Veritable cornucopia.
I remember those two words like Chuck Stone said them yesterday. I was in a feature/column writing class at the University of Delaware in, oh 1986 or ’87, and Stone was my professor. No doubt dressed in a bow tie and a suit, he used those two words to emphasize the point that the Delaware campus overflowed with story ideas. Just get out there, he told us, find them, write them, bring them to life.
Nobody brought journalism to life the way Stone did – in the pages of the Philadelphia Daily News, which ran his column for 19 years; at Delaware’s Memorial Hall, where he taught journalism for seven; at the University of North Carolina, where he taught for another 14; at plenty of other stops long before those, where he rubbed elbows with legends and held authority figures accountable.
Monday, the Pulitzer Board awarded Stone a posthumous special citation for his work covering the Civil Rights Movement, his role as the first Black columnist at the Daily News and his co-founding of the National Association for Black Journalists.
Almost 40 years ago, Stone (who died in 2014 at age 89) mesmerized young college knuckleheads like me with his lectures which weren’t really lectures at all. They were talks, discussions, examples, challenges. Be bold. Be fearless. Tell other people’s stories. Tell them well. Take risks. Accept challenging assignments. Don’t be a jerk.
He and his colleague Bill Fleischman (who taught sports writing, copy editing and layout) were the first college professors to make an impact with me – probably because they were more than professors. Each worked as a professional journalist, the college gigs were side hustles (long before that term), which meant they actually did the things they talked to us about. For whatever reason, that meant something. They got the who, what, when, where, why and how, but went beyond them. They knew inverted pyramid, but turned it upside down on occasion. They used active verbs. They knew how to fill column inches. They worked on deadlines. They interviewed people. They risked making mistakes in print.
Stone did all that and more. At the Daily News, he challenged city leadership, called out questionable behaviors and stood up for citizens. He clashed with a city police department known for its reputation of brutality against Black suspects. In 1977, Mayor Frank Rizzo called Stone “the bottom of the cesspool . . . a racist [who] represents everything that is wrong with this city.”
Stone was uncowed, writing “Politically, [Rizzo] is a functional illiterate who cannot read the handwriting on the wall.”
Other targets included state Rep. Dwight Evans, “an oleaginous eel;” Mayor Wilson Goode, “a paternalistic ferret;” and U.S. Rep. William Gray III, a “peacock.”
Readers trusted Stone, so much so that some surrendered to him rather than the police. A man charged with murder asked Stone to arrange a transfer to police custody. While at the Daily News, more than 70 criminal suspects – all Black – surrendered to Stone. In 1981, he helped end a five-day crisis at Pennsylvania’s Graterford Prison after getting involved on the recommendation of Gov. Dick Thornburgh’s staff and at the behest of an inmate’s mother. Stone helped gain the release of the final six hostages.
All this came after an early life that included serving with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, degrees in political science and economics from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Chicago. A St. Louis native raised in Hartford, Conn., Stone worked as a reporter and editor at the New York Age and became a White House correspondent for the Washington Afro-American. He was friends with Martin Luther King Jr.
And he taught journalism at the University of Delaware, a school known for its engineering program and Wing-T football. Hard to believe.
While in his class, I probably knew less than half of Stone’s past and wish I’d understood it better. I should have spent more time with him, quizzed him on that unparalleled life, soaked it all up a little more. He probably would have turned it around, and talked about my future instead of his past because that’s how he did things. I often wonder what he’d think of all these words about racehorses.
I can’t recall exactly when or why Stone used the “veritable cornucopia” line, but I know it stuck. At the office of The Review, Delaware’s student newspaper we used the phrase when we were light on story ideas or had pages to fill.
“There’s a veritable cornucopia of stories out there,” we’d say to challenge ourselves, and march off to find a coach or somebody to talk to. If a college professor’s job is to make an impact, make you think, teach you something, he succeeded.
Thanks Chuck. Congratulations. You were the veritable cornucopia all along.
