A mournful peal of doom

The dismantlement of the Dallas Morning News newsroom has begun as it prepares to shift operations from its home at 508 Young St. to the old Dallas Public Library, which has sat empty and abandoned on the other side of downtown for almost four decades.

The move will breathe new life into an historic Dallas landmark, but alas it also will be another mournful peal of doom for newspapers in general, the DMN in particular.

The News, of course, is depicting the fateful omen in flowery language and disguising the disaster with positive, optimistic prose. I’ve seen these performances before – the earnest gazes, the calm-voiced assurances that nothing is wrong, all is well – and I sadly predict there will be no happy endings here.

My friends and family know I derive no pleasure from such gloomy predictions. I spent a quarter of a century working at 508 Young, sharing the newsroom with some of the finest journalists this country has produced.

Some of my happiest days – and some of my saddest – occurred in that building with the proud, imposing – and more than a little pompous and overblown – façade:

“Build the news upon the rock of truth and righteousness. Conduct it always upon the lines of fairness and integrity. Acknowledge the right of the people to get from the newspaper both sides of every question.”

And when the last computer terminal has been packed, the last telephone console taken away, the work cubicles disassembled and stacked, I will mourn.

That’s what you do when proud institutions fade away and disappear into the dustbin of history. And despite the fact that the DMN kicked me to the curb in 2011 during one of its many rounds of layoffs, I’ll shed a tear or two when the doors are finally shuttered later this year.

DMN executives say the move will provide the newspaper with an opportunity to create a true digitally focused newsroom, as if that was a good thing. Trouble is, the “digital first” philosophy heralded by Editor Mike Wilson has done nothing but damage the print edition – the enterprise’s only cash cow worth mentioning – and steepened the death glide the DMN has been in since the early 2000s.

Readers continue to rush for the exits, as do advertisers. The rise in digital revenues trumpeted with such fanfare each quarter are no match for the plummeting revenues everywhere else.

Almost as an aside, DMN suits acknowledge that another impetus for the move is a financial one. By renting office space in the renovated Library building across town, the newspaper can save $1 million in annual operating expenses at 508 Young.

So read the move for what it really is – another desperate cost-cutting measure by an organization fighting a losing battle for its very existence. All too soon, this cost-saving effort will be followed by other cuts – almost certainly from the ranks of dedicated men and women who toil in an increasingly demanding sweatshop lashed daily with exhortations to “do more with less.”

I haven’t been back to the newsroom since the day I left six years ago, accompanied by two old friends on the long, lonely walk down the hall to the back dock. Life is good in my second career, and I have no desire to return to the place where my 37-year journalism career ended in embarrassment and heartbreak. At least not in person.

Because I have vivid memories of the newsroom that I left for the last time shortly after noon on Sept. 6, 2011.

I remember the first time I entered it in the summer of 1985, amazed at the size of it and energized – as I was on a daily basis – by the hustle and bustle of a newspaper on deadline.

I can see the row of clocks I sat under during my decade and a half on the foreign desk, their faces showing the time in capitals across the globe. Who cares what time it is in London unless you have a correspondent for whom you are responsible living and working there?

I see, as if it were yesterday, the corner of the room where I sat in 1989 when the call came summoning me to West Texas to see my father one last time (my mother telling me bleakly, “And bring your suit.”).

A year and a half later, I watched the TV set above the same desk as the ABC Evening News cut to a live shot from Baghdad. U.S. bombs were falling, and we were at war. In a planning meeting 20 minutes later, I remember the look of horror on News Editor Walt Stallings’ face when he was told we were adding a 10-page section to the first edition, whose deadline was only an hour away. We busted deadline, but the special section made all editions.

I can see Mary Carter, surrounded by dozens of colleagues, sitting at a terminal scrolling the AP wire as we all waited for the bulletin we already knew would officially announce we had won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. One of the advantages of having your publisher on the Pulitzer board is the champagne can be chilling on ice for the celebration.

Over there is my cubicle on the metro desk where I picked up the phone one summer day in 2005 and heard an excited Dave Levinthal tell me FBI agents had descended on City Hall and were carrying boxes of documents out of Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill’s office. Four years later, Hill would go to prison for bribery.

