Remembering great columnist Ernie Pyle
By Bill Knight
Annually, National Columnists' Day is April 18, which is also National Animal Crackers Day (appropriate, some might say) and National Lineman Appreciation Day (which I love, as the son of a power-company lineman).
Columnists decided on that date to honor Ernie Pyle, and this year I spent some of that day re-reading a Pyle essay I wrote for the encyclopedia “Forties in America” 10 years ago. With the Greatest Generation fading with time, Pyle’s story is worth re-telling, if in abbreviated form. After all, few recall even ideal members of the vocation.
(New York newspaperman and satirist Stanley Walker once wrote, “What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the accumulated wisdom of the ages. He is not only handsome, but he has the physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy. He can go for nights on end without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. Men admire him; women adore him; tycoons and statesmen are willing to share their secrets with him. He hates lies, meanness and sham but keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as his profession; whether it is a profession or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debase it. When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days.”)