Tucson Weekly: Frank Johnson (November 20

You Know Those Old Stories? They're All True.
By Jeff Smith
THEY SHOULD HAVE done it at the Manhattan and they should have waited until 1:15 in the morning, but given the exigencies of America in the twilight of the 20th century, it all came off with proper pomp and circumstance.
Smith We have no Minister of Protocol for rituals such as these, nor does Emily Post, Amy Vanderbilt, or even Miss Manners provide a light to guide us. When it comes to seeing an old newsman like Frank Johnson off on his Stygian voyage, whatever family, friends and former colleagues survive pretty much have to make it up as they go along.
The story began below the fold on Page 1-A of last Monday's Arizona Daily Star, reporting that Frank E. Johnson, reporter and editor at the Star for nearly 40 years, had died the day before. The second sentence said:
"He was 77."
That's the sort of linotype-and-newsprint in-joke Frank would have appreciated: The second sentence of any proper obit carries the same, three-word burden. And in time-honored Associated Press style, he did not pass away or go to his reward, he died. Well, I wasn't surprised.
Since July of 1982, when he caught a lungful of toxic smoke during a fire at the newspaper plant, time began getting away from Frank faster than seemed right.
I read through the curriculum vitae, made the jump to Page 8-A, and ended with the three-word standing close: Services are pending.
So I called a couple of days later, to learn that no public funeral was planned, but that there would be a party that evening at six at the Shanty. Again, no surprise there. Ostentatious displays of grief are better suited to dead cops than newspaper editors. Better an Irish-style wake. And since the Manhattan Lounge, where Frank and the rest of the night-siders from the Star of legend used to gather for drinks after the paper was put to bed at 1 a.m., has been bulldozed and replaced with an open-air bus terminal, the Shanty at six was the appropriate place and time.
The Star even paid for the drinks, which, again, was appropriate, though such corporate largesse was unheard-of 30 years ago, when Frank Johnson ran the kind of daily newspaper that made people like me proud to tell people who made a living wage that we were newspaper reporters.
They just rolled their eyes.
Of course today there's so much snarling between dailies and weeklies and television that the eye-rolling continues whenever anyone invokes the old days and the old pros like Frank. I don't care: The obit said he was "remembered for helping a legion of young reporters get their start," and I was one of that legion, as was my brother, nine years before me, and "Darth" Auslander, the current Star editor, a few years after. I'll never forget the day Frank hired me. It illustrated the man's character.
I showed up at the old Star/Citizen building downtown, a slow, two-finger typist with not a single semester of journalism training. Frank was managing editor and he handed me a form to fill out and sat me at a typewriter, just outside his glass-walled office. I sweated 30 minutes over that keyboard and returned the finished form to Frank. He scanned it in seconds, got to the personal history part where I mentioned the couple of nights I'd spent in jail for drunk driving, and said, "Tony Von Isser in personnel will have a shit-fit over that. Fill it out again and forget your criminal past."
I did, and Frank hired me on the spot. For $120 a week. Before taxes.
"Three months from now we'll decide whether to keep you. You can decide then whether you want to quit."
They didn't fire me, I didn't quit, and I never regretted going to work for Frank. I doubt he was similarly free of second-thoughts.
The thing about Frank Johnson was that he earned your respect, whether he won your friendship or left you feeling vaguely uncomfortable. It's a quality I've seldom seen in other men and women in this business, and never been able to duplicate myself. I remember a retirement party for an old--I mean really old--political columnist and editorial writer from the old days at the Star. He pounded down a couple drinks, hitched up his pants and delivered himself of a soliloquy on how proud he was that he'd never made an enemy in his couple hundred years of newspaper work. I thought he must have been wasting his time then.
Frank Johnson was different. He was a straight newsman for one: A reporter, and editor, not an editorialist or purveyor of opinion. He'd tell you what he thought about doing the job, getting at the truth, covering what mattered on your beat. So no matter what side of an issue you, or anyone else, came down on, you couldn't fault Frank Johnson's fairness.
It's a timeless quality. Unfortunately we seem just now to be at a time when it's a quality in short quantity.
Thinking back on the years I worked for Frank and the years I watched his work from outside, I'm reminded of something you may have seen recently on ESPN. It's about old heroes like Frank, and tiresome old farts who invoke his memory. It talks about the old stories of the old warriors, and how nobody ever ran faster, flew higher, and fought harder. And it says:
"You know those old stories? They're all true."
Frank Johnson was true.

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