Wild and crazy things I did in my newspaper career

My favorite or most memorable assignments are listed below. This is not an exhaustive list, but one I've been meaning to do for awhile. I did it more to preserve my memories of these specific stories so I can write more about them later. I'd love to hear about your favorite or most memorable assignments as well. As more come to mind, I'll add them.

1. Flew on a World War II B-24 Liberator bomber. (Thank you Roger, one of my favorite editors, for that assignment which is still my favorite).

2. Flew in a C-130 and jumped from an Army helicopter with the Army parajumpers at Selfridge Air National Guard Base as it hovered above the snow with my friend and Oakland Press photographer, Ken Irby. (Update: 4/20/09-My father wrote to say he never knew of my parachute jump. Well, that's because I have never parachuted. When I said jumped from a helicopter, I should have made it clear the helicopter was hovering just a couple feet off the ground, which was covered with snow. The pilot told us he didn't want to set down completely when he couldn't see any obstacles (rocks, etc.) under the snow. So the jump, to be clear, was a very short one.)

3. Interviewed a Rochester Hills woman on her front porch while she was only dressed in a flimsy teddy in 40-degree weather. She had been arrested in a "fatal attraction" case involving a married lawyer.

4. Got a press pass and spent Thanksgiving Day on the Silverdome football field hovering around the Chicago Bears (Mike Ditka, Refrigerator Perry, Walter Payton) for an Oakland Press story. I have some photos I took and will scan some in for that story, when I write it.

5. Was the first reporter (well, Julie of the Oakland Press was with me) on the scene after the roof of the Silverdome collapsed in 1985.

6. Testified at a murder trial in Lapeer.

7. Interviewed the mother of a former Marine charged in the homosexual rape of a Pontiac man and then talked her out of his Marine Corps photo for the picture in the paper. (I'm not particularly proud of that).

8. Spent a day inside a southern Michigan prison with former prosecutor and current Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson to cover the parole hearing of a convicted murderer.

9. Flew to Pittsburgh along with reporter Jane Hale to cover the story of a couple murdered in Holly. (In all four people were killed in that incident. That was back in the day when the paper spent the money to fly us places for stories).

10. Worked twice with producers of the television program "Unsolved Mysteries" to catch killers from the Pontiac area. (Both caught, by the way, and one of those got me a trip to Tucson to do the follow-up, again back in the day when newspapers paid for non-sports travel). Later worked with "America's Most Wanted" producers on similar stories.

11. Found a front row seat in Ferndale for the shooting at the Rialto restaurant during a July 4th weekend. Long story which I will tell later.

12. Interviewed Dr. Jack Kevorkian on the night of his first assisted suicide. In the days that followed I freelanced for New York Newsday, ending up with $3,000 in my pocket and a couple of front page bylines in that newspaper.

13. I once tried to interview a "hooker" working on Dort Highway about a string of prostitute slayings only to later find out that she was a police decoy and the officers listening in on her wire got a good chuckle out of my conversation.

14. Was once taken to lunch by a judge who was angry that I had found sources who referred to him as "Let 'em go Louie" for his lenient bail policies.

15. Also went to lunch once with another judge angered that I had found sources who referred to him as "Gentle Jerry" for his lenient bail policies. (Hey, two free lunches from one negative story, not bad, eh?)

16. Had a back stage pass to the Michael Jackson "Thriller" performance at the Silverdome. (In one of the more bizarre assignments of my career I later went to the hotel where Michael Jackson had stayed to see his hotel room. It was my editor's idea at the Oakland Press. There was a moment when a hotel manager pointed out Michael Jackson's hair gel smeared on the head board of the bed. I couldn't believe I was covering something this stupid. I would later cover much more stupid assignments.

17. When Pope John Paul II visited Pontiac, I covered the security and ended up with a police captain who took me in the back stage tunnel where the Pope arrived and dismounted just a few feet from me. I'm no longer a Roman Catholic, but I have to admit at being awed.

18. Covered the visit of President Ronald Reagan at the then new Orion GM Plant. Didn't get very close, however.

19. Covered visits of President Clinton and both President Bushes during my career. Got a little closer at these visits. (I still have my 1984 Secret Service Presidential clearance card).

20. Watched in shock as a police detective threw up off a porch in Rochester Hills (then it was Avon Township) after he viewed the scene of a triple homicide involving a 30-year-old woman, her 14-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old niece by two drifters. I also covered the murder trial for both men. (That was the trial where one of the killer's family called me a "vulture" for covering the trial).

21. Once got cornered by an angry crowd at the Flint Croatia Club after a shooting who wanted to do me harm for being there. Fortunately, Sgt. Brown rescued me, and I believe a Channel 12 videographer from physical harm.

22. Spent countless hours riding in police cars covering drug busts, drag racing crackdowns and traffic stings.

23. In 1984 was assigned to cover what turned out to be the final and successful game of the Detroit Tigers World Series run. Although the story was supposed to be about fun and games and eating hot dogs at the game, it turned into a story about the frightening aftermath when crowds overturned cars, set them ablaze and generally ran amok in the streets. I spent two hours hiding behind a phalanx of police officers praying that I would have a car to drive back to Pontiac in.

