Bee writer remembers CSUS, State Hornet

It’s been said that you should never return to your childhood home, especially after 40 or more years have gone by. The old homestead never looks – or feels/smells/sounds – the same.

Depressing is the word that comes to mind. That’s the word that keeps popping into my head after reviewing the Sacramento State College (this was before our school graduated into the university class) Hornet. I edited the Hornet September 1951 to June 1952 before receiving my degree and starting my first real newspaper job.

My stash of stuff from college days includes all the Hornets, and I am embarrassed to admit that I was involved.

Migawd – what drivel, especially the nonsensical, juvenile column I wrote: “Buzz of the Hornet.” I am surprised there are any exclamation points left in the world. I used one after every sentence. The newspaper’s most intelligent commentary came from the Rover Boys – Cotton (he grew up to become a dignified Clarence Johnson, with a doctorate under his arm and a professorship at CSUS), and Guy McTimmonds (his whereabouts are unknown). In fact, the funniest column was the spoof issue when they did the “Fuzz of the Hornet.”

We did have fun with the Lucky Journal. That was the other name of the Hornet, and for a good reason. The back page of the weekly was an advertisement from Lucky Strike with its slogan of L.S./M.F.T. – Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. Remember, this is in the early 1950s. The cigarette police had not launched their campaign to ban a legal substance, and the Hornet was happy to have the income.

The paper was a more compact size, 8 inches by 12 inches, with four pages, sometimes six, and once or twice, eight.

The staff felt it was the goal to encourage student participation. Does that sound familiar? If CSUS is considered a commuter college today, think what it was like B.C. – before campus – before the Go East With West (Dr. Guy West, the first president) caravan from Freeport Boulevard to J Street in February 1953.

Raising community awareness was a goal then, as it is now. At student association budget meetings, I lobbied for additional money for sports.

I felt then and I continue to believe that competitive sports teams increase and encourage support from the community. We had a killer of a basketball team under Warren Conrad; in 1952, the team had a 17-13 record meeting and winning over such teams as University of San Francisco, College of the Pacific, Utah State, San Francisco State and two wins over UC Davis.

Attending SSC in the early ’50s gave the students easy access to the faculty, particularly before the move. The Hornet and Statesman yearbook staffs shared an office in the rented facility at 10th Avenue. I think it had been a shoe repair shop, to give you an idea of the size.

Not only were the rambunctious staff members in and out of the office, but our professor was there, too. Dr. Clyde Parker, now deceased, calmly accepted the shenanigans and the “fun wall” of outrageous ideas. He saw to it that we performed when it came time to getting material to the print shop and that we did not embarrass SSC at the California Intercollegiate Press Association conventions. He even counseled me when I was elected state president of CIPA, but I wonder why he never told me to stop writing such a juvenile column.

On the other hand, maybe he did, and I took a typical college student course of action and ignored him. Parker’s desk was deep into the narrow room we shared; his desk barring the door to the john, where he locked away exams and their answers.

No matter what we did or how we did it, I continue to be grateful for the establishment of Sacramento State. Without the college, my educational opportunities would have been limited because of limited personal funds.

What I received was a bachelor’s degree and the impetus from Dr. Parker to pursue a newspaper career in 1952.

First there were three years in Modesto at The Bee, then 39 years at the Sacramento Union, and now a once-a-week column on nonprofit fund-raisers for the Sacramento Bee and author of Dining Divas, and other articles for Sacramento Magazine.

As a lifelong member of the Alumni Association, I received a Distinguished Service Award in 1996 and have had the opportunity – along with Mayor Joe Serna Jr. – to co-chair the Town and Gown Committee for the CSUS 50th anniversary.

What more could I ask?

– Gloria Glyer, Hornet Editor in Chief 1951-1952

From the Hornet’s comic pages to a national syndicate

It’s always the quiet one that shocks the world with revelations kept under wraps until the pivotal moment he or she finally snaps – or gets a nationally syndicated comic strip.

The latter happened to be the case for 41-year-old Kevin Fagan, the near-CSUS alumnus who went from being a run-of-the-mill college student to an overnight comic success – almost.

Actually, Fagan was sketching two-dimensional realities way back in 1976 – when the history major transferred to CSUS.

“My friend knew I was artistic and doodled for fun. That’s how it started,” he said. “I didn’t set out to be a cartoonist, I just fell into it.”

Fagan created “Drabble,” a nationally syndicated comic strip depicting life as seen through the eyes of Norman Drabble – a socially impaired, 20-something college student whose main goal is to get a date.

Fagan worked as a comic artist at the State Hornet for two years, and remembers his interview with then-editor in chief Rick Holloway. According to Fagan, Holloway was “only” able to offer $5 per comic.

