Yankee Editor, Citizen, Senator:
The Colorful Life of Edward Jackson Bennett
Episode 56
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Born in the same year as his Groton School classmate Robert F. Kennedy, Edward Jackson Bennett “batted” his whole life for the other team - the Republicans - as an elected official; but just as often he was the fellow calling balls and strikes as a member of the media as well - both journalist and editor/publisher - where he was called upon to provide unbiased journalism and fairness to both sides. It was a balancing act no doubt, but one he performed with grace and wisdom and - most of all - a sense of humor.
Bennett’s father - a graduate of Harvard who hoped his son would follow in the family tradition gave up that ghost after Ed was expelled from his second expensive private high school. Upon questioning, Ed told him that his first ambition in life was never to return to school again. His second was to become either a fireman or a tugboat captain. As an after-thought he suggested that he might be interested in being a newspaperman.
At 17 Bennetts mother clung to hopes that he would come around but his father arranged for him to meet Charles Marden, editor at the time of the weekly Milton Record, who offered him a job as a production assistant and a writer of obituaries. At the close of WWII Bennett left Massachusetts for Newsweek in New York.
It was at Newsweek that a mentor there advised him to go back to New England and get some “small town newspaper” experience, advice he took and moved to Claremont New Hampshire where for 3 years he worked his way up from reporter to state editor of the Claremont Daily Eagle, a paper that 10 years later he would own.
Bennett dove into the newspaper business and for most of his working days he could run every machine in the shop, an experience he would never have gotten at any of the major newspapers or Newsweek.
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Canaan Saves its Paper
Before he came to own the Claremont Daily Eagle he managed to purchase a small paper on what appears to be a shoestring. In 1950, at the ripe old age of 26, Ed Bennett bought his first small town newspaper, The Canaan Reporter in Canaan, New Hampshire. It was less than 24 hours after he had procured the Reporter when he discovered that there was not enough newsprint in storage for the following day’s edition. Furthermore, because he was a new owner, the company that sold the newsprint to the Reporter required a cash payment for purchases made until a history was established, a cash payment that Edward Bennett did not have.
As the delivery driver declared he was headed off for lunch at a local diner he announced that Bennett had one hour to round up the cash or he would be moving on to his next customer.
Not to be deterred, Bennett went immediately to the home of a friend who promptly helped Ed go from business to business in Canaan with hat in hand seeking personal loans, sometimes they donated a few coins and others more when possible. Even the employees of the paper emptied their pockets to help.
That day, Ed Bennett would say, the people of Canaan saved their hometown newspaper. They were remunerated within a day but Edward Jackson Bennett had incurred a lifelong debt to the people who read his papers, one he happily repaid again and again.
Edward Jackson Bennett was renowned for his sense of humor and his love of a good joke or prank and though we know little of his early years with respect to this, one can surmise from the fact that not one but two eminent private high schools asked him to leave before his tenure there was completed that their were a fair number of youthful hijinks and indiscretions from those days that formed the basis of his life in later years. But it is just as certain that these shenanigans were not deliberately cruel or malicious because Ed Bennett collected around him a cavalcade of community leaders and state dignitaries whose loyalty to him were legion.
One such story involves the acclaimed trial attorney William Phinney of Manchester, who was a NH Attorney General and whose name still is attached to one of the state’s most prestigious firms.
Shortly after Ed Bennett acquired the Claremont Eagle he received a letter from a Connecticut Attorney claiming that his client had been humiliated by a photograph of him published on the front page of the Eagle. It seems that the fellow had participated in a late night racoon hunt and had been photographed coming down from the branches of a tree he had climbed to free the carcass of an unlucky quarry and the photographer caught him in a position that exposed his wide open fly as he descended. The lawyer was demanding compensatory damages from the Eagle. Now we’ll never know if Bennett brought the letter to Attorney Phinney as a conversational lark or simply because he was doing “due diligence” but when he showed the photograph to Phinney - who examined it with a magnifying glass - Phinney said to him, “well Eddie it appears that his fly is open all right, but I can’t see anything else.
The two then proceeded to share the photo among the employees in Phinney’s office who were asked if they could see anything more. Phinney’s smile grew broader with each negative reply from his staff. He then called on his secretary and penned a letter to the lawyer from Connecticut.
“I have carefully reviewed your letter and the photograph which you allege humiliates and embarrasses your client.
While I do not deny that your client’s fly is open, I do protest that me client is responsible for this, or for the fact that apparently human nature passed your client by when “passing out the jewels.”
Several in my office have also examined the photograph, and all sustain my findings. Indeed, your client should be humiliated and embarrassed, but that is not the fault of the Claremont Daily Eagle.”
Phinney summed up his case with one final jab:
“I expect not to hear from you again on this matter and suggest that you direct your litigation elsewhere - perhaps your client’s father if he is still extant.”
