Lafayette Boulevard was once anchored on the east by a state
mental hospital and on the west by The Detroit News, and it was often
hard to tell the occupants of the two buildings apart.
Corporate journalism had already started to tame the newspaper
business by the time I walked in the door of The News in 1976, but
there were still some cowboy days left, and more than a few characters
who could have stepped off the frames of “The Front Page.”
Jim Kerwin wasn’t the most eccentric of the pack of older
reporters who spent more time rared back at the Anchor Bar than they
did covering their beats. But he was pretty close.
His wardrobe made him almost indistinguishable from a street
bum. His shirts and pants were so worn they held together only by the
material’s sheer determination not to surrender.
Before a late-in-life marriage, Jim spent many of his nights on
a cot in the back of the Anchor. After the wedding, his appearance
improved considerably, but never much above the level of rumpled.
With thick black glasses and a lumbering gait, he looked like
an overstuffed teddy bear that had been worried to death by a child.
He drew young reporters like a magnet. And not just because he
took time to talk us through stories, or to tweak our leads, or to
rewrite a paragraph or two on the sly. But because he still had the
fire, the passion for newspapering.
He was a hell of a reporter, the highest compliment you could
pay then. Jim was among the nation’s pioneering environmental writers,
and he championed the ballot drive for a bottle deposit in Michigan,
much to the chagrin of the newspaper’s pro-business bosses. I was
sitting in the newsroom with Jim the morning after the bottle bill
passed, when the late Martin Hayden, the fearsome editor of The News,
stormed in.
“Your damn deposit law passed, Kerwin,” he snarled. “I hope you’re happy.”
I was frozen in terror just being in the vicinity of such rage,
but Jim was unfazed. As Hayden whirled to leave, he said, “Well yes,
Martin, I am. Can I buy you a beer to celebrate? I’ll pay the deposit.”
Irreverence was the order of the day. Jim chaired the lunch
group at the old Press Club, where the price of admission was a quick
wit and the ability to take insults as well as you dished them out.
Jim’s moment of infamy came when he accepted a challenge from
Victor the Rasslin’ Bear as a publicity stunt for the old Olympia
Arena. Victor was supposed to go easy, but something about the reporter
aroused the bear’s beastly instincts. He flat kicked Jim’s butt.
Year’s later, Jim would rub his back and say, “I haven’t been
right since that crazy bear got ahold of me.” And then he’d retell the
story.
I never tired of hearing it or any of the dozens of tales Jim had about the glory days of The News.
And I wish I could hear them again. Jim died last week, at age 74, 14 years after retiring from the paper.
Stay around a place long enough and you start to see ghosts in every corner.
The newsroom was gutted and remodeled a few years back. But I
can close my eyes and still see the old room, with its dangling wires,
worn linoleum floor and Depression-era gray desks. I can also see the
legends who filled the room.
And now Jim Kerwin joins them.
Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The Detroit News. You can reach him at nfinley@ detnews.com or (313) 222-2064.
Latest Editorials 
Insider
Previous Story