...and their memories

Joe Jares
I was at USC from Sept. 1955 to June 1959 and worked on the pre-tabloid DT all that time. I would have done that anyway, but Fred Coonradt's reporting classes and Erl Erlandson's [sp?] copyreading classes required students to put in at least one day a week working those jobs for the school paper, which I think was a capital idea. I was a reporter, a copy editor, sports editor and managing editor. Wrote a sports column one or two years and a three-dot gossip column one year. Also worked on the Trojan Owl, newspaper for night school that came out once a week, and Wampus, the humor magazine. The big event, which you know about, was the production of the first (as far as I know) phony Daily Bruin in the fall of 1958. It was my idea and my co-conspirators were DT sports editor Garry Short and senator/varsity diver Larry Lichty. The paper is reproduced in full in the 1959 El Rodeo. Even the classified ads were phony, and I wrote an editorial on public vs. private education (with private winning out, naturally). Wrecked my grades that semester (got my first C's). We made sure copies were delivered to the Trojan Club meeting in the Biltmore (the only one at that time) and the club kindly reimbursed us for our expenses. DT at that time was printed at Dixon-Bell Press on Jefferson, across the street from the Shrine Auditorium. DB was printed there once a week, perfect for our purposes. The Knights, or maybe it was the Squires, kidnapped the DB truck driver and delivered the phonies, just as he normally did (it had been scouted). We had the legit copies delivered at about noon, so no ad revenue would be lost. The caper got lots of publicity. I was part-time on the staff of the Hearst evening paper (L.A. Herald-Express), which gave it big play, as did the morning Examiner and other media outlets. What else? We had some wonderful people on the Daily Trojan staff. ME my freshman year was Paul Wasserman, was a bright, colorful guy. And Susanna Barnes McBee, I believe the first woman editor of the DT in many years. Julia Norton McCorkle, a much-feared USC English teacher, had been DT editor many years before. I idolized her when I was a freshman; still do! And the late Ed Neilan, another hero for me. We had no elevator in the Student Union in the '50s. Up and down those four flights we went to work at the typewriters (no computers); we had the best legs on campus outside the football team. Oh, and a special issue on USC's track & field heritage was a highlight. As I recall, the two inside pages of the 4-page full-size issue were devoted to the history of Trojan track. Much sweat went into producing that: Tom Braly, Chuck Signor, Garry Short and others, I remember. I wrote a mostly-Row gossip column my senior year. It was not fine literature, or even fine journalism, but it was fun and it had a following. I'm sure it did have a name -- maybe SCatterings -- but I don't remember. It was a three-dot thing. Add your own memory

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