Fagan, who had never recieved payment for his work, was shocked.

But “in a moment of brilliance,” he submitted his strip for publication free of charge – fearful his work would not be printed should the newspaper run out of money.

According to Fagan, “Drabble” is based largely on his college days. Neil – the editor at Norman’s student newspaper – is actually based on Halloway. It was through the Hornet that the Sacramento Union, once a competitor of the Sacramento Bee, discovered Fagan. The newspaper offered Fagan $5 per strip. This time he accepted the salary.

Fagan mailed his clips to syndicates around the nation at the advice of Charles Schultz of “Peanuts” fame – and was offered a contract by United Media nine months later.

He received the news while in the company of a girl upon who he would base the character of Wendy – Norman’s unattainable love.

“I made the call with this girl standing there. I think she thought I was making it up,” he said. “Who could believe it?”

Fagan left CSUS in 1978 – just three units shy of graduating – to become the youngest syndicated cartoonist ever. He was 22 years old.

He said he would like to finish his degree, but currently keeps busy with his wife, Christi, and their three children – Sean, Kelsey and Brian.

Meanwhile, he lives and draws the world of “Drabble,” and will continue to do so as long as he is able.

“I have been very lucky so far,” he said.

– Melissa Jones, Editor in Chief, 1997-1998

William Dorman

Student newspapers are like dormitory food: sometimes difficult to digest but always easy to complain about. The State Hornet is no exception, at least from my perspective. I was first associated with the paper as a student staff member in the early 1960s, then as faculty adviser in the late 60s and into the 1980s, and now I’m just another member of the campus community who reads it regularly.

While I can’t speak for the quality of a dorm diet, over the years I think the Hornet has done far more to deserve praise than criticism. I remember vividly its earnest efforts to sustain a useful campus conversation during the civil rights and anti-war movements and its continuing struggle to open debate about student politics in the 1970s and 1980s and its present campaign to raise significant questions about the direction of the university as we approach the millennium.

It is also the case that if you’re interested in keeping track of student values in any given era, as I am, there’s no better way to do it than to read a student newspaper.

Have there been embarrassing moments for the paper, or times when staff members jumped the gun on a story or got something very, very wrong? Of course. But I must remind the paper’s critics that there is no other student endeavor on campus where students must be willing to be so publicly and permanently wrong. Hornet staff members publish their mistakes; the rest of us usually get to keep them private.

Not unlike most fifty year olds, the Hornet has to be wary of midlife crises or, for that matter, losing its teeth. But so far as I can tell, the paper is still in pretty good shape and showing no signs of age. That bodes well for CSUS.

– William Dorman, goverment professor, former Hornet adviser

Hal Rubin

The Chinese have a zen-type curse: “May you live in interesting times.” At Sac State in the 70s, those were indeed interesting times that we chronicled in the newly-hatched Hornet newspaper. On a shoestring, we also produced a few issues of Undercurrent magazine between l971 and 74.

Undercurrent was an eclectic mix of articles, photography, poetry, and fiction contributed mainly by journalism students, but the pages were open to others whatever their majors. Now and then I leaf through an issue and am still impressed by the quality of the contributions from Hal Hammond, Mike Justice, Karen McKenzie, Debi Quok, Rosemarie King, and all the others.

I still enjoy reading Rosie’s sharp comments about Ronniebaby when he visited the campus along with Bill Buckley to be interviewed. Even better, was Rosie’s subsequent expose of our governor’s tax-dodging maneuvers that the Sacto Bee had ignored.

Now the bean counters have taken over our country and the times are no longer very interesting, only rather sad.

– Hal Rubin was the first adviser for the State Hornet in the ’70s. Rubin currently resides in the mountains above Placerville. Rubin is 80 years old and still writes books and freelance articles.

Tom Goff

I first arrived in the Hornet newsroom on a brisk January morning of 1968.

I had just pulled a grim No. 17 in the draft lottery and- I’m no warrior – was surely destined for a body bag in Southeast Asia. So the student deferment Sac State offered made even a fog-ridden American River floodplain seem the warmest and most welcoming spot in the world. Plus I was fresh from seven years in the even damper, cloistered halls of a Roman Catholic monastery. Reporting for the Hornet was an additional attraction: I could sit out the war and have press-credential access to every sort of debauchery that an American campus offered in the swinging 1960s.

Dreams of covering sorority toga parties at Shakey’s and Janis Joplin post-concert orgies faded quickly on my first day, however, when through the Hornet newsroom glided the swan-like shape of a slender blonde goddess in a yellow sundress, swinging a menacing Hasselblad camera over her shapely bare shoulder. It was the paper’s talented staff photographer – the Hornet’s answer to Margaret Bourke White.

