Molly Ivins February 7

BERKELEY, Calif. — I believe it to be one of life's great truths that there is no group of people quite so wonderful as those who were seniors when you were a freshman. This applies to both high school and college. Didn't you notice that the juniors who became seniors when you were a sophomore were just not quite as ... suave, fascinating, dangerous, original as the seniors before them?

The same thing is true of the world of work. I belong to a peripatetic profession; most of us move on fairly frequently. I was exceptionally lucky with my first group of professional "seniors" at the Minneapolis Tribune — now folded in with what used to be our competition, the Star, to make the "Strib" of today.

True, I had worked for the Houston Chronicle before going to Minneapolis, and that was enough to convince me that Hildy Johnson of The Front Page was alive and well and that "my chosen field of endeavor," as Mel Mencher used to say, was deliciously sprinkled with outlaws and rascals. But the Tribune was my first "grown-up" job, and it was the first time I worked with a group of bright people trying to put out a first-rate newspaper. (At the old Chronk, our editor was given to solemnly informing us that our mission in life was "not to rock the boat.")

In Minneapolis — which would be the best city in the country except it needs to be shut down for six months of the year because it's too cold — I encountered a group of professional journalists who, bless their hearts, never thought of themselves as anything more pretentious than "newspapermen." The "seniors" of my first job have been croaking right and left lately, and when word came last week that Stu Baird, our beloved city editor, was gone, it seemed past time for a tribute.

Can anyone remember Stu Baird not laughing? He couldn't have laughed all the time — it only seems that way. He was bald even when I worked for him 30 years ago. I can remember many a tense huddle at the desk: "Here's the story, take you 15 minutes to get there, 40 to deadline, file 500 words, go!"

But mostly I remember Stu's laughter ringing through the newsroom about anything and everything: about Holbrook's love life, about the time a truckful of photochemicals plunged off a bridge into a river and he decided to wait and see what developed, about the fact that John Addington on the copy desk could recite all 71 counties of Wisconsin in alphabetical order, about the time we ran the headline "Area Bears Watching," about all the insanity and folly and sheer stubborn Midwesternness of Minnesota. Long before anyone had heard of Garrison Keillor, Stu Baird knew that Minnesota was bone-deep funny and wonderfully endearing.

He also relished the sheer oddity of the people who worked with him.

Newspaperpeople are not necessarily, or even often, your seriously normal human beans. That was fine by Stu. He positively cherished our assorted lunacies — would even boast about them. If a particularly peculiar citizen had a redeeming social value, Stu would always point it out, and if there was a good excuse for unseemly behavior — "You'd be that grumpy too if you were married to his wife" — it was always given due recognition. And when there was no excuse for perfectly dreadful people, Stu would just roar over stories of how wretched they were.

Baird left the Tribune, as newspaper people used to do in those days, to go into public relations so he could afford to send his kids to college. His successor at the city desk was Frank Premack, as relentless and driven as Baird was loose and easygoing.

I must have had a thousand fights with Premack, but he was a good newsman. There are a million good reasons why busting your rear on every story for a medium-size daily in a not-terribly-important market is not strictly necessary, and Premack never believed a single one of them. What a ruthless, driving force for excellence that man was — it's a mercy I didn't shoot him. It took me a long, long time to realize how much I learned from him.

Premack was balanced by Dick Cunningham, a rare and gentle soul, perhaps the greatest humanist I ever met around a city desk. I'm still not sure how these things are strictly measured — and I know most people never associate this with newspaperfolk — but Cunningham may have been the best Christian I ever knew. It gave him some remarkable insights into what news really is.

The Sunday late shift used to knock off at midnight — no bars open — and repair to Bob Crabb's house to play chess. At the beginning of World War II, Crabb was working for some long-since-defunct news service in the Philippines, was caught by the Japanese and spent the war in a concentration camp. He occasionally referred to it, but it was not until I later read the histories of those camps that I had any grasp of what he had been through.

We would play chess until 3 or 4 a.m., often until dawn, five or six games going at once. We developed a sort of running patter, referring to the pieces by elaborate formal titles. "Aha! I have seized your Noble Knight upon his Prancing Steed with my Humble Peasant here. Take that!" Those who were between games would gather to give strategic advice to those locked in close matches.

Just a few months ago, shortly before his own death, I received a note from Cunningham with a copy of Crabb's obituary enclosed. Cunningham's note, a reference to those long-ago chess matches, said simply: "Remember: Always seize the long diagonal!"

Chess is a complicated game — you can spend a lifetime studying it — but it's nowhere near as complicated as life. If there is a long diagonal in this world, I suspect it has to do with staying clear and staying true to those who have taught so much and given so generously to you.

COPYRIGHT 1997 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.