Jerry Manley was a devoted newspapermen. He was a brother to me for 50 years. Here is the eulogy I delivered at his memorial service July 16:
First, I need to apologize for the fact I’ll be using the name “Jerry” – which was how I knew him for his half-century as my best friend. Most of his family knew him as Dale.
He had other names, too.
As one of four charter members of a group of rascally newspapermen, he was known as “Chuckles.” (Full disclosure, I was “Flapjacks” and others were nicknamed “Death” and “Flash.” There even was a “Dumbo”).
Growing up, Jerry Dale’s schoolfriends called him “Prof.”
By whatever name, he was one of the last, great newspapermen.
Jerry was the best line editor I worked with in the half-century we spent together as ink-stained brothers. Delivering the news accurately, ethically and honestly was our goal.
A young Jerry quickly proved himself to be a skilled reporter and was promoted into management, mostly on the copy desk. His reporting chops stayed with him, though. When it was his job to edit the work of others, he quickly recognized the holes in stories. He knew the right questions to ask the reporters as he edited their copy.
He knew the Associated Press Stylebook – the old newspaper bible -- front to back.
He was among the last of a breed of newspapermen and newspaperwomen who sacrificed fortune, family time and, too often, health for what we considered an almost-sacred calling.
To me, he was more than a partner in this calling. He was my brother inside and outside the newsroom.
Let’s go back to the second week of November 1981, when Jerry and I threw our own 30th birthday party.
He was born November 9, 1951. Me November 18.
Even at 30, we were two relics, devoted newspapermen who had stayed at The Leaf-Chronicle while most of our contemporaries had moved on to larger markets, public relations or law school.
Younger folks were hired to fill those jobs, but we really didn’t know them and figured none of them would care enough to host a party for two grizzled, old – as we viewed ourselves – newspapermen.
Jerry reserved the party room at his apartments, and I called a friend to get a cut rate on a keg.
Jerry, who was news editor, and I, associate editor, generally went to work at 5 or 5:30 a.m. and stayed until mid-afternoon on weekdays, noon to at least midnight Saturdays. On party Friday, we left the newsroom at noon.
Jerry went to set up his stereo in the party room, so we could play the 30th birthday eight-track mixtapes we’d recorded.
I went to get chips, snacks, soft drinks, ice, paper plates, plastic cups and the keg.
The total was around $100, a lot of money 45 years ago.
“I’ll pay you after the next payday,” Jerry said. I told him recently, we’d apply that debt to our 75th birthday party.
Once we had everything set up for our 30th, Jerry and I started worrying.
“What if the beer is too foamy or doesn’t taste good?”
It was about 3 in the afternoon, and the party began at 6.
We decided that, to protect our younger newsroom guests, we needed to drink the foam off and test the keg.
It took us a couple hours of serious study to feel assured the beer was safe.
I’ll not go into the details of the party, other than to say that young staffers were amazed by the energy of the two old geezers.
Jerry became my best buddy quickly after he moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, sometime in the mid-1970s.
He was hired by the state’s oldest newspaper, The Leaf-Chronicle, to cover the City Council and County Commission.
I had met him earlier, when he was editor of the Gallatin newspaper, a weekly in our chain, and he came to Clarksville on Saturdays to lay out and paste-up his pages.
After he was brought to the daily newspaper, our bond grew unbreakable, until now.
When I was associate editor, news editor Jerry was on my staff.
But it was a team, especially on Saturdays, as we prepared our Sunday newspaper. Cops reporter Rob Dollar – one of the youngsters we’d befriended at our birthday party – would often carry the day with tales of death, destruction and DUIs.
Our front pages were filled with stories about murders, wrecks, a drunken mayor, a back-shooting cop (who was our friend), taxes, asbestos in the schools and deployments from nearby Fort Campbell.
Jerry had the final edit on the horrid weeks of stories about the concurrent but unrelated abductions and murders of two local teenagers.
I organized the coverage, did the first edit and wrote about the human element. Reporter Dollar provided most of the breaking news.
Often our writing was done on deadline, or even past it. If I told Jerry we were running late or we had a new piece of information and had to redo the stories, he’d not get upset. He’d begin composing the new headline, fire up a cigarette – all newspapermen smoked back then -- and wait.
Then he’d edit the stories with a critical eye, quick mind and reporter’s skill.
Adrenaline and sense of duty saved us when we were putting out these newspapers chronicling the two abductions and murders that traumatized the city.
But after the presses rolled and we stopped to absorb these horrible tales, melancholy settled in. The mental cost was high and unshakeable.
To paraphrase The Beatles, “And though the news was rather sad, we just had to laugh ….”
To deal with the weight of the horror, a small fraternity – The News Brothers—was born. Coping with the darkness through laughter and for charity.
One of the things Chuckles, Flapjacks, Death and Flash did was make a Hard Day’s Night-style movie that mocked society, the media and, especially, ourselves.
