OPINION:
The GI newspaper Stars & Stripes recently turned 75, with no letup on its heroic march. Headlines and stories over the decades flashed Anzio, Inchon, Khe Sanh, Medina Ridge, Fallujah. Now Stripes spearheads coverage at Bagram Air Field and other points in Afghanistan.
S&S goes where America’s troops go, these days online to complement the paper form.
Stripes had fleeting appearances in the Civil War and World War I, the latter featuring Harold Ross as editor before his New Yorker magazine co-founding and Grantland Rice on the sports page ahead of his golden age domination.
The continuous version of Stripes started in London in the spring of 1942, a few years before the Pacific edition set sail. While World War II raged, Bill Mauldin cracked up his fellow soldiers with sardonic “Willie & Joe” cartoons. Gen. George Patton was so ticked at the belittling of officers, he threatened to toss Mauldin in jail. Didn’t happen, thanks to Patton’s boss, Dwight Eisenhower, who underscored, “Stars & Stripes is the soldiers’ paper, and we won’t interfere.” Mauldin got the last laugh, winning two Pulitzers.
Another Striper in the European Theater was Andy Rooney, who covered D-Day decades before grumbling on “60 Minutes.” That snarl on CBS was no act. Upon S&S’ 50th birthday celebration in 1992 at the paper’s office just south of Frankfurt, Germany, I let on that while editing his column, I changed his copy to reflect the subjunctive mood: If I were, not if I was. Rooney had a fit, telling me his work was already edited and to lay off. That night at the party he joked about it, and I continued to tweak his grammar.
Meanwhile, more talent stepped to the fore at S&S: John Windrow, a hilarious writer who went on to teach journalism at Hawaii Pacific University; John Kominicki, a brilliant scribe who became publisher of Long Island Business News; and Bill Sammon, whose cutting-edge reports on the military’s mission in Bosnia preceded his rise as White House correspondent for The Washington Times and now a top editor at Fox News.
The absolute star at Stripes will forever be Bob Wicker. His name is about as nationally known as his hometown, Dothan, Ala. No matter. In the last half of the 20th century, he was a soldier, writer, sports editor, managing editor and simply the paper’s bulwark.
Bob was my sports editor at Stripes in the 1980s and ’90s, and did a marvelous job expanding space in the paper for Army basketball and Air Force football. He directed coverage of troops and their children at air bases in England and Holland, barracks in Germany and Belgium, naval stations in Spain and Italy. He inspired a staff that included Ben Abrams, whose legend lives on among military brats recalling his prolific high school columns, and Rusty Bryan, a maestro whose 1998 Wimbledon headline sang after Jana Novotna finally shed her choke tag: Novotna Czechs her baggage.
Now 80 and living near Reno, Nev., Bob Wicker stands as a pillar in the history of journalism. He was a rock of a newspaperman, solidified with creativity and integrity. Think Gibbs of “NCIS” with a laugh.
Happy birthday, Stars & Stripes.
• Bucky Fox is an author and editor in Southern California.
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