the stage. By the hour’s end, the number of Post journalists working on the story ballooned to 200 to 250 people.
Coverage of the shooting — the first assassination attempt to injure a U.S. president since the 1981 plot against Ronald Reagan — has been an enormous undertaking. Hundreds of journalists, perhaps more, have worked around the clock since Saturday, painstakingly confirming details about the shooting even as rumors and conspiracy theories fly on social media.
Reporters first had to establish the source of the noises that had preceded the Secret Service’s decision to rush Trump offstage. Information was limited to what journalists could see, said Washington Post deputy managing editor Mark W. Smith, who helped guide the outlet’s coverage Saturday. At that point, all they had seen was Trump touch his ear before Secret Service agents tackled him and ushered him away. They couldn’t yet confirm that the noises had been gunshots, and even though they could see Trump’s bloody ear, they didn’t yet know the cause.
Read more here.
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Many print readers looking for Sunday coverage of the assassination attempt found ‘zippo’ (Poynter)
By: Rick Edmonds
Sunday print newspaper readers, looking for a roundup of stories and photo coverage of the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, were as likely as not to come up empty. Fewer presses, remote printing and early deadlines often mean something happening at 6:15 p.m. might as well have been in the middle of the night.
A quick survey suggested that print deadlines and press arrangements mattered as much to newspapers’ ability to get some sort of story in print as the traditional time advantage of being on the West Coast.
Gannett communications chief Lark-Marie Antón said that besides West Coast titles like The Arizona Republic, those among the chain’s 200 plus papers that were able to include some coverage in at least some editions included the Detroit Free Press, The Bergen (N.J.) Record, and the (Wilmington, Delaware) News Journal.
On the other hand, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief of Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle, emailed me, “Our print deadline is Friday night. We got zippo.”
California-based McClatchy, with a number of West Coast titles, had a particularly unhappy coincidence. Some of its papers switched last week to postal service delivery, so for the first time, what would have been a Sunday edition was delivered instead in the Saturday mail.
Read more here. Shared by Mark Mittelstadt, Doug Pizac.
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Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance served in Marines as a journalist (Washington Times)
By Mike Glenn
In November 2005, Cpl. James D. Hamel, a Marine Corps combat correspondent with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, wrote an article at Al Asad Airbase in Iraq about all the hard work it takes to keep the KC-130Js of Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 252 in the air.
“Without the aircrew, no one would be able to fly,” Capt. Michael S. Roberts, a pilot with VMGR-252 told Cpl. Hamel in the article that can be found on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. “The difference between a good and bad crew is the difference between an unsuccessful or successful mission.”
On Monday, the author of that article — Cpl. Hamel — was picked by former President Donald Trump to be his running mate on the Republican ticket in November.
Sen. J.D. Vance, Ohio Republican, was born James Donald Bowman in August 1984. His parents divorced and he was later adopted by his mother’s third husband. He went by James Hamel — his stepfather’s surname — when he enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school.
After basic training, he was assigned to the public affairs section of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina.
Read more here. Shared by Dennis Conrad.
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MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ host says he was surprised and disappointed the show was pulled from the air (AP)
By DAVID BAUDER
MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said Tuesday he was “surprised and disappointed” the news show was pulled off the air the day before and hasn’t received a good explanation about why.
The four-hour morning news and talk show, a favorite of President Joe Biden and his fans, was pre-empted Monday in favor of a live news feed from the NBC News Now streaming service that was focused on covering the aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Scarborough said he was told Sunday night that all of NBC News channels would be working from a single, consistent feed for the entire day Monday.
“That did not happen,” he said on “Morning Joe” Tuesday. “We don’t know why that didn’t happen. Our team was not given a good answer as to why that did not happen, but it didn’t happen.”
An MSNBC spokesman said the network had no comment on what Scarborough said.
Read more here.
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AP classes, by the year...
(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a listing of Connecting colleagues who have shared the year and the bureau where they started with the AP. If you would like to share your own information, I will include it in later postings. Current AP staffers are also welcome to share their information.)
