George A. Scott: A Master Teacher

Just being there. That was the best part. There was no outside world. They were years when all that mattered was the process of learning to become what I called "a newspaperman." And at The Progress then, there was a master teacher. His name was George A. Scott and he was the editor.

Most reporters now who make it to the top in the newspaper business get their polish at universities that have what is called a graduate school of journalism. It has become a credential that is virtually a must in big-league journalism. It wasn't always like that. When I broke in, you learned the craft another way. You hooked on at a small paper and you had editors who took the time and considered it a part of their responsibility to teach you everything they knew. To have an editor as skilled as George Scott take you under his wing and teach you all that he could, that was the best thing that could happen. I got that break.

When I first began to work under him, George scared the hell out of me. He would dart around the newsroom –sleeves rolled to the elbow, green eyeshade, a cigarette in his mouth, in his hand or in his ashtray – and he didn't mince his words. If you screwed up, he'd let you know.

He'd do it right then and there. Make the same mistake twice, shame on you. He would go off. And when he did, he would curse a blue streak. He wasn't a big guy either. He was about five-six, five-seven, and no more than 150 pounds. He was about 50 then, and for as long as I knew him, he always had his hair crew cut.

Hard as he could be on you if you messed up, he was there with the right words of praise when you did a good job. And he knew. He had been in big-league journalism and he easily could have made it at the top. He chose to work in a small town. It was where he wanted to raise his family. At The Progress, he trained a lot of young reporters. That's what small papers do. They take young people who want to learn and they show them the way, and even while they are doing it, they understand that the best will fly away. They expect that to happen.

George Scott believed that I had the spark, that something special a reporter strives for. When Frank Cardon left The Progress for a larger paper, George appointed me sports editor. I had maybe two years on the job.

Being the sports editor on any newspaper is a big deal. As sports editor, you make decisions. And a lot of the time, things you decide upset a lot of people. On a small newspaper, they're not the fans of professional athletes who make a ton of money who come at you. Your big stories are of high school games. Your critics are parents talking about "my son" and "our kids," and sometimes disputes get serious and turn nasty.

George never left me out there on a limb. And he never allowed race to become an issue. It wasn't that I never encountered racism in Clearfield. Confrontations based on race did take place from time to time in cafes and in the streets and other places. But in the newsroom at the The Progress, where George Scott had his way and where he set the rules, racism did not come in there. And that was because he would not allow it. It was something he wouldn't tolerate, and I never heard or saw anybody try and challenge him on that.

To look back on it now, maybe the most precious thing that George did for me was to put up the fence that was the protection that allowed me to have those years where all I had to do was to focus on the task of becoming a newspaperman.

And once that was done and he knew that it was time for me to move to another level, to make that happen, he used his influence and his contacts. By 1960, I was headed to Lancaster, in southeastern Pennsylvania, where I would join the sports staff of the morning newspaper, the Intelligencer-Journal.

At the end, George said to me, "If you were going to one of these small papers around here, I wouldn't let you go. But that's a good newspaper in Lancaster; it's a real nice step up for you."

And then he shook my hand, wished me well and that was it. There was no hug, nothing emotional. That wasn't his way; his approach was almost military. Through the years that followed though I was to learn of the deep feeling that George had for me. He kept track of every twist and turn in my career. In his column in the newspaper, he wrote of my every accomplishment. Awards that I won still hang on the wall in The Progress newsroom. He also wrote of my parents. On the occasion of their 70th wedding anniversary, a color photograph appeared on page one. On my father's 100th birthday, there was a big story. And when my mother reached 100, it was the same for her. And always there, prominent in the story, was the mention that they were the parents of Earl Caldwell, a former Progress writer.

The last time I saw George he was very sick. "He won't recognize you," his daughter said to me. "He doesn't know anyone anymore." But that day when I walked into the room and spoke to him, his eyes opened and I saw in them the light of recognition. And that was our goodbye.