Hot Off the Press by Edward J. Bennett
When radio stations began to move into smaller communities after World War II, they were staffed by an engineer to run the station, some salespeople, and an announcer or two.
Most radio people had no newspaper experience. They were not equipped to gather, edit and process news. In many cases the stations in small communities relied heavily for their news on the hometown daily; so fortunate indeed was the broadcaster with a newspaper in town.
One early radio station licensed to broadcast in the western part of New Hampshire was located at Claremont. WTSV was fortunate to have in town the Eagle which has been published there as a daily since 1913.
Soon after I became publisher of the Eagle in 1961, its managing editor, Nelson Bryant, complained frequently – and often bitterly – that WTSV was cribbing local news from our newspaper, then broadcasting it over the air; of course with no attribution to the Eagle.
Bryant explained that the station would send someone up to the Eagle’s pressroom right after the papers began to roll off the press around 1 o’clock in the afternoon. With a copy hot off the press, the radio station messenger would hightail it back to the station, just in time for the 1:30 PM news which would be read over the airwaves, direct from the pages of the Eagle.
“You can even hear the pages rustling,” complained the disgusted Bryant. The managing editor was outraged at this blatant plagiarism and argued with ingenuity that we manufacture a special edition, “just for the radio station”.
The Eagle’s news staff were pitched into this project with alacrity. Assignments were handed out by Bryant for all sorts of bogus stories, and when the work was done and set into type, it was a work of geniuses, motivated in their work as never before.
Before the plates of the regular afternoon edition of the Eagle were strapped to the press, this very special page passed through the stereotype room to the pressroom, where only one or two were in fact run through the press.
When WTSV’s representative arrived at the Eagle on schedule, he unknowingly picked up this bogus edition and hurried back to the station. Everyone at the Eagle gathered around the radio that afternoon for the news. And startling news it was.
“The fire department had been called out for suspicious fires at the Moody Hotel,” one story read. The broadcaster continued, “And the police report that the chief’s car was stolen right in front of the station.” Also, “the school superintendant was apprehended for impaired driving – and in a school bus.”
WTSV had swallowed the Eagle’s bogus front page hook, line, and sinker. The entire newspaper’s staff was rolling in the aisle. It was the best show to hit Claremont in a year.
Pretty soon the radio station’s phone was ringing off the hook. “What the hell do you mean,” asked the chief of police, “that my car was stolen? And the school superintendent (a known teetotaler) driving a bus under the influence?”
The station’s distraught manager soon admitted that its source of information had been that afternoon’s Eagle. “Blame them,” he said, “not us.”
But no copy of the Eagle to match the one at WTSV could even be found, and for good reason: Theirs was the only one extant.
A Tangle with Meldrim Thomson
Unlike the majority of Republican officeholders today, Bennett was a part of the Grand Old Party’s early tradition of centrism. After all, he was born toward the end of the Progressive era of American politics where the Republican Party was the progressive party in politics. Where Republican Teddy Roosevelt had been busting trusts, standing up for the little guy, and launching the environmental protection movement. He also had a very strong sense of duty as a citizen. For much of his life Ed served in elected capacities from selectman to State Rep and later Senator.
He was always his own man, however. When then-Governor Mel Thomson appointed him as the Director of Economic Development for the state, Thomson did what he characteristically did with all his appointment . . . he made them sign an undated letter of resignation. This allowed him to get rid of an appointee even if they were protected by a specific law or term.
Not long into Ed’s term, the Governor - without consulting him - came out in favor of the development of a paper plant along the Connecticut River. A plant which would have polluted the river from Walpole to the sea. Ed Bennett was asked what he thought of the proposal at a Chamber of Commerce meeting in the Upper Valley and his response was “I think it stinks! Literally and figuratively! Governor Thomson dated his letter of resignation the following day.
Ed Bennett smiled when he told me this story - especially because he could say that the Paper Mill was never built.
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Father Bennett's Boy's Club
On the mantle at my home there are two mugs that bear the writing “Father Bennett’s Boy’s Club.” When I was a third-term State Representative I was invited to speak to Father Bennett’s Boy’s Club for the first time. At the time I saw it as a bit of a lark. I’d been invited by my friend Ed Bennett who had downplayed it as a group of folks from the Newfound Lake community who liked to get together once a month to talk about issues of importance to them. But when I walked into the room I realized that many of the most important community leaders of the central New Hampshire area were there. They clearly looked at this social gathering as an important part of their lives. Years later I would notice in obituaries for these people that Father Bennett’s Boys Club would be listed as an important part of their lives, a fact that I am certain they insisted be included in their final notice of passing. Edward Jackson Bennett had touched their lives in a way that could only have been acknowledged as a rite of citizenship with their passing.
Hot Off the Press is taken from "Yankee Editor" Vignettes & Anecdotes by a New England Country Editor and Legislator by Edward J. Bennett. The first printing of Yankee Editor was sold out and a second printing released November 1, 2004. You can order a copy of the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.
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