1951 - Norm Abelson (Boston)
1953 – Charles Monzella (Huntington, WVa)
1955 – Henry Bradsher (Atlanta), Paul Harrington (Boston), Joe McGowan (Cheyenne)
1957 - Louis Uchitelle (Philadelphia)
1958 – Roy Bolch (Kansas City)
1959 – Charlie Bruce (Montgomery)
1960 – Claude Erbsen (New York), Carl Leubsdorf (New Orleans)
1961 – Peter Arnett (Jakarta, Indonesia), Strat Douthat (Charleston. WVa), Warren Lerude (San Diego), Ed Staats (Austin)
1962 – Paul Albright (Cheyenne), Malcolm Barr Sr. (Honolulu), Myron Belkind (New York), Peggy Simpson (Dallas), Kelly Smith Tunney (Miami)
1963 – Hal Bock (New York)
1964 – Rachel Ambrose (Indianapolis), Larry Hamlin (Oklahoma City), John Lengel (Los Angeles), Ron Mulnix (Denver), Lyle Price (San Francisco), Arlene Sposato (New York), Hilmi Toros (New York)
1965 – Bob Dobkin (Pittsburgh), Harry Dunphy (Denver), John Gibbons (New York), Jim Luther (Nashville), Larry Margasak (Harrisburg), Rich Oppel (Tallahassee)
1966 – Shirley Christian (Kansas City), Mike Doan (Portland, OR), Edie Lederer (New York), Nancy Shipley (Nashville), Mike Short (Los Angeles), Marty Thompson (Seattle), Nick Ut (Saigon), Kent Zimmerman (Chicago)
1967 – Dan Berger (Los Angeles), Adolphe Bernotas (Concord), Lou Boccardi (New York), Linda Deutsch (Los Angeles), Don Harrison (Los Angeles), Doug Kienitz (Cheyenne), David Liu (New York), Bruce Lowitt (Los Angeles), Chuck McFadden (Los Angeles), Martha Malan (Minneapolis), Bill Morrissey (Buffalo), Larry Paladino (Detroit), Michael Putzel (Raleigh), Bruce Richardson (Chicago), Richard Shafer (Baltimore), Victor Simpson (Newark), Michael Sniffen (Newark)
1968 – Lee Balgemann (Chicago), John Eagan (San Francisco), Joe Galu (Albany/Troy), Peter Gehrig (Frankfurt), Charles Hanley (Albany), Jerry Harkavy (Portland, Maine), Herb Hemming (New York), Brian King (Albany), Samuel Koo (New York), Karren Mills (Minneapolis), Michael Rubin (Los Angeles), Rick Spratling (Salt Lake City), Barry Sweet (Seattle)
1969 - Ann Blackman (New York), Ford Burkhart (Philadelphia), Dick Carelli (Charleston, WVa), Dennis Coston (Richmond), Mary V. Gordon (Newark), Daniel Q. Haney (Portland, Maine), Mike Harris (Chicago), Brad Martin (Kansas City), David Minthorn (Frankfurt), Cynthia Rawitch (Los Angeles), Bob Reid (Charlotte), Mike Reilly (New York), Doug Tucker (Tulsa), Bill Winter (Helena)
1970 – Richard Boudreaux (New York), Richard Drew (San Francisco), Bob Egelko (Los Angeles), Steve (Indy) Herman (Indianapolis), Tim Litsch (New York), Lee Margulies (Los Angeles), Chris Pederson (Salt Lake City), Brendan Riley (San Francisco), Larry Thorson (Philadelphia)
1971 – Harry Atkins (Detroit), Jim Bagby (Kansas City), Larry Blasko (Chicago), Jim Carlson (Milwaukee), Jim Carrier (New Haven), Chris Connell (Newark), Bill Gillen (New York), Bill Hendrick (Birmingham), John Lumpkin (Dallas), Kendal Weaver (Montgomery)
1972 – Hank Ackerman (New York), Bob Fick (St. Louis), Joe Frazier (Portland, Ore.), Terry Ganey (St. Louis), Mike Graczyk (Detroit), Denis Gray (Albany), Lindel Hutson (Little Rock), Brent Kallestad (Sioux Falls), Tom Kent (Hartford), Nolan Kienitz (Dallas), Andy Lippman (Phoenix), Ellen Miller (Helena), Mike Millican (Hartford), Lew Wheaton (Richmond)
1973 - Jerry Cipriano (New York), Susan Clark (New York), Norm Clarke (Cincinnati), Joe Galianese (East Brunswick), Merrill Hartson (Richmond), Mike Hendricks (Albany), Tom Journey (Tucson), Steve Loeper (Los Angeles), Tom Slaughter (Sioux Falls), Jim Spehar (Denver), Paul Stevens (Albany), Jeffrey Ulbrich (Cheyenne), Owen Ullmann (Detroit), John Willis (Omaha), Evans Witt (San Francisco)
1974 – Norman Black (Baltimore), David Espo (Cheyenne), Dan George (Topeka), Robert Glass (Philadelphia), Steve Graham (Helena), Tim Harper (Milwaukee), Elaine Hooker (Hartford), Sue Price Johnson (Charlotte), Dave Lubeski (Washington), Janet McConnaughey (Washington), Lee Mitgang (New York), Bud Weydert (Toledo), Marc Wilson (Little Rock)
1975 – Peter Eisner (Columbus), David Powell (New York), Eileen Alt Powell (Milwaukee)
1976 – Brad Cain (Chicago), Judith Capar (Philadelphia), Dick Chady (Albany), Steve Crowley (Washington), David Egner (Oklahoma City), Marc Humbert (Albany), Steven Hurst (Columbus), Richard Lowe (Nashville), John Nolan (Nashville), Charlotte Porter (Minneapolis), Chuck Wolfe (Charlotte)
