Not a birth picture, but at least a birthday suit -- Bonnie Schupp poses for her first portrait in early 1945. This picture graced the bunk of her father Alvin on a U.S. Navy ship taking him to Italy near the end of World War II.

 

 Remembering Bonnie

on her birthday

 Today is Bonnie Schupp's 79th birthday. Or it would have been, had pancreatic cancer not intervened nearly three years ago.

 In between our respective bouts with life-threatening illness, we would talk on our occasional walks together about how to celebrate turning 80. We fantasized a big, catered party, inviting all of our friends and family. There would be performances by musician friends, a chance for others to say a few words -- kind or, preferably, funny about us and our relationships with them. It would be a celebration not only of our lives, but our friends while we still were around to appreciate and thank them.

 (We also poked fun at ourselves. For years on her birthday, I'd joke about how I'd never been to bed with anybody that old before.)

We did have a party, just not in the way it was intended. She only reached the age of 76. But it was a celebration of her life -- which she wanted instead of a funeral -- as well as the friendships that enriched it.

Age was not -- is not -- relevant. Especially not when it comes to love. It grows and endures.

 Poetic perspective

A few days ago, taking steps to freshen Bonnie's Google account so that the Overloads of Cyberspace would not erase her digital life, I stumbled onto her first efforts in blogging from the early days of the 21st Century. The blog was called "Blooming Journeys" -- its intent largely to post about the world of education, from the viewpoint of a retired teacher. It was a forerunner to her infinitely wider approach to blogging and creativity in an online journal of sorts, which she renamed simply "Journeys."

And one of those early "Blooming" entries was about being born, and a poem written on the day it happened by her great aunt, Gleasie Leatherbury.

 Here's what Bonnie posted:

 

Note: My great Aunt Gleasie, before she died while in her 90's, gave me this poem she wrote on the day I was born, December 10, 1944.

 

Fifteen Days Before Christmas

 

"Twas fifteen days before Christmas on a Sabbath morn,

In the Norfolk General Hospital, a baby was born.

There were other babies too--ones I've never seen

But this one in particular is little Bonnie Jean.



She was tucked in her basket with the greatest of care

Without the slightest idea that Daddy was near.

He was -- and Granddaddy too --

Awaiting news of a baby in blue.



Thirty hours he waited in great suspense,

Till the doctors thought he'd have no sense.

So he bit his nails and paced the floor,

When suddenly a nurse appeared in the door.



Said she, "Mr. Schupp, your wife presents you with a fine baby girl."

But she realized his head was still in a whirl

When he still imagined she had said a boy,

because like a sailor, he simply shouted, "Ship ahoy!"



Now that all is over, and Mother and baby are doing well,

Daddy feels much better too, as everyone could tell.

He is not disappointed, and confidentially I think,

He is perfectly satisfied with a little girl in pink. 

Bonnie in 2009, posing with one of her photographs -- an image of "Baltimore Hons" that remains a visual landmark in the window of M&T Bank on 36th Street in the city's Hampden neighborhood.

 

 

Helen Bentley and friends celebrate her 90th

Not many parties end with back-to-back singing of “Happy Birthday” and “God Bless America", but those were the main sentiments Sunday afternoon for one of the Baltimore area’s most celebrated public figures – Helen Delich Bentley.

Helen Bentley (Photo by Bonnie Schupp)

And in a “roast” leading up to the songs, many of Maryland’s top politicians and business leaders gave voice to their love for (and yes, even fear of) the 90-year-old former newspaper reporter,  Federal Maritime Commission chairman and five-term congresswoman.

Hundreds of invited guests from all aspects of her life -- including relatives, extended family, even her dentist – heard testimony from the likes of congressional leaders and former governors on the influence Helen had both on them and the city and state. The turnout filled the main hall of the waterfront Baltimore Museum of Industry, which was decorated with photos showing scenes from her life, including her husband, antique dealer Bill Bentley, who died a decade ago.

Matter not that she is a Republican. No less a liberal Democrat than the Baltimore area’s  Elijah Cummings, among the most senior African Americans in congress, called her “my dear sister” who “helped me to dream bigger dreams.”