And I can remember the overwhelming despair that swept over me as I sat in my cubicle by the western windows of the newsroom and stared at the ringing phone I knew would be a call from HR, informing me my days as a newspaperman were over.

Yes, I’ve been to the DMN newsroom many times since I left, and I suspect I’ll be back more times still. I left too much of my heart and soul there – and whatever talent I had – for it to be otherwise.

The DMN owners are still trying to figure out what to do with the five-story structure at 508 Young. They’d like to sell it, but so far have found no takers.

Anywhere else, it already would be designated an historic landmark. Opened in 1949, it was designed by architect George Dahl, who also designed Fair Park’s art deco buildings and, coincidentally, the Public Library building that will be the DMN’s next home.

Then there is the three-story “Rock of Truth” façade, which everyone agrees ought to be saved, if only they can figure out how to do it without bankrupting Croesus.

But the land upon which it sits just may be too valuable. The city covets it in order to create an entertainment district adjacent to the Convention Center and the Omni Hotel. Renovating the 68-year-old DMN building for such a purpose probably doesn’t fit into any financial equation.

Remember, too, this is Dallas, where historic preservation is a joke, so don’t be surprised if it eventually falls prey to the wrecking ball. And perhaps that is best.

Any new owners of the building might be discomforted by the ghosts that almost certainly will haunt the place. It’ll be a raucous crowd, noisy and profane and prone to practical jokes, most in very poor taste.

The new tenants will find it strange as each day throughout the late afternoon and early evening, the atmosphere of the building is seized by a growing sense of urgency, a rising level of stress and tension, followed shortly after 7 p.m. by a sudden whoosh of relief. A sense of calm then will fall over the building, as it and its ghostly inhabitants celebrate another successful sprint to the first-edition deadline.

The meaning of it all

I started my car this morning and from the radio came the distinctive opening guitar riff of “Old Man” by Neil Young.

It’s a favorite of mine, a reminder that youth is fleeting and that happiness doesn’t depend on fame and success, but instead is rooted in love and connection.

It was written by Young at the zenith of his fame, and the version I heard this morning was an early recording, with Young’s voice as clear as a ringing bell on the high notes. It made me sad and happy and introspective all at once in the way that great music does.

Young says the inspiration for the song was the caretaker of his California ranch, a simple, unassuming man who loved the land and his family and was content with his modest place in the universe.

Funny how your perspective changes. When I first heard the song in the 1970s, I identified with Young, “Old man, look at my life, 24 and there’s so much more.” This morning, I found myself contemplating things from the old man’s point of view.

Once upon a time, I thought “Old Man” was a love song, assuming Young viewed the old man as a cautionary tale, a warning about the consequences of not embracing life and love.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

And perhaps it is. But like most great songs, “Old Man” has layered meanings that reveal themselves only as we grow in experience, buffeted by age and regret and bolstered by knowledge and insight.

Now I understand what drew Young to the gray-haired handyman who tended things on the property purchased by the famous young rock balladeer’s music royalties and tour wages.

He didn’t feel sorry for his old friend. Quite the opposite, in fact. With the insight of an artist, he sang about a connection across generations, an appreciation that money, sex and rock ’n’ roll can’t make you happy, can’t fill the void inside you, can’t bring you peace in the wee hours of the morning as dawn and another damned day beckons.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Young looked at the old man and understood – even at his young age – the things that can offer us grace and a restful soul – an appreciation for the small things in life, an acknowledgement that we need other people to make our life complete. When he peered into the eyes of his caretaker, he saw peace and happiness. When he sings, “Old man look at my life. I’m a lot like you were,” it’s with a yearning – an earnest hope – that he can find that same peace and contentment.

As I drove to work this morning, I envisioned Young sitting on the porch of his California ranch house all those years ago, thinking deep thoughts for such a young man. And I envied his wisdom. It took me decades to get to the same place.

