Message from Kathryn Griffin
June 4th, 2007 by 
jsoper
To the IDSers and Bookers of yesterday, today and tomorrow,
It is at times like these that I feel particularly far away from home, though hearing sorrowful news from past stomping grounds is never easy, wherever it finds you. It came in an email from another friend it had been too long since I had heard from, and on top of the guilt of not keeping in touch over the years was another feeling…Dave wore shoes too big for just anyone too fill. Though at times I think my life down here in Manizales, Colombia (I’m still teaching English and I’m working now as an Educational Advisor (what would Dave think now, me, an advisor…) promoting US Higher Ed), is like a different world compared to the rolling hills of IU’s campus…even the FEEL of the universities down here is different, there are moments I will never forget in the hallways of Ernie Pyle’s School of Journalism and lessons I will always carry with me. Come to think of it, those trips to Kansas, well outside the confines of the yearbook office are some of the most telling…
So I send you all this greeting to say something simple, a feeling I know a lot of us J School rats feel, Dave Adams holds a place in our past I talk about with gleaming eyes these days, a man that will not be forgotten in the hearts he touched over the years.
My most sincere condolences,
Kathryn
–
Kathryn Griffin
kathryngriffinphotography@gmail.com
June 5th, 2007 at 3:25 am
In the summer of 1998, I was finishing up my bachelor’s degree at Indiana University. I was not majoring in Journalism but rather in Folklore – a degree with even FEWER prospects to be rich by thirty. But I had always written, long before the age of twelve. Note I say I had WRITTEN. I was not yet a WRITER.
I got the idea of writing for the IDS mostly out of boredom. It was summer, and I started what was intended to be a long letter to the editor on – oh, nothing really. I think a response to an editorial I thought was completely off-base, and which I could have written better. Halfway through this thesis, I realized I could just go to the IDS and do it better. I went in and asked for a job and was given one on the spot. I’ve heard stories of the old days of newspaper journalism, when there were such things as “cub reporters” who would be hired like that. In the world of corporate media giants, those days are gone. Thank God for college journalism.
It is impossible to describe how great an impact working at the IDS had on me. I had taken a high school journalism course and learned a lot from it, but NOTHING teaches writing better than writing to be read the next day by real people. And in PRINT – not some cockamamie online update that will be forgotten the next time Britney Spears posts about shaving her head. (Apologies to the management.)
Print is different. It’s… ETERNAL. Six months after I stopped writing for the IDS, I called one of my best friends from high school and college, Neal – who also worked for the IDS for a while – and offered to take him out for a drink. I arrived early, and by the time Neal got there, I was in full rant mode. Before Neal could say, “Hey, how’s it going?” I had launched into a diatribe on 90s music and why Sheryl Crowe was the only new artist worth a damn, when you got right down to it, but most of the alternative music was so much better. I finally stopped and took a breath, and I noticed Neal had brought a friend along.
“Who’s your friend?” I asked. “This is my buddy from the dorms,” Neal said. “I told him I was going out for drinks with my friend Tony Manifold, and he said, ‘THE Tony Manifold? From the IDS?’” Embarrassed, I started to apologize, but Neal’s friend said, “No, no, it was just what I’d hoped for. Thank you.”
I wasn’t just another student on a campus of thousands. I was THE Tony Manifold. That’s what writing for print is.
I live in Los Angeles as a struggling film and TV writer whose struggles are almost over. I work at a theater for kids. A lot of these kids – especially the teenagers – look up to me on some level and want to be writers, too. I implore all of them, “Go to a college with a daily newspaper. On your first day, join the newspaper staff. Stick with it all four years. It will be the best experience you’ve ever had.” (And then, because I’m still a Hoosier at heart, I recommend Indiana University and the IDS.) I told one of the kids this once, and he said it reminded him of the writing seminars parodied in the movie “adaptation.” I said if those writing seminars are summer camp, college journalism is joining the Army and going to war and living in the trenches. It’s horrifying and thrilling and stressful and invigorating and dangerous and exciting.
It’s writing TO BE READ. And IN PRINT!
