For about 46 years, my father-in-law, Milt Widder, wrote a popular gossip column for The Cleveland Press. His column, called "Sights and Sounds" became one of the newspaper's most popular features. But Milt's story began far from Ohio, in early 20th Century Europe. Milt was an Hungarian child, born in Berlin in 1907. He was to be the only child of his parents--a doctor father and a pianist mother. When Milt was only 13, in 1920, he and his parents came to America and settled in Cleveland. Times were tough for the immigrant family. Although his father was a professional man--a doctor--his inability to read, write or speak in English became a great challenge when he was faced with taking the medical exam that would allow him to continue his medical practice in America. A bright idea occurred to him--he could take his exam in Latin (the traditional language of both medicine and law). It worked, and he passed on his first try!
Young Milt had no interest in following in his father's footsteps. He instead decided that he would like to become an attorney. Although he began law school, the Great Depression got in his way and he dropped out. Lucky for all of his thousands of readers that he did, because he then went to work as a young copy boy for the newspaper. Interestingly, although Milt, like his father, could not speak much English when he arrived in Cleveland, he soon became so proficient in the language that he worked his way up to becoming a columnist for the paper. He did a brief stint as the music critic for The Cleveland Press before getting the assignment of gossip columnist. His outgoing personality and his writing style made him a "natural" for the job. Soon, all of Cleveland was reading his column. One reason for its popularity was the fact that his stories concerned not just Cleveland's elite high society, but the average person as well. While today's gossip columnists concentrate mainly on the rich and famous, Milt also included "the little guy" in his columns. Although his newspaper job didn't pay very well--most newspaper jobs don't--he was thankful to be employed at all in the Great Depression, especially since, by that time, he had a young wife to support--and would, in the coming years, have four children as well.
Being the city's favorite gossip columnist made Milt something of a celebrity in his own right. During Cleveland's Annual Christmas Parade, Milt frequently dressed up in the traditional red suit, and took on the role of Santa. He attended all of the popular events--in order to get stories for the column. Consequently, he met the famous people of the day--from opera singers, to movie stars, to sports greats. In fact, one famous opera singer became the godmother for his third son, and he came to know Indians great, Bob Feller, so well that, when he asked my late husband (a child of ten at the time) what he would like to name his little brother, my husband replied: "Robert Andrew Feller Widder." Milt and his wife, Dorothy, convinced my husband to settle on just "Robert Andrew Widder", still the namesake for the famous Hall of Famer!
In the "old" Press building--in the days before cellular phones and the Internet--Milt could frequently be found at his desk with a telephone to each ear, sitting before a manual typewriter on which he would "hunt and peck" his stories. Occasionally, he would come upon a really HUGE story. He was the first gossip columnist in the U.S. to learn that Howard Hughes and actress Jean Peters were divorcing. He hesitated to run the piece, feeling that it might be unkind to do so. (How different from today's gossip columnists!) It was a good thing that he hesitated, however, because the paper's editor, Louis B. Seltzer, soon came to him to tell him not to run the story in the gossip column--instead, Seltzer wanted it for the front page!
If his gossip column was the heart of his public life, his wife, Dorothy (or "Dort" as he lovingly called her) was the heart of his private life. It had been love at first sight for the young Milt and the lovely, blond Dorothy, who married in 1932, when he was 23 and she was just 21. Their marriage remained not just a marriage, but a great romance, as well, until Dorothy's death separated them in 1980. Milt lived on for another five years, until he went to join Dorothy once again in 1985.
In retrospect, Milt Widder was an excellent newspaperman. Despite his great popularity, however, he continually worried whether or not he might be fired from his job at any time. Ridiculous! Most readers of the paper claimed that his column was the first one they read each day. Perhaps it was just the shadow of the Great Depression, casting its shadow of doubt upon him--as it did upon so many that lived through those years.
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