Bill Macklin book signing today

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social contribution; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

If you knew the late Bill Macklin III, former long-time editor of The Journal, you'll understand why Emerson's words fit the man.

Macklin was the managing editor of The Journal plus a whole lot more. He wasn't the kind of guy that was happy to sit behind a desk all day and half the night.

He covered the Minnesota Legislature and wrote editorials with fervor. From 1951 until 1994 he wrote "Billboard", a human interest column. His columns touched readers with a spectrum of emotions.

His second wife, Judy Harding Macklin, is in New Ulm this weekend, promoting a book about him, "The Man In The Bright Flowered Cap, The story of Bill Macklin." She'll sign the book from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Rieke's Books, 13 N. Minnesota.

The eight-chapter book includes The Four Bill Macklins; The War Years; Bill, the Journalist; Bill, the Family Man; The Second Time Around; God, You Made us in Your Image; The Alzheimer's Years; and Endings.

Judy Macklin compiled a selection of her husband's columns, stories and poems on a computer after he died in June 1999.

"It's funny. I never thought I'd write a book, but I knew his columns had to be kept somehow, which is how I got started," said Judy Macklin, who worked many years as a nurse at Camp Courage near Itasca State Park.

"He wrote so many (columns), it took ages. About half way through, I decided to write something between them," she said. "Before I knew it, I was writing stories to fit some of his columns."

Macklin's journalism career began as a high school student in Litchfield when he worked as a correspondent for the West Central Daily Tribune of Willmar. His pay was $1 per story and a free subscription.

He enrolled at the University of Missouri in 1935, one of the top journalism schools in the nation. While there, he wrote one of his favorite editorials as editor of the Missouri Student, supporting racial integration at the school.

A prominent Missouri state senator read his piece on the floor of the state senate, crumpled the newspaper into a ball, threw it on the floor and declared it "the work of some eastern liberal."

The senator proposed a substantial increase in out-of-state tuition to keep radicals from corrupting the halls of Missouri learning. The legislature agreed, Judy Macklin wrote.

After graduating at Missouri, Macklin worked for the Associated Press in St. Louis and London. As an AP writer, he interviewed Joe DiMaggio in the Yankee locker room, rode to Wimbledon with tennis great Jack Kramer and attended Queen Elizabeth's wedding.

Between wire service jobs in St. Louis and England, he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941.

He admitted his father was riding him for some time about getting married. In his family, when his father told him to do something, he did it. He married his first wife, Marion Elaine Beckstrom, at age 27, in 1944, while he was stationed in Florida.

Macklin retired from The Journal in 1979 and moved to Ten Mile Lake near Hackensack with his first wife. Of course, he couldn't stop writing. His column, "From Under the Scotchman's Hat," regularly appeared in the local newspaper.

They gathered wild rice in the fall, maple syrup in the spring, entertained friends and family and enjoyed the seasons for eight years on Bachelor Bay, according to a eulogy written and read by Bill Macklin IV at his father's funeral.

His first wife died in April 1987. Later that year, he met his second wife, Judy Voss of Walker, while attending a marriage in Georgia. They were married the next year at the lake.

Macklin had Alzheimer's disease during his final years. He went to the Masonic Home of Minneapolis in 1995 but kept his suitcase packed the first few months there.

In December 1998, he was moved to Pine River, within a few blocks of his wife. He died at home seven months later.

Perhaps Bill Macklin IV, now a district court judge living in Lakeville, described his father best.

"He was a wonderful father, husband and friend, but what set him apart from others and what defined him was that he was a reporter. It wasn't just a profession for him; it was a way of life. If he engaged you in conversation he was always asking questions. He was an observer of everything and missed nothing. He was never without a notebook-- into into the Alzheimer's -- in which he would pen ideas for the next story," Bill Macklin IV said.