1977 – Bryan Brumley (Washington), Robert Burns (Jefferson City), Charles Campbell (Nashville), Dave Carpenter (Philadelphia), Ken Herman (Dallas), Mike Holmes (Des Moines), Brad Kalbfeld (New York), Scott Kraft (Jefferson City), John Kreiser (New York), Peter Leabo (Dallas), Kevin LeBoeuf (Los Angeles), Ellen Nimmons (Minneapolis), Dan Sewell (Buffalo), Estes Thompson (Richmond), David Tirrell-Wysocki (Concord)
1978 – Tom Eblen (Louisville), Ruth Gersh (Richmond), Doug Pizac (Los Angeles), Charles Richards (Dallas), Reed Saxon (Los Angeles), Steve Wilson (Boston)
1979 – Brian Bland (Los Angeles), Scotty Comegys (Chicago), John Daniszewski (Philadelphia), Frances D’Emilio (San Francisco), Pat Fergus (Albany), Brian Friedman (Des Moines), Sally Hale (Dallas), Jill Lawrence (Harrisburg), Barry Massey (Kansas City), Phillip Rawls (Nashville), John Rice (Carson City), Linda Sargent (Little Rock), Joel Stashenko (Albany), Robert Wielaard (Brussels)
1980 – Alan Adler (Cleveland), Christopher Bacey (New York), Jeff Barnard (Providence), Mark Duncan (Cleveland), Bill Kaczor (Tallahassee), Mitchell Landsberg (Reno), Kevin Noblet (New Orleans), Jim Rowley (Baltimore), David Speer (Jackson), Hal Spencer (Providence), Carol J. Williams (Seattle)
1981 – Paul Davenport (Phoenix), Dan Day (Milwaukee), John Flesher (Raleigh), Len Iwanski (Bismarck), Ed McCullough (Albany), Drusilla Menaker (Philadelphia), Kim Mills (New York), Mark Mittelstadt (Des Moines), Roland Rochet (New York), Lee Siegel (Seattle), Marty Steinberg (Baltimore), Bill Vogrin (Kansas City)
1982 – Dorothy Abernathy (Little Rock), Al Behrman (Cincinnati), Tom Cohen (Jefferson City), John Epperson (Chicago), Ric Feld (Atlanta), Nick Geranios (Helena), Howard Gros (New Orleans), Robert Kimball (New York), Rob Kozloff (Detroit), Bill Menezes (Kansas City), David Ochs (New York)
1983 – Scott Charton (Little Rock), Sue Cross (Columbus), Mark Elias (Chicago), Diana Heidgerd (Miami), Sheila Norman-Culp (New York), Carol Esler Ochs (New York), Amy Sancetta (Philadelphia), Rande Simpson (New York), Dave Skidmore (Milwaukee)
1984 – Owen Canfield (Oklahoma City), Wayne Chin (Washington), Jack Elliott (Oklahoma City), Kelly P. Kissel (New Orleans), Joe Macenka (Richmond), Eva Parziale (San Francisco), Walt Rastetter (New York), Keith Robinson (Columbus), Cliff Schiappa (Kansas City), David Sedeño (Dallas), Andrew Selsky (Cheyenne), Patty Woodrow (Washington)
1985 – Beth Grace (Columbus), Betty Kumpf Pizac (Los Angeles)
1986 – Joni Baluh Beall (Richmond), David Beard (Jackson), Tom Coyne (Columbia, SC), Dave DeGrace (Milwaukee), Alan Flippen (Louisville), Jim Gerberich (San Francisco), Howard Goldberg (New York), Mark Hamrick (Dallas), Sandy Kozel (Washington), Robert Meyers (London), David Morris (Harrisburg)
1987 – Donna Abu-Nasr (Beirut), Dave Bauder (Albany), Chuck Burton (Charlotte), Beth Harris (Indianapolis), Lynne Harris (New York), Steven L. Herman (Charleston, WVa), Rosemarie Mileto (New York), John Rogers (Los Angeles)
1988 – Chris Carola (Albany), Peg Coughlin (Pierre), Kathy Gannon (Islamabad), Steve Hart (Washington), Melissa Jordan (Sioux Falls), Bill Pilc (New York), Kelley Shannon (Dallas)
1989 – Ted Bridis (Oklahoma City), Charlie Arbogast (Trenton), Ron Fournier (Little Rock)
1990 – Frank Fisher (Jackson), Dan Perry (Bucharest), Steve Sakson (Baltimore), Sean Thompson (New York)
1991 – Amanda Kell (Richmond), Santiago Lyon (Cairo), Lisa Pane (Hartford), Ricardo Reif (Caracas), Bill Sikes (Buffalo)
1992 – Kerry Huggard (New York)
1993 – Jim Salter (St. Louis)
1995 – Donna Tommelleo (Hartford)
1996 – Patricia N. Casillo (New York)
1997 – J. David Ake (Chicago), Pamela Collins (Dallas), Madhu Krishnappa Maron (New York), Jim Suhr (Detroit), Jennifer Yates (Baltimore)
2000 – Gary Gentile (Los Angeles)
2006 – Jon Gambrell (Little Rock)
| Today in History – July 17, 2024 |  | |
Today is Wednesday, July 17, the 199th day of 2024. There are 167 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California after its $17 million, year-long construction; the park drew a million visitors in its first 10 weeks.