It was Helen, Cummings said, who first told him he was being named chairman of the House subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Affairs and, more bluntly, to “take it.” This notwithstanding his tendency to get seasick “even on small boats” and that “I can’t swim.” A day later, Nancy Pelosi delivered the offer, with the admonition that  “I want you to keep it a secret,” he said.

Nothing affecting the Port of Baltimore could be kept secret from Helen Bentley, who began reporting on maritime affairs at The Baltimore Sun soon after her hiring in 1945 and held the title of maritime editor when newly-inaugurated President Richard Nixon changed the course of her life with an appointment to head the maritime commission in 1969.

I intersected with Helen during the last year and a half of her newspaper days, mostly as an editorial assistant  and young reporter taking dictation over the phone and through a static-faulted dictation recording device to which she radioed or phoned in some of her stories from distant assignments – interspersed with salty language when that primitive technology seemed to be uncooperative.  Legend has it that she could out-cuss the most-hardened longshoremen.

As a longtime denizen of the city desk, including nearly a quarter-century as a rewriteman and my final six years as night metro editor, I had the bad habit of answering phones on the first ring, and knew many of the regular callers simply by voice – Helen among them.

I rarely saw her, and that she even remembered who I was over the years was flattering. But she seemed to remember people of all sorts, among them The Sun’s longtime telephone operator, the late Betty Cramer who, after leaving the newspaper because of multiple sclerosis, received Christmas baskets every year, and other help, from the congresswoman.

The printed invitation to her party was headed by its honorary co-chairs, former Maryland Governors Marvin Mandel, a Democrat, and Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican who, before his lone four-year term in that job, had succeeded Helen in her House of Representatives seat. It was Ehrlich who prompted the renaming of what is now the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore, as part of its 300^th anniversary celebration in 2006.

 Mandel, now 93, spoke briefly of Helen and some of the notable guests as “the people who made this the great state it is.”

“I thought this was a memorial service, and then I saw her,” joked Ehrlich, looking around at what he called “a room full of people who both love her and fear her.”  He also told of Helen’s influence on his life – and his dating habits. He said she disapproved of some of his girlfriends, but eventually found one she deemed right, and how he’d bring her over to visit with Helen on a date. It was an odd threesome, but Helen would put him to work moving heavy things around her house while she sat and talked to the young lawyer friend, Kendel, who would eventually become his wife and, during his term as governor, Maryland’s “first lady.”

The state’s senior U.S. senator, Barbara Mikulski, recalled a time early in her political career when Helen Bentley was pushing for the deepening  of Baltimore’s harbor to accommodate larger ships and disposing of the dredge spoil at tiny Hart and Miller Islands off Baltimore County. Mikulski, with concerns that included fear of possible toxic contaminants, was initially an opponent but said that Helen played a big role in changing her mind.

The project was eventually approved, including a share of federal money. The port channel was deepened, and the enlarged islands eventually became a popular recreation area for boaters.

Former U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes noted that Baltimore, in large measure because of Helen’s continued efforts, now is one of just two ports in the nation that can receive the super-size container ships that soon will be accommodated by a deepened and enlarged Panama Canal passageway.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer included Helen as among the four former Republican members of congress present who had identified themselves as members of the Maryland delegation – “not as Republican members of the Maryland delegation” – in a lament that “we’re at a time where we have real polarization, confrontation and gridlock in the Congress of the United States.”

Hoyer also alluded to Helen’s championship of American manufacturing, and how as a congresswoman (and no stranger to a sledgehammer) she staged public bashings of Japanese-made electronics and even an automobile outside the Capitol building. “I have here a letter from the Japanese ambassador that, because we have a mixed crowd here, I won’t read,” Hoyer joked. (There were children in the crowd.)

Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger said even in running against Helen for her old seat when it was vacated by Ehrlich, “we always agreed to fight it out fairly and squarely.”

“Helen and I had 11 debates. After it was over, we shook hands.... She is an adviser to me in the House.”

But it was Cummings, the black Democrat, whose remarks about Helen “as a mentor of mine” were the most emotional and, likely to some, unexpected.

