Making friends wasn’t Ben Reddick’s top priority

ROBERT GARDNER

* EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Pilot has agreed to republish The Verdict,

the ever-popular column written for many years by retired Corona Del

Mar jurist and historian Robert Gardner, in exchange for donations to

the Surfrider Foundation. This column was originally published on

Feb. 5, 1994.

Ben Reddick, editor and publisher of one of our early local

newspapers, was a very controversial character. To his critics, Ben

was loud, obnoxious, opinionated, bombastic, overbearing and

unpleasant -- and that’s an expurgated list of his alleged character

flaws.

To his admirers, few though they may have been, he was aggressive,

outspoken and fearless. However, Ben didn’t have too many admirers.

Not that he cared. Ben didn’t go out of his way to court admirers.

Ben was prickly, not cuddly.

For some reason, I liked him. So too did Walter Bourroughs,

founder of the Pilot. However, even Walter was hard pressed to say

much nice about Ben. In Walter’s chapter on early local newspapers in

Jim Felton’s “Newport Beach, 75,” about all he could say about Ben

was that he liked him and that he had a loud laugh.

I concur. Ben’s laugh was more like a bray. Unfortunately, it

usually had a connotation of derision rather than humor. Be that as

it may, neither Walter nor I ever told Ben Reddick that we liked him.

If we had, it would have brought out that loud laugh plus a glare

from a set of gimlet eyes that challenged the truth of anything you

said. I repeat: Ben Reddick was not cuddly.

Before Ben, our local newspaper editor was Sam Meyer, a delightful

man who ran a very friendly paper that was eventually acquired by

Ben. Sam was establishment oriented -- don’t rock the ship, be nice

to everyone. Sam was very frank about it. He was in business to make

money and you don’t make money making enemies.

To the contrary, Ben Reddick couldn’t care less about making

friends. He wasn’t happy unless he was rocking the boat, taking on

the whole world. I always thought Ben pictured himself as the fiery,

small-town newspaper editor immortalized in countless western movies.

You know, the only friend of the lonesome hero who takes on the

wicked cattle baron.

Actually, Ben went out of his way to annoy people. For example, he

held the medical profession in low esteem and refused to call doctors

by the title “doctor.” In Ben’s paper they were always “mister.”

Understandably, this infuriated the doctors and made Ben happy.

Ben had one characteristic on which all agreed, friend and foe

alike. Ben was aggressive. I always thought this was the result of

his background as a newspaper photographer. Before Ben came to town

he had been a newspaper photographer with the Hearst Los Angeles

Examiner. All newspaper photographers are aggressive. Hearst

photographers were doubly aggressive. You know, the type that stick a

camera in the face of a woman sobbing over the body of her slain

child. Ben never got over being a photographer.

And so it was that one night a gunfight broke out between the

police and the operator of a smoked fish stand at the corner of

Jamboree and Coast Highway. Ben grabbed his trusty camera and got

right into the battle, stationing himself between the opposing forces

and actually running right up to the smoked fish stand operator and

taking the operator’s picture as he was blasting away at the police

and anyone else who came into range.

This led to Tom Keevil’s boob of the year award.

Shortly after the Battle of the Smoked Fish Stand, the town was

going through its annual man-of-the-year search. A few of us

irreverent souls met at Tom Keevil’s house and decided to pick the

boob of the year, the man who had done the most incredibly stupid

thing during the year. Tom, who was the editor of the Pilot and had a

nose for a well-turned phrase, decided we should name the award in

honor of the smoked fish guy because he was the one who had a chance

to shoot Ben Reddick and didn’t.

In spite of infuriating everyone else, Ben apparently impressed

one man, the governor of the state, who appointed Ben to the board of

supervisors to complete the term of a supervisor who had died in

office. Ben took his prickly personality into the political world and

was not reelected. Shortly after that experience, Ben left town and

started a paper in Paso Robles. I lost track of Ben.

Then one night I checked into a motel in Paso Robles. As I was

checking in with the owner, a nice, motherly, white-haired lady who

bore a striking resemblance to Mrs. See of See’s candy, I said, “I

understand Ben Reddick operates a newspaper here.”

If I had touched the lady with an electric cattle prod the result

couldn’t have been more dramatic. This kindly, motherly,

white-haired, old lady swelled up like a pouter pigeon. Her face

turned purple, and she screamed, “Ben Reddick. That ----! ----!

----!”

I gathered that Ben Reddick hadn’t changed his ways.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a resident of Corona del Mar and a longtime

observer of life in Newport Beach.