God willing

The two most famous Beacon Journal pranks involve items sneaked into print: The late Ron Kuhne was responsible for writing the weather summary for page 1. Kuhne thought he would have fun with his editor. It went through the city editor, copy desk and slotter and was dutifully set in type.

The other prank called the "slug" was a line of type set by a Linotype operator back in the days of hot type when each line of a story was a lead slug. The printer who set this line of type sneaked it into the middle of a story and it was actually printed in the newspaper.

Below are posts about the weather prank.

And memories of those who recall a few of the
details surrounding
the weather prank.

Ronald H. Kuhne died April 15, 2007 in Fort Wayne, IN, at the age of 66. His obituary appearing almost a month later in the Beacon Journal on Sunday did not mention that he was a former Beacon Journal reporter nor that he was the perpetrator of one of the greatest pranks in the newspaper’s history.

Kuhne who was responsible for writing a one paragraph weather summary for page 1. Kuhne thought he would have fun with the copy desk so he wrote a graph that ended something like "The sun will rise at xxx a.m. tomorrow, God willing. The "God willing" bit was missed by the city editor, the copy desk and the slotter. it was printed in the newspaper. Kuhne was fired, but hired back the same day.

The BJ obit lists him only as Ronald H. Kuhrne,U.S. Army (Ret.), 66, of Ft. Wayne.

He leaves his wife, Bridget; daughters, Margo (Rich) Kuhne, Heather (Eric) Walters, Helen (Bart) Spears, Kate Kuhne; granddaughters, Ashley and Ellie; mother, Eleonore Kuhne; sister, Judy (Tim) Donovan; niece, Meghan Donovan; nephew, Sean (Nicole) Donovan; great-nephew,

This is part of an e-mail from Ron Kuhne of Fort Wayne, IN, giving his side of the "God willing: story:

I was working on the city desk. Had a nasty headcold, felt really punchy and should probably have called in sick. My jobs that day included the routine weather blurb. I knocked that out early on and just for shits and giggles added that "God willing" thing after: the standard "The sun will rise at xxx a.m. tomorrow." I figured Giles would get a chuckle out of it (I believe it was he who was working as city editor) and edit it out after chewing me out. Well, he didn't cut it, neither did the copy editor, nor the slotter. The linotype operator faithfully copied it and that's how it ended up in the paper.

I was aghast when first edition came up and it was still there. Bill Schlemmer wanted to fire me, but I think Ben Maidenberg (sp?) talked him out of it -- probably out of concern about a possible union dispute. But after that incident, I felt the handwriting on the wall and took the job on the Connecticut paper a year or so later.

Blog Note: We found Kuhne, now retired in Fort Wayne, in hopes of getting the real story on the "God willing" incident. But, alas, time may have clouded part of his recollection of the story. He says he believes Bob Giles was acting city editor at the time while Dan Warner says he was and that he fired and rehired Kuhne. See the December Archives for a piece Dec 17 by Charlies Buffum: "A story About a story" which mentions the incident and the January archives for a Jan 5 post "Dan was there for God willing" which this blogger believes was probably the correct story. What say ye, Bob Giles?

i can flesh out a bit about Ron Kuhne tacking "God Willing " to the line about Sun rising tomorrow in the weather report.

I was city editor. Bill Schlemmer was ME and Ben Maidenburg was Editor/Publisher..

Schlemmer noticed the "God Willing" first and went nuts. He ordered me to fire Kuhne, which I did.

I am 68 and mostly retired, after editing The Eagle-Tribune in Mass for 29 years, running my own weeklies in Maine for five and teaching at Boston University for three..

Janet and I now live in Florida, 9932 Bella Vista Ct., Fort Myers, 33913. I write a column for about a dozen papers and work a couple days a week mentoring reporters at the Fort Myers News-Press.

God Willing, we'll all laugh about it when we meet in that Biog Newsroom in the Sky that Arnold Miller so often promised us.

RONALD KUHNE, 66, of Fort Wayne, died Sunday, April 15, 2007. Arrangements by D.O. McComb & Sons Pine Valley Park Funeral Home, 1320 E. Dupont Road.

Ronald H. Kuhne, U.S. Army (Ret.), 66, of Ft. Wayne, Ind., passed away on April 15, 2007.

He leaves to mourn, his beloved wife, Bridget; daughters, Margo (Rich) Kuhne, Heather (Eric) Walters, Helen (Bart) Spears, Kate Kuhne; granddaughters, Ashley and Ellie; mother, Eleonore Kuhne; sister, Judy (Tim) Donovan; niece, Meghan Donovan; nephew, Sean (Nicole) Donovan; great-nephew, Michael; and many family members in Connecticut.

Cremation has taken place. For remembrances, please consider a donation to The Smile Train, P.O. Box 96231, Washington, D.C. 20090-6231.

Here’s e-mail from Ron Kuhne, now retired in Fort Wayne, IN, on what he has been doing since the BJ:

After leaving the BJ, I went to Connecticut as editor of a large Sunday weekly in Fairfield County, a bedroom for the NYC commuting crowd. That means we were literally competing with the Sunday NY Times. The Herald was printed at a job shop in Mount Kisco, NY, a situation that meant most of our copy and art had to be ferried about 30 miles away via courier (before the days of instant faxing). Our makeup crew came back home late at night; fog on those hilly roads made the return trip hazardous.

The Sunday Herald was owned by Bill Loeb, of the then-infamous Manchester Union Leader. Except for my occasional trips to the Boston suburb where Loeb and his wife (the late Nackey Scripps) resided in a castle on a hill overlooking the Atlantic, none of my crew ever met the man. In his defense, he wasn't the monster he was perceived to be. He was generous to a fault (once paid our ad manager's bills and complete salary for six months during an illness). In fact, Loeb saw to it that the ad guy was treated at the Boston Clinic, a cost Loeb also bore. Loeb was an absentee owner whose only contributions to the Connecticut paper were editorials -- some of which ran on the cover. The mandated heads included such gems as "Shoot Jane Fonda" and "Dopey Dwight." Beyond that, he left us alone.

Loeb had bought the Herald long before I came onto the scene in 1970. The paper had been a classic scandal sheet that seemed to have been run into the ground by its previous owner. Loeb bought it, changed the name, moved it to Norwalk from Bridgeport and fought the good fight to improve its circulation and reputation, but the Sunday Times was a formidable adversary, to put it mildly. What I did not know when I signed on is that Loeb was using the Herald as a tax write-off and lost money on it every week.

There were 12 editorial types on the staff -- unionized yet, plus an assortment of about 15 ad, biz, and circulation types. It was a hopeless situation, but we managed to take paid circulation to above 40,000 from about 30,000 after converting it to tabloid format. We even showed a little profit now and then. But it was too late and Loeb decided to fold The Herald during the 1973 recession. By then, I was general manager as well as editor and I still feel the sting of that event.

As far as I was concerned, I was through with journalism. I joined the Army and worked as a journalist in Hawaii and Turkey. I also worked as "subject matter expert" for the Defense Information School in Indianapolis. After I retired from the Army, I changed my mind about quitting journalism and took a berth on the copy desk of the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, one of the few two-newspaper towns left. I retired last year after 11 years and am pretty much loafing, at least for now.

On the personal side, I've been married to a patient saint for 32 years. One daughter lives at an Army base in Georgia (her husband was in Kuwait when the second sandbox war started). My oldest daughter works in the theater in Atlanta; a third daughter is an architect in Cleveland and my youngest just earned her second degree from Purdue.