Anne Kibbler | Nov. 14, 2010
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| Photo by Ann Schertz |
| Retired AP reporter and editor Marty Anderson, BA '57, has given the school its largest individual gift ever, about $1.75 million. |
The prize, an autographed copy of one of Bartlow’s books, sowed the seeds for Anderson’s own 33-career as a reporter and editor with the
Associated Press in Indianapolis and for his lifelong love of journalism.
Now, Anderson is giving IU students the opportunity to pursue their passion for the profession through a $1.3 million gift — the largest in the School of Journalism’s history. Previously, he had established a separate scholarship in his name and in the name of his late wife, Ann.
“My whole intent was to provide a way for young people who did not have the financial means to get to college,” said Anderson, who lives in Avon, Ind. “It’s so gratifying to know that this money for many years will provide scholarships for young people in Indiana to go to what I call the finest journalism school in the country — after all, it’s mine.”
Journalism school dean Brad Hamm called the donation “a remarkable gift from a remarkable person who cares deeply about journalism, about Indiana University, about this school and about our future students.
“He is giving us an amazing opportunity for the future to be able to help students to afford college and to both dream about and become journalists.”
The book that caught Anderson’s imagination was Martin’s Butcher’s Dozen, which chronicled the police investigation of a series of murders in Cleveland, Ohio. Butcher, a freelance writer, later became an adviser and speechwriter for John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.
“I became fascinated by writing about people’s lives and backgrounds,” Anderson says of the experience with the book. “From there, it just blossomed.”
From the IDS to the Associated Press
Anderson didn’t set out to become a journalist. As a freshman, he had his heart set on being a doctor, but poor grades in chemistry and physics changed his mind. He met with John Stempel, then-director of the journalism program, and the two clicked immediately.
Anderson started working nights at the paper, mostly covering campus issues. He continued to work nights for most of his career.
“I so looked forward to the next morning, to seeing the newspaper,” he says. “If I had a bylined story, it was such a thrill to see that, until Mr. Stempel got hold of the paper the next day and put his red marks all over it.”
Anderson’s days at the IDS sparked a new career goal — to become a foreign correspondent for a newspaper. But after serving in the ROTC in Fort Knox, Ky., he took a job with the Associated Press in Indianapolis, and he never left.
As night wire editor, he was on call to cover breaking news during the night. He reported several major breaking news stories, including the crash of a Northwest Airlines passenger plane that slammed into the ground near Tell City, Ind., in March 1960, killing 63 people; the explosion of a propane tank at the Indiana State Fair’s Coliseum during a Holiday On Ice show in October 1963, which resulted in the deaths of 74 people; a December 1964 nursing home fire in Fountaintown, Ind., in which 20 residents died; and the mid-air collision in September 1969 of a Piper Cherokee and an Allegheny Airlines DC-9 over Shelby County, which killed 83 people.
Despite the horrors he witnessed, Anderson says he kept his emotions in check.
“Because of the training, the byword was to be cool,” he says. “Tell the story. Don’t get involved. I never had deep feelings about these things because I was so detached.”
But a murder-suicide did bring him down, not through his own coverage, but through that of New York-based AP writer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Saul Pett, who came to Indiana to follow up on the crime. Pett’s in-depth writing on the incident affected Anderson deeply. He can’t remember all the details of the crime, but he remembers what Pett wrote.
“What touched me about his story was his description of the scene in a woods where the perp committed suicide,” Anderson says. “Mr. Pett discovered the accused was sitting on the ground, his back against a tree. It was obvious in looking at the scene, Mr. Pett wrote, that the accused sat for a considerable time, apparently contemplating what he'd done, before finally ending his own life. For me, his article was an emotion-packed piece on a life that stumbled into desperation.”
There were fun times, too. Anderson sat way up in the bleachers to cover the Beatles’ performance at the Coliseum — an assignment he tried to get out of.
“I wasn’t a Beatles fan, although I have come to appreciate their music,” he says. “I never heard one note from the Beatles, there was so much screaming from the girls.”
The overnight wire crew
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| Photo by Ann Schertz |
| Anderson is proud of the role he played in disseminating important news to the public. “It’s good to know I was in a profession that informs people about the most critical issues of the day,” he says. |
Anderson, she said, was one of a select group of editors — mostly men — around the country who made a career out of the overnight wire job. In addition to covering news that broke during the night, he went on assignment every year to the Indiana State Fair, which he loved, looking for features about 4-H champions and other fair staples.
Fisher remembers Anderson’s fastidious habits on the night desk in the small AP office in the Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis News building. Although he worked virtually alone in the office for much of the night, she says, Anderson would come to work in a sports jacket, shirt and tie.
“He was a big man,” she says. “He sort of filled up the room, although that wasn’t hard to do, considering the size of the room we had.”
After he arrived, he would come in and straighten up his desk, arranging everything just so.
“That was the superficial dressing on an organized, efficient man, dedicated to his job,” Fisher says, recounting that one of Anderson’s jobs was to alphabetize basketball results from 435 high schools around the state.
Anderson took early retirement from the AP in 1992. He spent many years taking care of his parents, and he didn’t marry until his 68th birthday in 2003. He and his wife, Ann, were together for just four years before she died suddenly in 2006.
A new lease on life
Anderson loves to tell how he and Ann, whom he knew at Howe High School, found each other after so many years apart.
“It’s a beautiful story,” he says.
When the two were seniors at Howe, Anderson took Ann to the senior prom, but he didn’t have the nerve to ask her out again afterward. She graduated from Butler University with a degree in elementary education, married, raised two children and ran her own Montessori school in Chicago.
She met Anderson again at their 50th high school reunion in 2002, which he helped organize.
“Everything bloomed from there,” Anderson says. “We had a wonderful, wonderful four years together.”
The couple made a list of things they wanted to do — and they did them. They took a world tour together on a private plane, visiting Machu Picchu, Easter Island, the Taj Mahal and the great pyramids of Egypt. They also took IU alumni trips to China, Europe and other destinations.
Anderson says those four years with Ann renewed his life. Since her death, he has developed an avocation: painting. He has a small easel in a sunny studio in his home, which is filled with landscapes, paintings and sculptures of animals, and the fantastical works of his favorite artist, James Christensen.
And he’s taken up writing again, but these days his genre is fiction. He’s a member of the Avon Writers Group, contributing short stories and poems to the group’s magazine, Derivations of Finn. A recent issue of the magazine includes The Banner, a poem Anderson wrote about the American flag.
He still follows the news, and he’s confident the profession of journalism will endure, despite rapid changes in delivery methods.
“It’s going to be the same process, just a different venue,” he says. “Papers will disappear, but people will still need the news and will want to see it, whether it’s on TV, on their computer or on their cell phone.”
The survival of the profession is critical to the health of the country, Anderson believes. If American journalism were silenced, he says, the nation would be doomed.
He’s proud of the role he played in disseminating important news to the public.
“It’s good to know I was in a profession that informs people about the most critical issues of the day,” he says.
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