I have traveled all over the world. I have had champagne at the top of the Hotel Roosevelt, and I have shaken hands with movie stars. I have been paid by the hour and paid on commission. I have made far, far more money in my lifetime than the $6 a column I earned at the IDS.
But, to this day and for the rest of my life, the best job I ever had was at the IDS.
Most of what I wrote were opinion columns. I took the tack of avoiding “hot topics” – fraternities in trouble, abortion rallies, the Monica Lewinsky case – and focused instead on grander issues and philosophies. I talked about sex and dating (ironic when you realize how pathetic my dating life was at the time), enjoying being young and what it meant to be a male. I wrote about stuff that affected everyone while still relating it to larger news stories – albeit ones which might have slipped through the cracks. I wrote about campus life, too. One time – just one time – I filed a news story, when I happened across a fire in a trashcan at one of the dorms. I vividly remember that day as one of the greatest of my life. I felt like Woodward or Bernstein (I imagined myself Robert Redford as Woodward, but at the time I was probably closer to Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein – I certainly smoked enough to be Bernstein), calling the RA for a comment, calling the police for injury reports, calling the hospital for patient information. I also co-wrote with my sister one movie review (for Howard Stern’s “Private Parts,” which was edited down to a two-inch capsule review – meaning my sister and I each got about six words in) and one personality profile on a photographer doing an exhibit at the IU Art Museum which was never published, if memory serves.
But mostly, I wrote opinion columns. I was a lazy bastard – particularly in my senior year of college – but on one count in my entire senior year, I was extremely diligent. My column ran Thursday. On Tuesday night, after my night class, come hell or high water, I walked to Ernie Pyle Hall (have stories come to be filed via e-mail now? They still weren’t when I was there) and sat there and waited. Sometimes I’d had 100 great ideas for columns over the week. Sometimes I’d had none. Sometimes I’d had 100 great ideas, only to realize by Tuesday afternoon they were all total crap. But, crap or treasure, dammit, I was staying at that office until I had a story idea. And if that meant I would stay until 2 AM and walk the three miles home in the dark, I would do it. And no matter how late I went to bed, I was there at 8 AM Wednesday morning to work with my editor on the column. I did this without fail.
Of course, being a columnist had its perks, too. I remember one day, PLAYBOY had just published its “Girls of the Big Ten” issue. Some of the ladies were signing autographs at The Den on Kirkwood (is that place still there?), and I convinced my editor to let me interview them. For the purposes of the column, I claimed I needed to interview the girls. AND I GOT A PRESS PASS! So while every other horny virgin on campus was lining up at the table to talk with a pretty girl whose boobs he’d seen for ten seconds, THIS horny virgin got to flash his press pass and say, “Oh, no, I’ll be on THIS side of the table. For as long as I want, thankyouverymuch.”
Best freakin’ job I ever had, man.
And now Dave Adams has left us.
I didn’t meet Dave too many times. I think maybe once or twice. Yet I knew at the time that everything I was doing – all the great experiences I was having – were possible because Dave, a guy I had met for maybe five seconds, did what he did. I may not have known him well, but his presence was felt. It was felt whenever I got handwritten notes on my writing – how to improve it, and when I’d gone too far (the latter lesson – as this comment probably proves – I still haven’t learned). It was felt whenever one of my editors said, “Dave says….” It was felt from the moment I walked into Ernie Pyle Hall, and all week long as I thought about what I would write the next time I was in there.
I live in Hollywood now. I held a table reading last week for my most recent script. Actors you’ve heard or seen were present, and actors whose names you know have already caught wind of it. I’ve been getting calls from agents and managers asking me to send it to such-and-such client or such-and-such potential client. Meanwhile, I’ve been asked to make a pitch to one of the few cable networks people actually watch, and my writing partner and good friend Jeff – whom I met at the IDS, where we became lifelong friends – is planning to fly out to LA from Chicago this summer, where he will crash on my couch as we pitch our drama pilot. We’ve already gotten some interest. And I am no longer THE Tony Manifold. I write under another name – my grandmother’s maiden name – which the world will soon know well.
