From 1986: The promise & the fulfillment | Chuck Stone

This column originally appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News on May 23, 1986. On Monday, Chuck Stone was honored with a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board.

In an abbreviated space of two days, two reporters died last week.

One from a stroke in New York City, the other a suicide in Newark, Del.

The 71 years of Theodore H. White had been graced by a fulfillment rarely found among journalists.

He was the consummate professional.

The 22 years of A. Ross Mayhew Jr. were still glowing with promise when his own hand intercepted their fulfillment.

He was a budding genius.

We can be many things in journalism — reporter, writer, editor, author, scholar, teacher, historian, storyteller and novelist.

Pulitzer Prize-winning White encompassed them all with an intellect that churned out literary masterpieces the way most of us struggle to make a deadline. His books achieved that rare trinity of being best-seller, journalistic masterpiece and college textbook.

But his professional bottom line was reporter, the kind of journeyman who set the standard for craftsmanship.

White’s studious research style belied a contagious, bubbling happiness.

Former New York Times managing editor Clifton Daniel summed up this pudgy bundle of energy with: “He wore a perpetual smile — an impish grin.”

Apparently, genius replicates itself. That same perpetual smile and impish grin was Ross Mayhew’s trademark.

At 22, with so much to live for, a just completed brilliant tenure as editor-in-chief of the University of Delaware’s Review, and graduation only two weeks away, Ross committed suicide last Saturday night.

There were no warning signs.

Dr. Nick Nickerson, who heads Delaware’s journalism program, and I had had breakfast with him the Monday before he died.

As usual, Ross did most of the talking, effervescing like a just-opened bottle of soda.

He was a student in one of my classes. I later became an adviser. Both of us idolized Samuel Johnson.

But Ross was a Pulitzer Prize waiting to happen. He proved it by exposing a breakthrough in the university’s computer security system. (How proud he made his father, Arthur Mayhew, publisher of the Bucks County Courier Times.)

When an understandably distressed administration hired an investigator to find the culprits, a gleeful Ross promptly front-paged the investigator’s criminal background.

When the university police harassed him, coming close to violating his constitutional rights, he shrugged it off.

He was more worried about protecting his staff members.

Why, then the world’s mine oyster,

Which I with sword will open.

For Ross, investigative journalism was his sword, opening up the world to expose injustice.

Inside him, a Justice Holmes passion for justice swirled, overflowing in many ways — a relentless crusade against tuition increases, a clothing drive last year for victims of the MOVE holocaust, a campaign for more student involvement in elections.

“He showed us that it is possible to carry a full load, get high marks while still working — a minimum — 60 hours a week publishing a newspaper,” wrote his close friend and Review managing editor Paul Davies.

“Hell, he had a 93 on the last exam in my class,” remarked the English department’s Joycean scholar, Zack Bowen.

And through it all, Ross’s wickedly irreverent sense of humor flared like a lighthouse spotlight on a foggy night. He was having a ball.

“Whether or not the Review made any significant changes for the good remains for history to determine,” he wrote in his last editorial. “But I can safely state that we certainly made things interesting.”

Damned, Ross, you were the whole ball game.

And you met Teddy White’s high standards.

I’ll miss those middle-of-the-night phone calls.

Your running breathlessly into my office to ask my advice, and then I end up listening to your lecture.

I’ll miss one of the highest honors ever conferred on me in 28 years of journalism — your posting one of my columns on a hostage surrender story on your wall. (Even Pete Dexter made it.)

You were that other son I never had, the writer I never was, the editor I always wanted to be.

And now you’re gone, and I’ve cried myself dry.

What little redemptive comfort I can find are in these thoughts:

When he shall die

Take him and cut him out in little stars

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun.