The long reach of journalist Blaine Newnham
We were covering a major track meet in Eugene a generation ago, Blaine Newnham and I, and the story of the night, or so I thought, was a long jumper who won in a big upset.
“You know,” Newnham said, “there’s never been much of a history in the long jump at Hayward Field.”
He did it again. I always said Newnham’s greatest professional skill was in sizing up an event or situation and sensing the relevance therein, recognizing a big picture that might not declare itself so easily. Sometimes those pearls are a layer or two beneath the surface.
So on that night in Eugene, while the rest of us were apt to settle for what seemed the obvious story, he was able to put it into the vast context of Hayward Field’s long and decorated history. That ability was a dream gadget in a columnist’s toolbox.
Newnham’s knack for the story, and other journalistic chops, were recalled fondly at a memorial for the late Eugene Register-Guard and Seattle Times columnist, who died in June at 82. What set the event apart was that it seemed to reach a lot of the audience – at a golf club on Bainbridge Island, near where he and his wife Joanna lived his last four decades – on a deeply personal level.
“Losing my dad is like losing a compass, where the needle is suddenly broken,” said his daughter Nicole, a Bay Area filmmaker.
She invoked a poem from a collection by novelist/poet Wendell Berry on his father:
What did I learn from him
He taught the difference
Between good work and sham
Between sense and nonsense
Newnham had an understated way of sifting through life’s B.S. and finding the nectar inside. I remember him in so many story-planning meetings, casual and formal, listening to a lot of yakking around him. You could see his wheels turning. And he’d say, “What do the readers want here?”
It was obvious he reached that level of connection personally, from the poignant recollections of Nicole Newnham and her sister Lisa, a veterinarian on the Olympic peninsula; to the warmth in the memories of several grandsons; to the longtime family friend who found Blaine and Joanna Newnham rushing 280 miles to his side when his son faced a serious legal challenge.
He seemed to know what you needed, whether you were a friend, a daughter, a grandson or a reader. Lisa recalled being 12 years old and expressing that she wanted to be a vet someday. Her dad responded that he was covering a game the next weekend at Washington State, where the vet school is highly regarded, and she’d be coming with him. It didn’t matter that it was a male-dominated field.
“He never saw us as girls,” Lisa said. “Some things, I didn’t even know I could do, but he did.”
She laughed. “I think I’m the youngest person ever to tour the vet school.”
But the visit must have resonated; it’s where she ended up getting her doctorate.
Anecdotes, naturally spilled forth. Years ago, when newspaper guys routinely wore neckties, Newnham, balancing a cup of coffee, reached into a coined paper box, fumbled and, bending over, saw it shut abruptly on his tie.
“He had to flag down a woman to give him 50 cents to open the box,” Lisa said.
Then, as ever, he was the newspaperman. We were in Seoul at the Olympics in 1988 one Monday morning and ran into each other on the way to the main press center. The news had just broken that Ben Johnson’s victory in the 100 meters two days before had been voided because he had tested positive for anabolic steroids. Shortly, there would be an International Olympic Committee press conference to explain the whole episode.
Except these were pre-Internet days, pre-cell phone days, and neither of us could be sure the other knew about the big story that was just breaking. Most of my newspaper years, I was a teammate of Newnham, but at the Post-Intelligencer at the time, I was a competitor. And during our several minutes together, we never mentioned the big story, thinking it might provide the other guy an edge.
We never did talk about it. But that’s the way you operated, forever competing, whether you were with Blaine or battling him. I think he always enjoyed the fight.
The other campaign was to savor the journey. Nicole’s son Blaine, a high school junior named for her father, appreciated that his grandfather managed to be present. But in his twilight years, Nicole said, her father entertained the thoughts that I suspect give pause to many of us.
“I look back now and wonder if I didn’t worry too much,” she said, quoting from an e-mail he sent her, “when there was so much to celebrate.”
There was. He was one reason.