At his request, Cummings said, Helen became a board member of the Baltimore Maritime Industries Academy Foundation, and for seven years has attended its monthly meetings and visited its public high school program that has introduced many teenagers – in particular, the congressman noted, African American children -- to maritime skills and the world of the port.

“The kids love her, and she loves them,” he said, finishing up his remarks by telling her, “I will go to my grave appreciating the impact you’ve had on my life.”

Helen had the last word. A little stooped from the effects of aging, and thus a few inches shorter than she used to be, Helen stood on a low, carpeted riser behind the podium and told about why she wanted to have the huge “birthday bash.”

As the daughter of Serbian immigrant parents and growing up in Ruth, Nevada, she could not recall having had a  birthday party. “You were given a kiss and a piece of cake.”

She added:  “I decided I wanted to see all of this while I was still above ground.”

The invitation specified no gifts, but listed her favorite causes for contributions, among them the museum, the state goodwill vessel Pride of Baltimore, the Maritime Industries Academy Foundation, animal-protection groups, the Bentley scholarship fund at the University of Baltimore, and the one we chose, Wounded Warriors.

Newspapers: A very unmerry birthday

Little cause to celebrate
as Baltimore Sun turns 172,
a shadow of its storied past

The Baltimore Sun turned 172 on Sunday, but the birthday was not much cause for celebration as the pain and uncertainty from its mass firings/layoffs of nearly a third of the news and editorial staff continues.

Latest to go appears to be reporter Nick Madigan, but unlike many others at the newspaper in recent weeks, Nick saw his layoff coming – in painfully slow motion.

Even an act of amazing generosity by a colleague, aimed at saving his job at the cost of her own, could not save Nick because of the seniority numbers game that determined who is in line for the personnel axe.

Jobs started rolling like severed heads at The Sun at the end of April, in two days of instant layoffs that targeted news and editorial managers and then union-jurisdiction staffers. The bloodbath, carried out amid extra security in the newspaper building, claimed at least 61 jobs.

But because of a union contract – a rarity in the anti-union Tribune empire – seniority protected some longtime employees initially given layoffs, enabling them to bump into job classifications they had previously held. Longtime copy editors, for example, could go back to being reporters.

Who was vulnerable to being bumped? Some of the younger staffers were protected by the company with moves into newly-created jobs that were outside union jurisdiction – enabling the company to zero in for firing on older, and higher-paid, employees. Some others with only a few years at The Sun stayed in jobs they loved and hunkered down as best they could in these uncertain times for the print newspaper industry.

The night of May 8, when the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild held a party – a wake, really – to honor both the union and nonunion victims of the purge, it was apparent that job bumping was imminent and some still-employed colleagues like Nick Madigan were on shaky ground. No one was comfortable with the prospect of staffers wanting to keep their jobs having to bump others out the door. It was just another ugly reality of life under the Tribune Company.

That’s when veteran education reporter Sara Neufeld told Nick that, to save his job, she was going to volunteer for a layoff. She’s young, and hasn’t started a family, while Nick is married, the father of a four-year-old son, and faced with a mortgage on the house he and his wife bought after moving from Los Angeles to Baltimore four years ago.

Nick said he didn’t want Sara to quit her job if the only reason was to save his, but that she assured him she had wanted to pursue other opportunities and suddenly found herself with a reason to do so. As it turned out, Sara’s act didn’t help Nick directly, but rather another employee further up the seniority chain.

Still, Nick was stunned at what he called Sara’s “amazingly selfless” offer, a far cry from the manner in which many of their colleagues were driven out of the newspaper they loved.

“I was very touched by what Sara did, and it proves that there are some very fine people at the paper,” said Nick, who left the newsroom Friday to a round of applause from colleagues. “I’m sad to leave The Sun, not only because I'll miss the crew of characters who put it out every day – some of them good friends and all of them very dedicated – but also because its newsroom is probably the last one I'll work for, and after a 29-year career in newspapers and wire services, that's hard to take.”

Nick has written from around the United States and more than 20 other countries, including France, Morocco, Britain, Mexico, Haiti and Cuba. For The New York Times, he covered the Columbia shuttle disaster, the trials of Michael Jackson and Winona Ryder, the William Kennedy Smith rape case and other stories in California, Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. He also worked on the staffs of the Palm Beach Post, Variety and United Press International, for which he covered the Invasion of Grenada among other stories throughout the Caribbean.

