Free Press family has lost a great ‘newspaperman’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/05/2009 (5976 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was born into the Winnipeg Free Press, to a reporter father who would die an editor there.

The date he died was Jan. 27, 1976, and newspapers were still basking in the reflective glow of the Washington Post’s Watergate greatness.

On Jan. 27, 1984, I was at work on a column when a woman colleague and friend of my father’s marched the length of the newsroom and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"Thinking specially of your dad today," she said. "It’s been eight years."

Her name was Marion Lepkin.

And now it’s my turn to remember her.

***

Marion Lepkin’s life, like her mind, was exceptional. Even if her death wasn’t.

Marion died in a personal-care home on May 1 at age 85.

"She was a complicated woman," said Vera Mardon, her best friend and former Free Press colleague.

Tom Oleson, the Free Press columnist and editorial writer, offered his own epitaph for a complicated woman.

"She was a good newspaperman.

"I say that deliberately," Tom quickly added, "because she thrived and survived in a world that was completely dominated by men."

Marion grew up in a Brandon home that was dominated by a man.

Her father.

But young Marion survived that, too, and thrived at Brandon Collegiate, where she won the Governor General’s Medal and an Isbister Scholarship. At 20, Marion graduated from Brandon College with more gold medals and an honours BA.

And then, at 23, overqualified in every way but gender, Marion joined the Winnipeg Free Press and a cast of characters whose life can be reduced to three words.

News and booze.

When young Marion arrived in the late 1940s, the Free Press newsroom made The Front Page — Hollywood’s version of newspaper life — seem understated.

Once she witnessed a reporter toss a typewriter out a fourth-floor window. And there was the drinking in the darkroom.

Marion would graduate from reporting, to column writing, to the desk, where she became chief copy editor, assistant city editor and Canadian editor. But it was as a copy editor that Marion made her reputation.

She was exacting about newspaper style and clear and concise writing. To the point that she often infuriated reporters with the notes she attached to their copy.

Ritchie Gage, now publisher and editor-in-chief of Manitoba Business magazine, recalled one style lesson he can quote verbatim.

"By the way, Ritchie," Marion said, "the world began, everything else started.’"

Another lesson followed.

"She once took 75 inches of copy out of a meandering feature I wrote on a sailing adventure," Ritchie said, "and you couldn’t see the seam."

But for all her teaching about copy, Marion, cigarette dangling from red lips, was a Front Page character herself, of course.

"She used to sing, ‘N-o-e-l, N-o-e-l’ in the middle of every day," Ritchie recalled "Just those two words"

"She has a singing voice like a cow," said Vera. "She was having fun with it."

The no-nonsense copy editor acting nonsensically.

That was just part of what made her complicated. What was less evident to most was that as hard as she could appear, Marion was really a soft, sensitive soul who quietly helped many people in need.

"She was afraid in some way to show her feelings."

Although, after she retired, she did write letters to the editor that practically chewed off the hand that used to feed her.

Marion didn’t like the direction newspapers were headed.

Back in the early 1990s, she launched this missile because stories weren’t turning off the front page.

"Media experts say one reason newspapers still prosper in the electronics age is the depth and detail they can bring to news coverage… A page for turns helps meet that need. To an outward-looking society such as Manitoba’s, the world is our backyard. We desperately need a Free Press with a Page 1 that reflects that truth."

***

Today, there are those who would argue that we don’t need a Free Press at all.

And perhaps one day not that long from now, newspapers will die.

But how do you replace a "newspaperman" like Marion Lepkin?

Her memorial service will be held today at 2:30 p.m. at Bardal Funeral Home, 843 Sherbrook. St.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca