News from Wallace House Archives

Gifts of $6 Million Advance Excellence:
How Self-Discovery Cost Me a Million Bucks

I've no idea what Hodding Carter is telling you in this issue about why he launched that magnificent $5 million challenge at us. Perhaps Charles Eisendrath knows something of a scatological nature about Hodding which he threatened to reveal unless... As for my own motive in coming up with one fifth of what we have to raise to match the Knight Foundation's generosity, a little personal history may be in order.

I spent four glorious years of self-discovery in Ann Arbor back in the late 1930s, after which I went about the business of trying to figure out what it was that I really wanted to do when I grew up. It took longer than it should have, with radio stops in Grand Rapids, Detroit, Chicago, the Navy, back in Chicago, and finally in New York and television in 1951.

After a decade of varying jobs in news and less satisfying undertakings, I finally settled in at CBS News in 1963, where it's been mostly bliss ever since.

Along the way I had lost touch with the University, except for an occasional ball game, of course, and shared nostalgia with old friends there. I was too self-absorbed to think about giving something back to Michigan, which- I was finally beginning to understand-had given me so much a quarter century before.

But then I was introduced to Charlie Eisendrath by a mutual friend, Richard Clurman, who'd held down various jobs at Time, Inc. over the years, one of them as Chief of Correspondents for TIME. Among his former correspondents was Eisendrath, who, by the time I met him, was already doing what he does now: inspiring mid-career journalists to take a year off to join a dozen of their contemporaries in taking a gander back at what they'd been up to, plus a look ahead at what they'd like to do when they go back to supporting their families.

Charles, I found, was a fascinating companion, full of energy, enthusiasms, and notions for the future of the Michigan Journalism Fellows, and eventually we arranged to purchase and renovate, under the direction of his wife, Julia, and my wife, Mary, what is now called Wallace House.

In the years since, I've spent time with many of the Fellows, in Ann Arbor and elsewhere, and have come to admire what they did here and the effect that a year at the University had on them and their subsequent endeavors. A while back, Charles, that indefatigably persuasive fundraiser, allowed as how the Knight Foundation, which has generously funded all manner of journalistic enterprises across the country, might be persuaded to help us with our endowment, to the tune of $5 million, if we'd promise to come up with an equal amount. Since I was about to turn 84 and doddering toward the end of my career and beyond, I persuaded Mary that, what the hell, why not do it now instead of saving it for my will. And when the news got out, I began to get letters from some of the Fellows I'd met down the years:

From Michael Vitez of the ’95 class: “I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wouldn't have won my Pulitzer Prize in 1997 had I not spent a year as a Michigan Journalism Fellow,” and “I took astrophysics for simpletons and learned to play the Michigan Fight Song on my trombone. I made friendships that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

From Ben Davis, class of ’92: “It was revealing for me as an African-American man to be part of the Fellows program. Charles did not study some nine-point plan on ‘how to deal with the African-American journalist.’ He dealt with me based on my aspirations and talent and to hell with Rodney King and any other ‘black male’ stereotypes. That was sanctuary for me.”

From Henry Allen of The Washington Post: “I had a Michigan Journalism Fellowship in 1975-1976. I won a Pulitzer Prize in Criticism in 2000. There is a straight line of descent between the two.” He elaborates and winds up with, “Thank you, Michigan.”

From my friend Charlie Gibson at ABC News: “I was in the original class in 1974, and we 12 had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into and couldn't really believe that the year would be as valuable as it was. I know the history of the program. I know how much it can mean to an individual. It meant everything to me.”

It has meant a great deal to me too, and to the University, I think. And now, of course, we've still got to raise the other $4 million.