Next week, I go under the knife to remove a cancerous prostate. Perhaps it’s only natural, under such circumstances, to ponder the mysteries of life and muse about the real meaning of it all.

Our children's herculean task

When historians look back at this particular period of American history, I wonder what their judgment will be?

They won’t be kind, I suspect. Our country has slipped into such a state of malaise, selfishness and hatred that I scarcely recognize it. And it happened on my generation’s watch, which makes it all the more painful and all the more tragic.

We grew up in an era of peace and prosperity. Our parents pampered us and spoiled us in a way their parents were unable to do for them. Unlike our parents, most of us went to college, and our diplomas did not come packaged in bone-crushing debt. We demonstrated against and ended an unjust war, contributed our brains and brawn to the civil rights struggle, created the environmental and the women’s rights movements, and dreamed the dream of making a better world.

Tragically, it will be left to my children’s generation, the much-maligned Millennials, to clean up the mess that we Baby Boomers have left, and what a sorry mess it is.

The state of our democracy has never been more imperiled. The bloody, hard-fought progress we have made in racial, gender and LGBT relations is seriously threatened. The United States, once the light of a troubled world, has become a laughingstock before the brotherhood of nations.

At a time when environmental catastrophe looms ever larger, our leaders are retreating into the murk of superstition and false gods. And a large percentage of our countrymen feel so isolated from the world and so disenfranchised that they turned over, in their anger, frustration and fear, the reins of power to men governed only by nihilism, narcissism and greed.

Yes, I know. These are strange thoughts to have on the Fourth, normally a time of pride and celebration. But these are not normal times and this is not a normal holiday. I have a sickness of heart and an oppression of spirit so heavy that sometimes I can hardly draw a breath.

So amid the flag-waving and fireworks that normally mark this day, I humbly suggest we say a quiet prayer for happier times and for God to guide the hands of our children, who have inherited the herculean task of preserving our democracy and leading our country out of the wilderness into which we led it.

I believe they are up to the task. Our children -- the greatest gift we could ever give to this sad, troubled world.

A parable about letting go

For parents who have successfully shepherded their children into adulthood and believed the home stretch was in sight, a parable:

On a recent morning, your 21-year-old son informs you he is making a short trip to Austin to visit friends.

He’s living at home this summer to save money for the two international trips he has planned during his break in classes at UNT. Last month, he spent a week in Switzerland and Germany with two buddies and made it home without getting blown up by terrorists. In a few days, he and his sister will journey to Israel on a Birthright trip both have anticipated for years. You’re already fretting about that little adventure because your 15 years on the DMN’s International Desk taught you a few things about the world and none of them are reassuring.

College has matured your son. He’s no longer the muddle-headed flibbertigibbit you sent to Denton three years ago, fearful of the dangerous lures a college town can have on an aimless spirit. He’s become a thoughtful, responsible young man and a good student. Last semester, he made the Dean’s List for the second year in a row.

So when you hear about the Austin trip, you aren’t alarmed – until you hear the details. He’ll drive to Austin on Wednesday afternoon and, for reasons that make sense only to him, he and a UNT pal will spent one day in the capital and start home sometime after midnight on Thursday.

Negotiating I-35 in the wee hours after an evening of bar-crawling on Sixth Street sounds like an appalling idea. But you swallow your reservations – mindful of the promise you made to yourself to give the young adult living under your roof some space – and wish him good luck and God’s speed.

On Thursday night, you go to bed at the regular time and manage to drift into a troubled sleep. But at 2 a.m. your eyes pop open and you know any further sleep will be impossible until you hear his key in the front door.

You lay there, your mind swimming with every wayward traveler’s story you covered during a long newspaper career. You remember the grieving parents you’ve interviewed, only now – in your mind’s eye – it is you who is answering the questions and struggling with the loss.

Then, at 4:45 a.m. you hear the sound you’ve been praying for. The scrape of his key, his shoulder muscling the sticky front door open. Home, at last! A dozen things flash through your head. You want to scold him for not calling to give you an ETA, to lecture him about the dangers of highway travel at night, to deliver a lesson in responsibility and consideration for those who love him.