Also on this date:
In 1862, during the Civil War, Congress approved the Second Confiscation Act, which declared that all slaves taking refuge behind Union lines were to be set free.
In 1902, Willis Carrier produced a set of designs for what would become the world’s first modern air-conditioning system.
In 1918, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began as right-wing army generals launched a coup attempt against the Second Spanish Republic.
In 1944, during World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of them African-Americans, were killed when a pair of ammunition ships exploded at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California.
In 1945, following Nazi Germany’s surrender, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War II.
In 1975, an Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind.
In 1981, 114 people were killed when a pair of suspended walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed during a tea dance.
In 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Europe-bound Boeing 747, exploded and crashed off Long Island, New York, shortly after departing John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board.
In 2014, all 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were killed when the Boeing 777 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine; both Ukraine’s government and pro-Russian separatists denied responsibility.
In 2020, civil rights icon John Lewis, whose bloody beating by Alabama state troopers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long and celebrated career in Congress, died at age 80.
In 2022, a report said nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to a mass shooting that left 21 people dead at a Texas elementary school, but “egregiously poor decision-making” resulted in a chaotic scene that lasted more than an hour before the gunman was finally confronted and killed.
Today’s Birthdays: Sportscaster Verne Lundquist is 84. Queen Camilla of the United Kingdom is 77. Rock musician Terry “Geezer” Butler is 75. Actor Lucie Arnaz is 73. Actor David Hasselhoff is 72. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is 70. Film director Wong Kar-wai is 66. Television producer Mark Burnett is 64. Singer Regina Belle is 61. Country music artist Craig Morgan is 60. Rock musician Lou Barlow is 58. Actor Bitty Schram (TV: “Monk”) is 56. Actor Jason Clarke is 55. Movie director F. Gary Gray is 55. Country singer Luke Bryan is 48. Film director/screenwriter Justine Triet is 46. R&B singer Jeremih (jehr-uh-MY’) is 37. Actor Billie Lourd is 32. NHL center Connor Bedard is 19.
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Connecting is a daily newsletter published Monday through Friday that reaches more than 1,800 retired and former Associated Press employees, present-day employees, and news industry and journalism school colleagues. It began in 2013. Past issues can be found by clicking Connecting Archive in the masthead. Its author, Paul Stevens, retired from the AP in 2009 after a 36-year career as a newsman in Albany and St. Louis, correspondent in Wichita, chief of bureau in Albuquerque, Indianapolis and Kansas City, and Central Region vice president based in Kansas City.
Got a story to share? A favorite memory of your AP days? Don't keep them to yourself. Share with your colleagues by sending to Ye Olde Connecting Editor. And don't forget to include photos!
Here are some suggestions:
- Connecting "selfies" - a word and photo self-profile of you and your career, and what you are doing today. Both for new members and those who have been with us a while.
- Second chapters - You finished a great career. Now tell us about your second (and third and fourth?) chapters of life.
- Spousal support - How your spouse helped in supporting your work during your AP career.
- My most unusual story - tell us about an unusual, off the wall story that you covered.
- "A silly mistake that you make"- a chance to 'fess up with a memorable mistake in your journalistic career.
- Multigenerational AP families - profiles of families whose service spanned two or more generations.
- Volunteering - benefit your colleagues by sharing volunteer stories - with ideas on such work they can do themselves.
- First job - How did you get your first job in journalism?
- Most unusual place a story assignment took you.
Paul Stevens
Editor, Connecting newsletter
paulstevens46@gmail.com
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