Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [5]
The money I saved in that six-month period was important to me, but the lessons I learned on the job, I now believe, were more important. Car-cleaning was essentially a Negro occupation. I was thrust into an all-black world. I worked and ate with Negroes, made friends with them, and gained firsthand knowledge of their problems. Unconsciously, in those formative years, I developed an understanding of human beings that was to help me later on.
I attended Northwestern for two years, during which I played football, covered sports for The Daily Northwestern, and worked as an assistant to Walter Paulison, the University’s veteran sports publicity director. Two years later I transferred to the University of North Dakota. The late Jack West, athletic director and football coach, lured me there with a “prize” offer: I would become his publicity director. I was probably the only college football player who had his own office and secretary. My salary in those Depression days? Twenty-five dollars a month!
But the experience was invaluable. I would write five or six stories per week and hand them to my secretary for mimeographing and mailing. On Fridays I would call on sports editors with a sheaf of publicity material under my arm. On Saturdays I would put on my uniform to play quarterback in the games I had been publicizing. This arrangement was not only better than sweeping out the gym, but also led me to friendships that have lasted through the years. My friendship with Los Angeles columnist Vincent X. Flaherty is one of those. He was then writing a sports column in Washington, D.C. (University of North Dakota, 7 – George Washington University, 0.)
After my college days I played professionally with the Philadelphia Eagles for a short time. Then I was ready to pursue my chosen profession. With my college journalism training and publicity experience, I felt confident that I could handle a metropolitan newspaper job. Marvin McCarthy, sports editor of the old Chicago Times, apparently shared this confidence. He hired me on the recommendation of a Tau Delta Phi fraternity brother of mine, Herbert Simons, who was then covering baseball for the Times. My starting salary as a sports copyreader: $32.50 per week.
Sports thrive on the unexpected. I remember that when I played for the Philadelphia Eagles in 1935, the team was in serious financial difficulty. Bert Bell, owner of the Eagles who later became National Football League Commissioner, had an inspiration for bolstering the box-office receipts. One of the most publicized sports figures of that era was a player named Alabama Pitts. Alabama had been the number one baseball and football star at his former institution, Sing Sing Prison. Bell signed him as a halfback for the Eagles. A few days before the season opened, Bell summoned the players to a meeting to announce it. He sketched Pitts’ career for us and requested that we treat him as we did any other player. He explained, too, that he hoped Pitts would become a box-office attraction, which would benefit us all. As the meeting broke up, Bell called me aside and said, quite straight-faced, “By the way, Kup, I have a special assignment for you. You have the honor of being Alabama’s roommate. Sleep well, my boy.” With that, he walked away.
As it developed, I had no reason not to sleep well. Alabama was a quiet, unobtrusive roommate who seldom talked at all. I was never sure whether this was the result of his years in prison, or an inferiority complex caused by his having been thrust into a group of college men. At any rate, Alabama didn’t last long with the club. After the publicity of his signing had faded, he was found wanting for lack of weight (165 pounds) and experience, and he was released. (I was sorry to read, several years later, that Pitts had been killed in a saloon fight.)
Later that season a serious shoulder injury retired me from pro