He left his position as a contract writer for The New York Times’ Los Angeles bureau in 2005 to take the job as national media writer for The Sun. But after two years, The Sun, which had begun cutting its personnel and narrowing the scope of its staff’s coverage, eliminated Nick’s beat. He was assigned to the “Sun Rising” team, which was tasked with beefing up coverage of breaking news for the Web site and expanding stories for subsequent print editions. More recently, he’s been covering criminal justice stories, notably the case of Nicholas Browning, who murdered his parents and brothers, and the Rodgers Forge parents who starved their infant son.

On one of my increasingly rare visits to the newsroom a few months ago, I found Nick working a police story and expressed hope that he hadn’t been thrust into a beat he didn’t want or enjoy. But Nick said, enthusiastically, that he was doing the job he always loved – news reporter. He had no complaint about the role.

Not that it much matters now, but Nick said he received his last “performance evaluation” from the company Wednesday, and it was, he said, “pretty damn good.”

(The company went to enormous lengths to create its performance-evaluation system and force a change in the union contract so that annual raises could be based on merit – although it proved to be grossly arbitrary in determining the winners and losers, and was more demoralizing than constructive. And now that The Sun is simply firing people – many of them among the most talented and experienced – it proves the evaluation system to have been an irrelevant waste of time and resources.)

As for Sara, a Sun staffer since 2003 and earlier an education reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, she emailed a note to friends about her decision, in addition to announcing her imminent departure on her education-beat blog at baltimoresun.com. (The responses from readers are telling about how highly her work was regarded by the community that The Sun ostensibly wants to reach online.)

In her note to friends, Sara wrote of the reporters with low seniority about to lose their jobs through bumping:

“One is a friend who is the sole provider of his family of three and stands to lose his house. As he was telling me about his plight last week, I found myself blurting out that I'd like to give my job to save his.

“I was shocked by my words as soon as they were out of my mouth, but ever since then, it's been increasingly clear to me that leaving now will be the right thing for me as well as for whatever reporter whose job I save (unfortunately, I don't think it will be his, but it depends on how the bumping situation plays out over the next few days).

“I'll get five months of severance and vacation time, and I am confident from some job inquiries I've made recently that something will come through during that period. And, though I'm really sad to leave some wonderful colleagues and a great beat, I'll get out of what has become an increasingly unhappy environment. I would also be incredibly sad to leave my adopted home of Baltimore, but so far most of my prospects are in New York City, which would put me with my sister and a quick train ride from the rest of my family.

“So, I don't know what's next, except that 16 years after I fell in love with newspaper reporting as a high school sophomore, it's time to try something new, likely in education. I'm lucky that I've developed a second passion for the subject I've covered for nearly a decade, and public schools aren't going away nearly as quickly as newspapers are.”

Today, Monday, will be Sara’s last day at The Sun.

Nick said his treatment by top Sun editors was at least humane, given the advance notice a week earlier from Sam Davis, the newsroom’s assistant managing editor for administration who has found himself in the unfortunate role of a messenger with bad news for so many employees. Nick said he was advised to hang on to the possibility of a call-back until the bumping deadline of May 27 should others ahead of him in seniority rankings decide not to come back or, like Sara, volunteer for a layoff.

But even if he manages a return, there is no certainty of a future for anyone at The Baltimore Sun these days.

Sunday, as noted earlier, was the venerable newspaper’s 172nd birthday. When an institution is that old, such occasions rarely get notice – except maybe at numbers divisible by 25, when the marketing folks take advantage of it as a sales pitch.

The last such occasion included a specially fat commemorative Sunday edition of The Sun and this slogan: “The Story of Our Lives for 150 Years.”

I have that slogan sitting in front of me, emblazoned on a white commemorative mug produced for the 150th birthday. The metallic gold lettering is beginning to chip away with the passage of time and the mug’s delivery of an occasional dose of caffeine.

The Sun will turn 175 on May 17, 2012 – if it lives.

A lot of people have their doubts.