Flush with the repressed passion of an ex-monastic, I threw ethics to the wind and swiped the assignment list from the photo department, then shadowed my contact-print Contessa around campus – largely inventing story assignments until she agreed to a date.

That was 31 years ago. Exact details of my “professional” life on the editorial staff of the Hornet have now mostly faded – I dimly remember the impeachment of the campus president, a fight against stadium lights that pitted the paper against the jocks in the Greek fraternities, the burning of an entire edition by the Black Students’ Union, but not much else. Too many careers and too many exotic adventures – in the Amazon jungle, in the highlands of Irian Jaya, on the North Slope of Alaska above the Arctic Circle – have pushed the rest from memory.

But every exacting detail of that newsroom romance – especially the flowing rhythm of that spectacular sundress as it swung through the Hornet newsroom – remains fresh and clear across the decades.

– Tom Goff was editor in chief in Spring 1969, graduating in 1970. He graduated law school in 1973 at UC Davis, then became a reporter for Fortune, senior editor of New York Magazine, and articles editor of Esquire. He is now Vice President of Media Relations at Global Crossing, a telecommunications start-up in Beverly Hills.

Chelsea Carter

At the State Hornet, ringing phones, screaming editors and the slightest hint of scandal made my heart beat a little bit faster.

Five years later, it still does – now as a reporter for The Associated Press in New York City.

But when people ask what story in my short career has made my heart race, I don’t tell them about airplane crashes, bombings, presidential improprieties or riots. I tell them about the night – as a State Hornet reporter – I spent with my teen idol, Rick Springfield. You know, the guy who sang “Jessie’s Girl.”

I can still remember the day I found out he was going to be in Sacramento. It was Spring 1992 and I begged, pleaded and generally whined to the Hornet features editor, Kirsten Mangold, to let me interview him for a story. She consented. I think I wore her down.

The day before his performance I conducted a telephone interview.

I taped it and, to this day, I still have it. I stumbled through the interview, stammering out questions. He was patient, gracious and funny.

But it was the next night, after the concert, that I went into near cardiac arrest. He was signing autographs when I went up to introduce myself.

“Hello. I’m a reporter with the State Hornet,” I said.

He cut me off before I could get my name out.

“Hello Chelsea. I’m glad you could make it. I hoped you liked the show?” he said.

Rick Springfield remembered my name.In recent years I’ve learned that’s part of a celebrity’s job.

They remember names and faces; they are cordial, especially when promoting themselves. They don’t like reporters; we expose their warts.

Today, I dread such puff assignments. Give me a story about real people and real problems, I always say.

But that night in Sacramento, Rick Springfield remembered my name.

– Chelsea Carter, State Hornet reporter in 1994, now with Associated Press in New York.

Tricia Reader & David Hansen

They fell in love at The Hornet.

Two former editors in chief, Tricia Reader, ’89-’90, and David (Brumfield) Hansen, ’90-’91, first met at the old “temporary” Hornet building, the intimate mobile home that had a lockable door to the editor’s office.

They used that lock often.

Trish and Dave eventually married, had kids and to this day, still have weathered copies of their newspapers.

They both graduated ’91 and now live outside Seattle, where Trish takes care of the household and is active in the community. Before children arrived, Trish was an editor and writer for a monthly real estate magazine.

Right after college, she worked at the Ledger-Dispatch in Jackson, Calif. Dave has worked in a variety of editing positions for weekly and daily newspapers. He recently became a marketing writer for a software company. For Trish and Dave, the Hornet will always be remembered as the real start of their life.

There are so many memories in that old building: the friendships, the all-nighters, the political fights with the student body government and the university administration.

Most of all, for us The Hornet was our first home.

We love it dearly.

– Trish and Dave Hansen
Issaquah, Washington

Michael J. Fitzgerald

On my first day on campus at CSUS in the fall of 1986 as the newest member of the faculty, Ralph Talbert – then Journalism Chair – told me that I wouldn’t have to advise the State Hornet for “at least a year, maybe longer.”

On my second day, he told me he changed his mind.

“You’re the new faculty adviser and the first staff meeting is tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m. Good luck.”

From that point, until 1995, the State Hornet was the center of my life at the University, advising on questions of news judgment, photos, ethics, always encouraging the ad staff to make more money, and occasionally throwing my body in front of the staff when the adminstration of either the University – or Associated Students – attempted to muzzle the newspaper or strip it of funding.

I discovered right away when it came to news judgment, the ability to adapt to technology and simple compassion, the students working on the State Hornet were leagues ahead of most designated adults.