But I wouldn’t be doing all this if it weren’t for Dave.
There are times when I have wondered what the greatest gift a human being can leave behind is. I can’t speak for others, only for myself. It is easy to leave an impact on your family. That’s what they’re for, after all. It is also easy to leave an impact – for good or for ill – on those who know you well and all your life.
Yet, when my father died, I remember the condolence phone call which affected me most was the one from a woman who had attended elementary school with him a half a century earlier. It was then I realized the greatest thing that can be said of a human is this: If one has an impact on those he or she did not know, or at least did not know WELL, he or she has lived a truly great life.
I did not know Dave well. But he had one hell of an impact on my life.
I grieve for a man I barely knew, because – while he could not have picked me out of a line-up – THE Tony Manifold is who he is today because of Dave Adams.
He will be missed.
June 6th, 2007 at 11:50 am
For as long as I can remember, back as a teacher in Iowa and more recently for the past 25 years as a yearbook publisher’s rep, Dave Adams has been the cheery face that I sought out at journalism conferences and workshops. I never was his student in a formal sense but I certainly learned from him. His absence will be felt for years to come on the collegiate yearbook scene, on the scholastic free speech platform, and in the world of those who cared about this smiling (although minus one tooth) huggy bear of a man. My condolences to those who will miss his daily presence in their lives. You were truly blessed to have had that experience.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
When I read the stories in the IDS from the current students, I found myself getting frustrated and angry that circumstances have cut short their time with Dave. It’s not an easy position for them to be in. They have to deal with their own grief and then also keep pushing forward into the storm for the sake of the alumni, who will be bombarding them this weekend, and also for the sake of the publications, which can’t be allowed to falter. You can’t ever stop pushing – no matter how frustrated or angry you get.
Three years ago I started graduate school at a very small program in a very small town. Two weeks into our first semester, one of our three professors was killed in a car crash. Lanny Wright had been a history professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program for thirty of its forty years. The only class we had those first two weeks was a two-week intensive research skills class taught by Lanny. He’d helped shape the program and was an integral part of our Cooperstown culture. I see parallels between then and now, only this time I’m on the side of the grieving and sorrow-filled alumni rather than the grieving and lost-feeling students.
The outpouring of support from our alumni was amazing, and we didn’t know what to make of it. Most of us had barely known Lanny, only been his students for two weeks and had only heard a few things about him from our second-year classmates. We learned so much more about him at the memorial service when our alumni told story after story about our beloved, curmudgeonly professor. As each former friend or student shared their tale of academic curiosity, mischief, or friendship, we sat there and tried to understand the scope of our loss. We were frustrated and angry. Lanny was a friend and mentor from whom we’d only just started to learn, and now we would only get that chance through the stories of others. Again, the parallels are striking.
This weekend you will hear many stories about your beloved and far-from-curmudgeonly professor, and chances are, like me, you will be frustrated and angry you never got the opportunity to create, or finish, stories of your own with him. Like Lanny, Dave has been an inspiration, mentor and friend to so many of us. We have our Dave stories and we regret that you won’t get a chance to have yours.
But you have a different story that we never had and never wanted: You are Dave’s last class. That is not an easy responsibility with which to be charged. It’s up to you to maintain the exceptional quality of Student Publications and secure Dave’s legacy of journalism excellence at IU – and quite frankly, that sounds intimidating.
You will have help though. We are your alumni – we worked at the IDS and the Arbutus under Dave’s tutelage. We’ve gotten ourselves into hot water and gotten out of it time and again – usually with Dave’s help. You may not have Dave, and we’re certainly no replacement, but you have us. I don’t think I’m overstepping my authority to say that your alumni will support you wholeheartedly as you continue to work for Student Publications. When you have questions, call us. When you need help, call us. When you need career advice, call us. When you just want to hear a fun story about Dave, call us. We are your alumni and we’re proud of you for how well you’ve handled everything so far.
We want you to succeed, and if there’s something we can do to help you, we will.
–Valerie Aquila, ‘04