Memorable Story

Memorable Story: O'Connor on Phil Dietrich

This memorable column was written by Bill O’Connor and published in the Beacon Journal
on April 3, 1997. It was one of a series of columns called "O’Connor’s Side Streets."

Chronicle of a veteran newspaperman
Writer Phil Dietrich has seen a great deal in 90 years,
but he's learned a lot, too, and that's what matters most

By Bill O’Connor
Beacon Journal staff writer
Those who search the ruins of past civilizations look for the chronicles, the legends and stories of that time. Years from now, the searchers will find the chronicles that were written by Phil Dietrich.

"My grandfather was born here," Phil Dietrich said. He said it while looking out the parlor window of his fourthfloor apartment in Stow. He meant Akron when he said "here," the area, this spot on the earth. Home.

"And his father before him." Dietrich looked out on a sunny day, an advance patrol from the land of spring, itself a warm promise of the lazy and delicious ease of summer. Even the wintered skeletons of a stand of trees, far below, seemed somehow anxious with new life.

So did Phil Dietrich. He looked out at the sunny day the way a bear stretches in the spring. If Dietrich is a bear, he is an old bear, a canny old bear. He turned 90 on the first day of March.

Yet it isn't quite fair to tag him as old for, in a youth-centered society, old implies frail; useless, maybe.

Dietrich blows apart such ideas. With his gray chin whiskers and the energetic way he moves, he comes across as a man with such a lively interest in life that all things intrigue him

Old-timers and apprentice old-timers will remember Phil Dietrich from his days as a sports writer for the Beacon Journal and, before that, for the Akron Times-Press, a rival paper that the Beacon Journal ate in 1938.

"They called a meeting on a Saturday afternoon," Dietrich said of the folding of the Times-Press, "and said not to bother to come to work on Monday because there would be no jobs."

You have to understand that in every story he tells, he dives back into those times. He gives you not just facts, but the feel of the situation. He did that while talking about the old newspaper.

The difference between the past and the remembering, though, is that Dietrich has learned a thing or two during his time on this earth. All things pass away, even pain. His eyes twinkled. Ah, they seemed to say, what enjoyably foolish children we were.

"So we had a party and everybody got drunk. In the middle of my cups, I called Jim Schlemmer and told him I wanted a job."

Schlemmer, sports editor at the Beacon, hired Dietrich and for more than 30 years, until his retirement in 1969, Dietrich wrote about the activities in this place he still calls home.

He was asked what sports he wrote about. He waved the question away, a gnat of a question. "Oh, the people are the stories," he said. "The people."

It was not so much what you did with the ball, or the size of your bat. It was, for Phil Dietrich, what it revealed about you, what effort you gave.

He has been at it too long to spout the drivel that sports builds character. What Dietrich knows, though, is that athletics reveal the character of the athlete.

He has written several books. One is titled The Silent Men, the story of an Akron football team in the 1920s whose members were deaf. Another, Down Payments, is the story of professional football in Akron from 1896 to 1930.

Dietrich pioneered several things in Akron. He was the first sports information director at the University of Akron.

As a student there, he had been editor of the Buchtelite, the campus newspaper. "I majored in activities," he said, that long-ago Phil Dietrich once again tickling the now Phil Dietrich.

He wrote an outdoor column for the Beacon and was executive sports editor when Schlemmer was on the road covering the Browns, the Indians, Ohio State and the Akron Bears, a semi-pro farm team for the Chicago Bears.

Those were raucous newsroom days, long before the yuppified calm of today's newsroom. Dietrich tells of Schlemmer sleeping on the copy desk, then stirring in the early hours to write his story.

Dietrich worked under fiery and legendary editor Ben Maidenburg. You can tell the two did some serious slam dancing. "He fired me a couple of times," Dietrich said. There were no lawyers involved, no pouting. Dietrich always was brought back because no replacement could replace him.

Dietrich's memory is phenomenal. It would be phenomenal if he were 30 instead of 90. What the years have given him is a lot more to remember.

"Reporters would call the police station, checking. If there was a murder or a death, the reporter would ask, 'white or colored?' If it was a black person, it would be ignored. A little story would just say, 'A colored man was found dead.' Not even a name.' "

There is no self-righteous outrage when he relates such stories, no holier-than-though stance. There is just that mild amazement at how foolish we all can be.

He tells of growing up when the people who lived across the alley had horses. His family goes back to canal days.

Dietrich is married to his second wife, Dee, a charmer of a woman with a sense of hospitality that is both warm and courtly.

After his retirement, he moved to an idyllic spot in Maine.

Five years later, he was back. "You can't sink your roots as deeply as we did and really leave," he said.

His eyes smiled, catching the light of the approaching spring.

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