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Journalist Jack Hawn explores the fascinating span of his long career in journalism from its inception at Fort Ord’s Public Information Office (PIO) in 1948 until his retirement from the Los Angeles Times in 1991. Except for some childhood “freelancing” about schoolyard gossip that he passed out in flyer format plus “writing letters from time to time, and getting straight-A report cards from Mrs. Opal Oliver, my high-school English teacher,” Hawn states, he never saw himself in a journalism career: “…I couldn’t envision myself bent over a typewriter attempting to compose an acceptable news story.” There was, however, a six-week course the Army eventually sent him to in 1950, but this was an endeavor he considered a waste of taxpayer money. Instead, Hawn learned all his newspaper writing, editing, and publishing chops on the job. The opportunity to write stateside during the Korean conflict was bestowed by “Colonel Amos W. Flemings, a reserve officer and director of public relations at the Apple Valley Country Club in Victorville, California.” The assignment was undertaken “on the picturesque Monterrey Peninsula, the 4th Infantry Division… under the command of General Robert T. Frederick… the youngest major general in the United States Army at the time.” Unlike other recruits, Hawn worked regular office hours with every weekend off, had no “KP,” or kitchen duty, and even had private living quarters—possibly the best circumstances any Army private could dream of.
This fortuitous and perhaps auspicious entry into the field continued with both luck and hard work, playing a role in Hawn’s eventual career path as a copyboy for the Citizen-News and, later, as an LA Times columnist and freelance screenwriter for a variety of television programs. His promotion to the C-N sports desk was a leg up financially and socially. Hawn’s lifelong residency in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles evolved into a pleasant lifestyle of attending sporting and social events with his wife, opening up many opportunities to meet celebrity athletes, teams, and managers now well-known in US sports history. His interest in creative writing allowed him to rub shoulders with some notable Hollywood producers and actors of the day. Hawn naturally and unselfconsciously drops a plethora of highly recognizable names throughout his chapters that define the various stages and eras of his career.
Readers will appreciate the snappy, clear writing that echoes the “who, what, when, where, why” prescription of newspaper journalism, coupled with Hawn’s ability to inject a creative element into his prose, no doubt learned and polished during his tenure as a sports columnist and an aspiring television writer. The memoir covers many physical details about the newspaper industry worthy of historical note since Hawn began his career decades before the digital revolution. This was the era when paper copy was collected from various desks and pasted together to form longer articles at copy desks. Proofreaders also read lead lines of type that were set for printing presses. Anyone interested in the hands-on details of newspaper industry history set against the backdrop of national historical events over this forty-three-year span will find much to enjoy in this narrative, including the vintage personal and professional photos of Hawn’s life and times. Hawn is as humbled and surprised by his own entrance and unpretentious progression through the mid-to-late-twentieth-century world of journalism as readers will be, attributing his easygoing introduction and ascension through the ranks as divine providence in his modest, Midwestern way. Hawn appears to have been a natural mover and shaker in the industry, and his memoir reflects this comfortable “meant to be” ambiance. The volume should be a welcome addition to a body of work about historical journalism.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review