24. Broke a story at the Oakland Press about a shoplifting police chief in Redford Township and an amazing story of a Rochester Hills housewife who wrote more than $900,000 in bad checks to buy lottery tickets from local stores. I interviewed her and her attorney in the the lawyer's Mercedes Benz as he drove her to a psychiatric hospital near Jackson.

25. Also broke a story about "Shiva" a six-month investigation into the eventual arrest of a postal worker for threatening to blow up Oakland County buildings if he was not given a $20 million extortion payment. I was working for the Oakland Press and the two sides were negotiating through the Detroit News and Free Press classifieds, which made my breaking the story all the more sweet. (Longer story later).

26. During a trial of five men charged with killing a male nurse for his wallet and $30 in Waterford Township, I got angry when I heard the five separate defense lawyers call the killing "an unfortunate incident," "a tragic accident," and "a horrible mistake." After the men were convicted of first-degree murder, I wrote a column (which I think won an AP award) about how the lawyers called the killing everything but what it was, a cold-blooded killing.

27. I spent nearly three months (much of it on my own time) researching a magazine story (back in the days when the Oakland Press had a magazine) about the 1896 "cyclone" that destroyed the then booming towns of Thomas and Oakwood. I prowled libraries, historical societies, interviewed the children of eyewitnesses (who were themselves very, very old) and visited dozens of local cemeteries looking for victims. The 1896 "cyclone" killed 26 people, the second most deadly tornado to the Flint-Beecher tornado of the 1950s. I had so much fun doing that story that I didn't mind not getting paid much for it. (I think in those days we got an extra $300 for a well researched magazine piece. Now it's $25 - $50 for a freelance article. So much for inflation. (I'll write more on this later).

28. Along with another reporter at the Oakland Press, covered the crash of Flight 255 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

29. Spent three days in Ohio tracking down the background of a young man arrested in a series of rapes in Oakland County. I stopped by his parents home in Ohio and found them to be devastated, but not receptive to an interview.

30. Along with Flint Journal photographer Steve spent three unhappy days in Bowling Green, Ohio, following the arrest of a 14-year-old Flint boy in the killing of his twin brother. This is a long story that involves the purchase of underwear. (More later.)

31. Spent the opening weekend of deer hunting season in 1985 with my friend and photographer Ken. Ken, who is black, reminded me at one point that I had dragged him into the north woods with a bunch of white, armed rednecks. We had a great three days together covering not just the hunting, but the night life associated with men going north to hunt deer. We went to a strip club just north of Gaylord (or Grayling, I can't remember) and my lede, which survived editing was: "The stripper picked up the dollar bill on the stage in a most unusual way." (This is another long, long story which I will write more on later, including the goshawful Radio Shack word processors that we had to use in those days for remote stories).

32. Was among the first reporters to arrive at the scene of a fatal shooting of a first-grader, by a first-grader at Buell Elementary School on February 29, 2000. My wife's Dodge Shadow, which I parked on the sidewalk in my haste to get to the scene, still shows up on file news footage when something comes up about the case. It was also the story that lowered my opinion and expectations of the competence and accuracy of the national media. A Washington Post story included this bit of hyperbole or something very close to it in the original lede: "In this part of Flint (It was actually Mt. Morris Township) only plastic flowers grow."

33. There were hundreds of fatal car crashes, hundreds of homicides (someday I'll tell the story of "eaten by animals"), drownings, electrocutions (I'll have to write about the "flopping around like fish" quote) and other awful deaths.

34. For about 12 years I wrote a weekly column, first called "Night Beat" and later called "Off Beat," about the quirky and strange things I found on the police beat. Many people told me they liked the column and I handed it off into the capable hands of another reporter who continues the column even today. I invented the column because the stories were not usually of large enough impact for a full story, but I just believed people would like to read them.

35. In my career I worked with great people. In college I worked with people, one who later became executive editor of the Free Press, one who was the editorial editor of the Stamford, Conn. newspaper, another who was an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times and one who I hired at The State News, who was a feature writer at the Flint Journal. He was perhaps the best writer I ever worked with. He has now written two books and we enjoy lunch together every couple of weeks. Many of my colleagues broke stories I wished I had found and broken. "King Boots," the dog who killed the family's grandmother in Oakland County, comes immediately to mind. Michael, another Oakland Press reporter who is now a carpenter, was maybe the best investigative reporter I ever worked with. He knew his way around documents in a time before Google and online resources in a way that I'm still jealous. More on these folks later.

36. Most of all, there were great people, wonderful sources and people who had suffered unspeakable tragedies who instead of slamming up the phone in my ear, or slamming the door in my face gave of their time, even in their grief, to try and make sense of the senseless. While I have forgotten many of their names, I have not forgotten their sad faces and broken voices. Those images will be with me forever and I plan to write of them as I recall them.