Democracy needs defenders
Every time I write about politics, someone gets angry.
Some readers are going to get mad, readers I deeply care about enough to challenge.
Why write about politics? Why risk losing loyal readers? Why risk getting angry letters to the editor? Why risk advertisers cutting revenue to the paper?
Why poke the bear?
Tom Brett is the tall skinny guy on the left.
Because democracy needs defenders.
In journalism school, my professors taught me to write for one person, just one. It doesn’t matter if the circulation of the paper reached hundreds or hundreds of thousands of people, you always write for one person.
You visualize that person every time you write, so you’re not writing for awards, editors or for your own ego.
I’ve been a professional journalist since 1986 and I still write for one person. That one person has never changed, even though he’s been gone since 1999.
I write for my dad.
That’s why I never use big words it takes a dictionary to understand. Some people criticize the simplicity of journalism, scoffing that we write for someone with an 8th-grade education.
That’s what I do, without apology.
My dad dropped out of school in 9th grade to work, to feed his family. He was the oldest of 10. His family lost everything in the Great Depression. Their home. Their farm. Their livestock.
But not their hope. That’s what America offered his immigrant parents from Ireland: hope.
When they auctioned off everything, the auctioneer said the money from the corn crop my dad planted would go to him, even though he was just a teenager.
My dad spent it on a house in Ravenna for the family to call home. It was more like a shack by the railroad tracks. He and his younger brothers chased out the rodents, dug out a basement and turned the one-room dormer upstairs into bedrooms.
I grew up in that house. Spent my entire childhood there.
I grew up with a dad who never read a book, except about the sheet metal trade, and that was mostly drawings of duct work. But he read the paper religiously. And I do mean religiously. The threat of eviction hung over any one of his 11 kids who cut out a story or lost a section or spilled food on a paragraph before he read it.
After a long hot day tarring a roof or pounding down shingles or rearranging slate, he greeted my mom, asked how school was, then buried his face in the newspaper.
Not just one. Two. The Akron Beacon Journal and the Ravenna Record Courier. My dad studied every story, especially politics.
Why politics? Because when freedom was at stake, whether it was the freedom to put up a fence in your yard or run a business out of your garage or protest a war you didn’t believe we should be fighting, my dad cared.
He didn’t wield a lot of power. Blue collar guys like my dad could outwork their sons on a hot roof or in a cold basement crawling in tight spaces to bring a dead furnace back to life. He wielded no power except the greatest power we all have: The vote.
My dad believed in democracy. Risked his life for it as a tail gunner in over 30 mapping and combat missions over Burma and China in World War II.
He even tried to run for office. I hated it every time he ran for Portage County Commissioner. It was one of the rare times he wore a suit other than funerals. Our family picture ended up as an election flyer for Tom Brett. He would drop us off to “canvas” neighborhoods and knock on doors to tell people why they should vote for him.
I hated those election days. He always lost. Why?
The guy behind the counter at Morris’ Busy Corner told me. The corner store where we picked up the daily newspapers for dad was just four blocks away.
The burly guy behind the counter smelled like Marlboros. So did the Archie comics. One day the man said in a gruff voice, “Your dad’s running for office again. He’s never gonna win.”
My 10-year-old heart hurt hearing that truth.
“You know why?” he said. I held my breath waiting for a litany of faults that didn’t come.
“He’s too honest.”
I’m still blown away by those words. My dad wasn’t a joke for running for office and losing. He was a hero to guys like this one.
If there was a poster of my dad, it would be Norman Rockwell’s depiction of Freedom of Speech. A blue-collar guy in a flannel shirt standing up in a crowded townhall meeting surrounded by white-collared guys in suits and ties, steadying himself on calloused hands in a frayed jacket as he stands to speak truth to power.
When you participate in democracy, you defend it, every way you can.
My way is with words.