I don’t believe that has changed much.

The student editors and reporters I worked with had real chutzpah – a characteristic that kept my telephone ringing, – proof the staff believed the saying, that a newspaper’s job is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

The State Hornet staff’s from 1986 to 1995 also had plenty of fun with weekly trips to The Graduate (now Bleachers)where they rehashed the week’s newspaper and riotious end of the year parties that frequently ended up with everyone (adviser included) dancing in bars in Old Sacramento. The staff also attended the annual California Intercollegiate Press Association conventions and distinguished themselves in too many ways to describe here.

The years 1986 to 1995 were innovative years, too, moving from manual typewriters in 1986 to full pagination, going to two editions per week, and introducing two magazines, The University Review and Current Wisdom. (Both survived two years before succumbing to financial pressures.)

On my second day at CSUS Ralph Talbert also told me he thought I would one day look back and feel very good about having served as faculty adviser to the State Hornet.

He was certainly right about that and a lot of other things, too.

– Michael J. Fitzgerald, a professor of journalism, was State Hornet Faculty Adviser from 1986 to 1995.

Hornet years are valued

Not many years in my life are as valuable as those spent at CSUS. I was fortunate enough to have experienced the “Golden Years,” as many have referred to the period just prior to the end of the Viet Nam War. The campus was alive and change was in the wind.

Lifelong relationships were established that have endured for years. The most influential personality in the cast of CSUS characters must be Hornet newspaper and Undercurrent magazine advisor Hal Rubin, who offered gentle guidance with a creative and energetic flare.

Fellow Journalism students that stand out in my mind include Jerry Hall, Paul Kronenberg, Hal Hammond, Gus Kaplanis, Chuck Woodbury, Maryellen Burns, Scott Burns, and Rose King. We are all better for the CSUS adventure.

– Michael Justice 1970-1971
Legislative Services Director
Sacramento Builders Exchange

Those were the days

I spent three years working on the State Hornet during the Reagan Era, so I devoted thousands of words to making fun of Republicans and other Establishment types.

In fact, I think the Hornet should get credit for breaking the news that Reagan had Alzheimer’s. That’s right: Five years before the mainstream news media admitted it, the Hornet was exposing the Gipper as a mental midget on a weekly basis. Of course, nobody will admit we scooped ’em.

I even had a personal enemy – this guy who sneaked around campus posting fliers that called me a “threat to democracy.”

Those were the days!

– Jennifer Williams, Alumna, ’89, Former Editor in Chief, State Hornet Columnist as Ask Jenny-Bob

Disco and the State Hornet

It was the late 1970s. W. Lloyd Johns was just settling in as president of CSUS. Political tensions between the U.S. and Iran were felt on campus when CSUS students protested the firing of an Iranian professor.

Worse yet, there was disco.

As editor in chief of the State Hornet from 1979 to 1980, Jan Haag remembers the time well. “Though people think of that period as being kind of blah politically – and musically – there was a lot going on. There were demonstrations on the quad and students were very active,” said Haag, who now advises the student newspaper at Sacramento City College.

Haag credits her turn as editor of the Hornet for helping her realize her capabilities. There were also more immediate lessons to be learned.

“It was the year I learned how not to cry in public,” said Haag. “It was my first experience running anything.”

When she took over the reins of the Hornet, the paper had just been cut loose from the university in terms of funding. She and the other editors sold advertising “like crazy” when they weren’t doing their regular duties.

“There were the usual struggles with Associated Students,” Haag said. “It was a constant race to run the paper. We killed ourselves to raise the money to keep it afloat.”

At that time, the newspaper office was located on the second floor of the food service building. The dire financial situation wasn’t much different when another CSUS student held the position of news editor, six years earlier.

Ginny McReynolds, who is now an administrator at Sacramento City College, headed the news department of the Hornet during the 1973-74 school year.

“I was really, really shy and afraid to go over to the Hornet,” McReynolds said. “Working there helped me to overcome that fear.”

Though she learned a lot about working on a newspaper, she credits the experience for teaching her larger lessons.

“It’s more how you work and play with others, more than what you learn about journalism,” she said.

She went on to teach speech, English and journalism at CSUS and eventually advised the Hornet for two years, a job she shared in 1984-85 with Haag. Currently McReynolds is journalism faculty member at Sac City, teaching journalism and advising its student paper, The Express.

Haag chairs Sac City’s journalism department and teaches journalism classes.

“It’s great to be able to help students do what I used to do,” she said. “You learn a lot of things, but the great gift of the Hornet is that it shows people how much they can accomplish.”

– Jennifer Coleman, Former Staff Writer and News Editor, 1997-1998