But you don’t do any of that. Instead, you ask if he had any trouble on the road and wish him a good night. As he trudges tiredly upstairs to fall into a blissful sleep, you lie back exhausted, thankful that inexorable fate has spared you again by passing your door without stopping. And as you, too, slip into dreamless slumber, only three words are on your mind, “Thank you, God.”

The sun shines once again

On a rainy afternoon last week, I sat down with my urologist and talked about cancer.

My cancer.

It was a pleasant enough conversation. He talked, I mostly listened. There was no drama and little outward emotion from either of us. The two boxes of tissues in the consultation room went unused.

All things considered, it appears that I’m a pretty lucky guy.

My cancer is located in my prostate, hasn’t metastasized elsewhere and is highly treatable with radiation and/or surgery. My chances of a cure – not a term used loosely by those in the medical trade – are good.

In the two months that I’ve lived with the possibility of having cancer, a succession of nightmarish scenarios played havoc with my peace of mind. For the first time in my 65 years on earth, I was forced to confront my own mortality.

As death shifted from being a vague concept into a very real possibility, a certain clarity of mind ensued. In the last few weeks, I’ve conducted an accounting of my life and what I have and haven’t accomplished.

The results of that assessment were sobering, but not altogether unpleasant. I’m a man of many faults and deep regrets. But I’m not a complete reprobate. I have had my moments, as they say. That said, I’m grateful I apparently still have time to chart new courses, right a few wrongs and work on being a better me.

The biggest problem with being as old as I am is not the aches and pains of an aging, disintegrating body, but the sadness of seeing family, old friends and acquaintances succumb to disease and debilitating illnesses.

Even as I celebrate – quietly, out of a fear of bringing kharma down upon me – my own positive prognosis, I have friends who face a cloudier, more uncertain future. Clicking my heels at my good fortune – even if I could accomplish such a feat without permanent damage – seems too churlish by half.  

A couple of former newspaper colleagues are waging much stiffer battles with the Big C than I am and are brilliantly documenting their journeys on social media. They are talented and brave, and their posts – which they hope will help others facing similar struggles – demonstrate vividly the depth of their character. I am proud to call them friends, and my prayers are with them and their families.

My own experience is more prosaic and less instructive. I’ll keep it largely to myself, not out of a concern for privacy, but out of an embarrassment for the good fortune I feel.

Later this summer, I’ll go under the knife to have my prostate removed. If necessary, I’ll undergo some follow-up radiation treatment to make sure all the cancer cells are destroyed. And after that?

Who knows? Of one thing I’m sure. The clouds eventually part, and the sun shines once again.

The man in the photograph

The young man gazing so steadily into the camera, the mere wisp of a smile on his face, is my father, Clyde Gunnels, a farm boy from Eastland County until he was swept up into the fiery furnace of World War II.

He would be about 26 in the photo, old for a soldier. Most of his buddies were years younger. He wasn’t new to the Army when the photo was taken, as shown by the corporal’s stripes he wears on his sleeve. There’s also a quiet confidence radiating from his eyes. He has the look of someone who knows his job, his place in the world. The look of a guy who already has stormed a hostile beach and lived to tell the tale.

He’s seen terrible things, unimaginable things. And he will see more, much more before the guns are silent and he is able to return to the Texas countryside and marry his sweetheart, my mother, whose photo he carries in a stained and battered case.

His age, as much as anything else, is probably responsible for his stripes. He is not a talker, not a leader of men in the conventional sense. There would be no showy heroics, no “follow me, boys” histrionics from this noncom, who won his third stripe before war’s end. He would have led by quiet example, by doing his job and going on to the next one without waiting for praise or reward.

He was, after all, a farm boy, a youngster who picked cotton to pay for his first gun, a .22-caliber single shot, only to have his gruff, domineering father take it for his own. He was the oldest of three brothers, the one who war took to the other side of the world, the one who crawled ashore four times – in the Aleutians, at Kwajalein, at Leyte in the Philippines and, finally, into the cauldron that was Okinawa.