“Flapjacks: The Motion Picture” was screened November 12, 1982, in an abandoned movie theater, with proceeds going to local charities.
In his long decline, Jerry couldn’t remember a lot about his life in newspapers.
“I remember being silly with you. Making movies… Rolling around on the ground.” His laughter was weak, but sure.
I often reminded him how much I missed the vegetables from his massive gardens. He was generous in bringing the produce to the newsroom. Unfortunately, at least for my taste, he also was generous with his pickles.
“Want some more, man?”
“No,” I’d answer. “Better share with the others.”
The guy high school pals called “Prof” was a brilliant, inquisitive man. He loved to read – especially hard-boiled detective yarns. If you had an opinion about anything from weather to politics, he didn’t always argue, but he might ask “who, what, when, where, why and how,” the age-old formula for good journalism.
Over the phone or at his bedside in various facilities in recent years, I would regale him with replays of two newspapermen’s shared life adventures.
Recently, I was sitting by his bed retelling those stories when I was interrupted by the nursing home social worker, who came in to ask him a few questions. I am not sure why, but I guess she was checking out his awareness in his hours of darkness.
He knew the answers, birth date, marital status, power of attorney, funeral plans. Then she asked “what is most important to you?” He tried to tilt his head toward me as he said, quietly, “Friendship.”
There’s no one left now to laugh with me about Sunday all-night record-listening sessions we shared for years. I laugh when I think about us, standing arm-in-arm singing along with Kristofferson’s “The Silver-Tongued Devil and I.” We were our best audience.
But our best times were in the newsroom.
One Saturday night, cops reporter Dollar came back from the sheriff’s office and city police department. He had information on wrecks and murders that he’d offer to me as stories for Sunday. I’d pick and choose which ones he should work on.
He didn’t have to go any farther than the report he’d scribbled out detailing the deputies’ frenzied pursuit of an escaped pet monkey named Chico.
Jerry and I smiled at each other. In many newsrooms this would be a brief, if that.
Not if it’s a quiet Saturday night in Clarksville. Not if you are a News Brother.
“Let’s make Chico the Monkey our lead story,” Jerry and I agreed.
Rob turned up the volume on the police scanner, and we all listened to the frenzied radio traffic of deputies in hot pursuit of Chico.
After Rob’s story was finished, Jerry and I inserted as many monkey cliches as we could come up with on deadline.
“Deputies go bananas: Monkey at Large!” screamed the headline, stripped across the top of the Sunday newspaper.
The publisher called me into his office first thing Monday.
“I wouldn’t have done the monkey story that way,” he scolded in what was neither the first nor last time we had heart-to-hearts over decisions I’d made with my lifelong accomplice.
Our careers went full circle. Jerry had been the top person on my staff in Clarksville. Decades later, he was my last boss at The Tennessean.
Hoping to get me to resign for bottom-line reasons, the bosses busted me down from entertainment editor and then senior writer to night cops, the entry-level position in any newsroom.
My boss was night editor Jerry Manley.
Instead of quitting, I embraced my job as Jerry’s reporter. I went on vice raids, wrote about the capture of a teamster serial killer, helicopter crashes and bodies found in vacant warehouses.
Eventually, I was told to take “a voluntary buyout.”
On my last night as a newspaperman, I cranked out a batch of cop stories for my boss. A news team one last time.
As the shift ended, Jerry and I hugged, long and hard. There were tears. He may have tried to give me a jar of pickled peppers.
I’ve seen Jerry a fair amount in recent years. For most of one year, he was in a memory care facility near my house. Once or twice a week I was there. Sometimes he remembered me, sometimes he was lost in the TV or in his head. He particularly enjoyed science fiction movies, although he also was a fan of Westerns like “The Rifleman” and “Gunsmoke.” His favorite old movie was “The Wizard of Oz.”
He told me he missed junk food, especially cheese crackers and Diet SunDrop, so I smuggled that contraband in on every visit.
Jerry was able to live his last couple of years at the home he shared with his beloved nephew and caregiver Steven, “Ghost,” the white dog and ‘Cat,” the black cat.
Steven answered most of my phone calls. Jerry was sleeping or lost in some science fiction movie.
But when he was able to talk, I would remind him of our adventures.
When he was in hospice care, I told him he needed to stick around until November for our 75th birthday party.
“We’ll have to do it here in Lewisburg,” he said, though we both knew it wouldn’t happen.
On my last visit he told me: “Don’t reckon I’ll make that party. I’m really sorry, man.”
Me, too.
I’m proud to be here celebrating this great newspaperman, News Brother, savvy editor, best pal. He was a kind man, a good dad and a fine uncle and brother.
But I’d much rather be looking forward to drinking the foam off a keg in November.
“I love you, man,” we told each other at the end of our last conversation.
Just a couple old geezers, newspapermen, saying goodbye.
