Think About It - Bill Freehoff

 

The Many Faces of Bill Freehoff

It’s a long, complicated story so I’ll just cut to the chase: at lunch Monday talk turned to, of all people, Bill Freehoff.

Do you remember Bill Freehoff?

Here’s a hint: “We ask not that you agree with us. Only that you think about it.”

That was Bill Freehoff’s signature closing line on each editorial that he delivered on WKPT radio (and later TV).

Bill Freehoff was the long-time editorial director and news director at WKPT-AM.

But Bill Freehoff was so much more than a conservative editorial writer. In fact that was a late career gig for him.

Freehoff was editor of the University of Missouri's humor magazine.

He came to Kingsport in 1946, fresh out of the service, to work for the Kingsport News, the morning paper back when the morning News and the afternoon Times had separate staffs. And that’s where he worked for the next 16 years, serving as general assignment reporter, city editor, managing editor, editorial page editor, executive editor, political editor, book page editor and columnist.

It was as columnist that he became best known in those years.

From 1952 till 1962, he wrote the News’ front-page column “Over the Coffee Cup,” a smorgasbord of the little stories floating around town – and around Bill’s head.

He was good at it and I’m sure many people couldn’t start their day without a cup of coffee and Bill’s column. (I don’t remember reading it but then again I was four when he started it.)

Then in 1962 he mysteriously – and without warning – disappeared from the pages of the Kingsport News. What happened?

I figured it out after digging around. His column disappeared the same time that C.P. Edwards sold the newspaper to Sandusky Newspaper group. New owner, new agenda.

He took a job in Jimmy Quillen’s first campaign for Congress in 1962 but after Quillen won, he turned down a staff position. He didn’t want to move to Washington.

That’s when he landed at WKPT where he became famous for telling folks they didn’t have to agree with him, just to think about it.

It was while digging up all this bio material that I discovered a couple of amazing facts about Bill Freehoff that you probably didn’t know.

In 1951 he left the Kingsport News for a year after he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship. That is one of the most prestigious honors in journalism and includes a paid year of study at Harvard University. No Times News journalist had won one before or since. (Kingsport native Carol Bradley won a Nieman in 2004 when she was working at the Great Falls, Montana newspaper.)

But my favorite Freehoff fact came from his book page column of July 1, 1951. Here it is from the column he called “Let’s Talk Books:”

For its July selection, the Book of the Month Club has chosen a first novel by a talented young writer from one of the Connecticut commuting towns. Jerome D. Salinger's “The Catcher in the Rye,” is the story of a 16-year-old boy who has been kicked out of one of those fashionable Eastern preparatory schools. Salinger is no stranger to the literary world. He has published, in all, about 30 stories. Many of his short stories have appeared in the “New Yorker” magazine. The biographical sketch on Salinger which appears in the BOM Club "News" says he "was sent to military school, which he not very surprisingly detested.”

It happens that Salinger and I were cadets at this school at the same time. [Italics mine] It is true, he did not fit into the rigid pattern of discipline which that kind of school demands. Like most writers, “Jerry” Salinger rebelled at regimentation. (But he went through five campaigns in Europe during the war.)

Salinger was a sort of school "character." He was cynical for one so young, was given to using rather flowery language, and was one of the mainstays of the school's dramatic club.

I haven't read his new novel but it promises to be a powerful piece of writing. My personal reaction to his short stories, however, is that they are good examples of fine writing, but the point often escapes me.

 

J.D. Salinger's yearbook photo from Valley Forge Military Academy

Bill Freehoff and J.D. Salinger went to military school together!

That military school was Valley Forge Military Academy, located in Wayne, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. Freehoff and Salinger were both in the class of 1936.

 

Ten years after that mention of his classmate J.D. Salinger, Freehoff returned to his Valley Forge Military Academy days for an Over the Coffee Cup column:

Have you ever expressed a desire to turn the tables on one of your teachers?

As book review editor, I'll get that rare chance next Sunday when I review a novel written by a former teacher of mine.

The teacher - Norman Ford – taught me English at Valley Forge Military Academy more years ago than I care to admit. His first published novel - "The Black, The Gold and The Gray" - has been published by Doubleday.

It is a fictionalized version of the cheating scandal that rocked West Point a few years ago. Ford is a graduate of the Academy (Class of ‘32.)

I have almost finished the novel but I haven't decided what grade to give my old teacher. Actually, Foral was good to me.

I got good grades in his English class and he gave me choice roles in the drama club, "The Mask and Spur."

There is another student of Ford's who did very well in his class and in the dramatic club.

He is a novelist also – Jerry Salinger, who wrote the best-seller about teenage life, "Catcher In The Rye."

Valley Forge left its mark on both Ford and Salinger. I could catch a glimpse of the place in their novels. A character in Ford's book had been a student in a boy's military school ("tin school'' as West Pointers call them). The main character in Salinger's book goes to a private boy's school.

VFMA made an impression on me. But I'm well adjusted, I keep telling myself!

 

When Freehoff got around to critiquing his old professor’s novel a week later, he gave it a mixed review. “The points he makes through his hero are well-taken and deserving of serious consideration. But as a novel it is unbalanced. There is authentic feeling of barrack life but his constant use of the flash-back technique gets to be annoying.”

Sounds like a B minus.

 

I didn’t know Bill Freehoff but I remember him from the radio. He died in 2003, shortly after I moved back to Kingsport and started writing a column for the Times News. I wish I had gotten a chance to talk to him for my column. I would have had lots of questions about Jerry Salinger.