Miraculously, he emerged unscathed, at least physically. All his scars were on the inside, where he kept them safely hidden. My mother worried about him, concerned at first when he refused to join the VFW or the American Legion, dismissing them as refuges for blowhards and shirkers. That was unfair, of course, but he had a lifelong aversion to talking about his combat experiences. Only occasionally, when fueled by beer and shots of whiskey, would he relate tales of noncombat hijinks during between-invasion rotations in Hawaii.

My father returned from World War II, married, got a job and raised a family. He did so with no fanfare. He expected no parades and heart-pumping speeches, and he received none. He was a patriotic American who flew the flag from our front porch on the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, but acknowledged to me late one night that he hoped and prayed I would never have to go to Vietnam. “I fought in war so you would never have to,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks. That I faced such a prospect seemed to him an act of betrayal by the country he had defended so well.

Today, I honor the man in the photograph, a stalwart, dues-paying member of the Greatest Generation who died in 1989 at age 71. I honor my father and his comrades, the ordinary men who put down their tools and their plows and their books to save the world from rampaging evil.

In speaking of these men, James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity and a WWII veteran himself, wrote:

“How many times they had heard the old, long-drawn-out, faint field command pass down the long length of vast parade grounds, fading, as the guidons moved out front.

“So slowly it faded, leaving behind it a whole generation of men who would walk into history looking backwards, with their backs to the sun, peering forever over their shoulders behind them, at their own lengthening shadows trailing across the earth. None of them would ever really get over it.”

You’ll be a man, my son

Ethan Gunnels turns 21 today, and I’ve been wondering for some time now how to mark appropriately the occasion of my son’s official entry into adulthood.

My first instinct, of course, is to burst into tears and curl into a fetal ball.

But that would be a disservice to the splendid young man he has become and to the adventures he yearns with quickening pulse to commence.

Ethan always has possessed an independent mind and a contrarian spirit. He’s not a joiner, not a follower, not a hanger-on. He charts his own course and steps boldly to the beat of his own drum.

He is on schedule to graduate from UNT in December, a semester early. He’s eager to get on with his life and whatever it holds. He’s a bit vague about his plans. He talks about getting a job tending bar in a ski resort or going to New York to make films or a dozen other ideas that flit through his mind as he waits for the future to come into sharper focus.

I’ve resisted the impulse to lecture him about starting a career, exploring opportunities and making responsible decisions – all the nonsense fathers are expected to offer their sons at this pivotal moment in their lives.

I just can’t bring myself to do it. If I’ve learned one thing after more than 40 years of toil in the marketplace, it’s that 21 is too young to abandon your dreams, yoke yourself to a lifetime of responsibilities and toe the line society demands of promising young men with sharp minds and courageous hearts.

Ethan wouldn’t listen anyway, bless him. He’d endure my droning for a while, looking distracted and uncomfortable, and then, at the earliest opportunity, slip quickly away.

Improbably, he’s found himself at UNT. That should be the function of a college education but often isn’t. Instead, college has become the place where society prepares the next crop of innocents for the commercial maw.

His mother and I sent Ethan to Denton with some trepidation, worried he might sink like some Southlake kids into a dazed muddle of partying, dope-smoking and beer-guzzling. He dabbled in some of that – honestly now, what college kid hasn’t? But he shocked both of us last year by making the Dean’s List, deciding on a history major and sacrificing party-going and girl-chasing for a part-time job.

I don’t worry so much about him anymore, at least no more than the normal father, mindful of his own feckless youth and the inevitability of the gene pool.

To be kind, he was a lackluster student at Southlake Carroll High School, where he maintained a gentleman’s C while nurturing a barely concealed contempt for the privilege and glitter around him.

Ethan mostly hung out with Carroll’s more bohemian crowd, offering bitter, often cogent commentary about life in the “Southlake Bubble.” But he remained his own man, maintaining friendships he’d formed in childhood among Carroll’s “cool kids,” including members of its heralded football team.

Once upon a time, he’d been one of them. As a child, Ethan sampled all the sports – soccer, Little League, inline hockey, basketball and the rest. It was only when he showed up on his first flag football field that he found his place. From that moment, he embraced football and played flag and then tackle with a passion and determination that brought tears to my eyes more than once.

