Returning to Cleveland after a week stay with my daughter Karin in New Rochelle, I came across the obituary for John Morrell. The Plain Dealer gave John a fitting obit, noting his “Park Bench” murals downtown.
I claim another piece of John’s work.
In 1968 when I decided to start a newsletter, one of Cleveland’s top advertising men and a friend, George Sapin, was good enough to hook me up with graphic artist John Morrell. John was small in stature but large in talent and heart.
Morrell, he said, would pro bono design a format for my newsletter. With a stipulation, however. Morrell wasn’t going to work for someone whose work he disapproved. He had to meet me, George said, and test my work against his ethics. John was generous but fussy about whom he would support. If he didn’t agree with me I wouldn’t get his free work. Nor, I imagined, could I coax him with money.
I gave him what I had written for the first issue of the newsletter I would call simply and honestly, I believed, Point of View. The first article was an attack on Mayor Carl Stokes’ “Cleveland Now” program. It was being hailed mightily by both city newspapers. I labeled it “another gimmick.” I wrote that as a program to solve Cleveland’s problems, particularly aimed at poverty and racism, it was “a diversion,” and a program that “creates an illusion” of solving the problems rather than a serious attempt.
Morrell liked what he read. At least I assumed he did because I was soon presented with a mockup of what would be the model for Point of View for more than 32 years.
Morrell actually had the printed title for the newsletter in lower case. Further, the word “view” was printed with an upside down “e.” Morrell said that what he read was different. He wanted to signify that distinction somehow. Thus the upside down “e.” Something no typewriter or computer that I know could replicate.
I had a number of his mockups printed. Then I would type my articles on a borrowed IBM. Take the typed material home and glue them into the mockup. The printer then would take the mockups and reduce them to the newsletter size of 11 by 14 inch. It would be folded into a seven by 11 inch, making a four-page newsletter.
You can see John Morrell’s original handiwork for Point of View here:
http://www.clevelandmemory.org/roldo/pdf/wheehq.pdf
Many years later I ran into Morrell on Coventry. He insisted that the newsletter needed a new dress-up. Okay, who was I to argue. Soon I was presented with new mockup sheets. The changes were minor and again simple.
This issue has the newer Morrell design:
Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s.
He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991.