I loved every minute he played. And he loved it, too, until a concussion in the 8^th grade, and the medical complications that followed, eventually robbed him of his passion for the game.

So he switched to the rough-and-tumble sport of lacrosse, drawn I suspect to its violence and physicality. That’s when I learned just how tough my quiet, brooding young son really was.

I had hints before that, of course. In the 6th grade, during his last year in peewee football, I arrived at practice one night to see him coming off the field, holding his right arm, his pale face tight with pain.

“It hurt real bad, Dad, but I didn’t cry,” he told me through clinched teeth. He was out three weeks with a hairline wrist fracture, but he returned to his team wearing a Dragon-green cast and played the rest of the season. The refs made him encase his cast in bubble wrap, lest he use it as a club. At season’s end, the Senior Green Dragons won the Dragon Youth Football championship, and Ethan was a big part of it.

In lacrosse, my son, new to the game, lacked the net-handling skills of his teammates, most of whom had played the sport since grade school. But Ethan showed the fearlessness and aggressiveness needed to play goalie. So that’s where he lined up, with only light pads and an oversized netted stick to protect him from the hard rubber balls being hurled his way from every direction.

Southlake Carroll, a premier football school, had a so-so lacrosse program. After one lopsided JV game (22-3) with lacrosse powerhouse Episcopal School of Dallas, I met Ethan coming off the field. He had played a full half in the box, no match for ESD’s swarming attackers.

“Tough game,” I said. “You must have felt like you were in a shooting gallery.”

“Yeah, they were throwing the ball pretty hard,” he admitted, lifting his uniform shorts to reveal a mass of black, blue and green bruises covering the inside of both thighs. “They usually don’t turn this color for a couple of days!”

He’ll need some of that toughness as he travels along life’s road. But Ethan will manage. Turns out, he’s got a good head on his shoulders. I’d like to think I have something to do with that, but it’s probably as much my wife’s contribution as mine.

From me, he gets a low tolerance for ineptitude, malfeasance and mendacity and a generally low opinion of his fellow man. I’m not proud that I’ve made my son a cynic, and I fear that legacy will cause him more pain than joy. But alas, it is what it is.

Around his mother and me, Ethan mostly is reserved, even somber. If he has a silly side, and I devoutly hope he does, he saves it for his friends and, on rare occasions, for his sister. Rachel delights in calling herself the “Perfect Child” in her brother’s presence, and he generally regards her with irritable distain, except for when he seeks out her advice on girls and other topics he judges too sensitive for his so-square parents.

He and his mother share a special bond. He came after two miscarriages, and Marice always has considered Ethan to be her miracle baby, special beyond compare to a mom who has only sisters and whose closest cousins are female, too.

She understands him better than I do, and she has endless patience for her youngest child, even when he displays appalling judgment and engages in questionable decision-making. Her baby can do no wrong.

I look at my son and often wonder what’s going on behind those guarded brown eyes. I don’t worry about his character. He’s a good person with a kind and giving heart, and he keeps his commitments. Even as a child, he felt compelled to defend weaker kids from schoolyard bullies. He didn’t have to be taught that. The instinct to protect the victimized and confront their tormentors always has been strong.

But I’m not sure I completely understand him. And perhaps he doesn’t fully understand himself. God knows I was a cipher at his age – to my parents, many of my friends and myself.

I came late to parenthood, goaded into it by my patient and loving wife. But I have never enjoyed anything more than being the father of Rachel and Ethan. I’ve watched, with a mixture of soaring joy and profound sadness, as they successfully negotiated the transition from child to grownup.

Family and friends know I’m a sentimental man. I still cling to memories of when my children looked to me for security and guidance, when I stood much taller in their lives than I do now.

 So I still cherish the nightly ritual my son and I perform on the rare nights when we sleep under the same roof. It’s one we’ve shared since he was 3.

 “Good night, Son. Love you.”

“Good night, Dad. Love you, too. Don’t let the bed bugs bite!”