Charles H. Grasty: Difference between revisions
Drobinsonx (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Drobinsonx (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 16: | Line 16: | ||
<gallery> |
<gallery> |
||
http://www.danarobinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ |
http://www.danarobinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/grastyteamphoto.png |
||
{{Information |
|||
|Description = A photo of Charles Grasty, far right with the Baltimore Sun staff |
|||
|Source = http://www.danarobinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/grastyteamphoto.png |
|||
|Date = (digital enhanced 12, Feb. 2011, original photo courtesy of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, H.L. Mencken Collection) |
|||
|Author = digital derivative by Dana Robinson |
|||
|Permission = Courtesy Enoch Pratt Free Library, H.L. Mencken Collection. |
|||
|other_versions = |
|||
}} |
|||
</gallery> |
</gallery> |
||
Revision as of 15:25, 12 February 2011
Charles Henry Grasty was a well-known newspaper operator who at one time controlled the Baltimore Sun. He was born March 3, 1863 in Fincastle, Virginia, the son of a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend John Sharshall Grasty, and the former Ella Giles Pettus, and as a bright youth taught Latin while in high school. At age 16 he entered University of Missouri to study law, but left before graduating to enter the newspaper business. He stayed on at a summer job reporting for the Mexico Intelligencer paying $6 a week, and then was offered $7 a week to join the Kansas City Star, where he rose to managing editor within 18 months.
In 1890 he married Leota Tootle Perrin, a woman with a daughter from another marriage named Sarah Perrin (Sarah Perrin was married to Lieutenant George de Grasse Catlin in Lake Placid New York August 18, 1909). That same year, Grasty became the general manager of the Manufacturers' Record, a weekly business journal in Baltimore, leaving the Kansas City Star.
Grasty was one of the investors of the Roland Park development in Baltimore at about the same time that he found investors to back the acquisition of the Baltimore Evening News. Through the Evening News he attacked local political corruption, but maintained political independence. He came out against the Baltimore Sun as a competing newspaper for its willingness to ignore Baltimore political corruption, at the time not knowing that over a decade later he would take control of that newspaper. His efforts to root out corruption in Baltimore politics ensured the loss of power by incumbent democrats Arthur Pue Gorman, who lost the state senate seat from which he had dominated Maryland politics for years. In addition, he saw the unseating of I. Freeman Rasin, Gorman's ally in control of Baltimore, who was defeated for city council. Grasty’s 1893 accusations against democratic politicians for their involvement in gambling schemes earned him a libel suit, which he won.
In the great Baltimore fire of 1904 took down much of the city including the Evening News. The Washington Post agreed to print the News, and Grasty turned to Adolph S. Ochs to use the unused printing facilities of the Philadelphia Times. Ochs essentially gave Grasty the machinery. Grasty rebuilt the News and reopened within weeks. It is said that within 16 hours of the fire, Grasty had acquired a new plant and three new printing presses for $150,000. First Press Is Here, Baltimore American, Feb. 12, 1904; Charles Grasty to Richard Mansfield, June 30, 1906, NYPL/ms; See Mencken: the American iconoclast By Marion Elizabeth Rodgers.
Grasty sold the News on 27 February 1908 to chain-maker Frank A. Munsey for $1,500,000. Grasty attempted to remain on as general manager, but resigned within weeks due to disagreements. Later in 1908 he bought a half-interest in a Minnesota evening paper called the Dispatch. Early the next year he bought the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which had both morning and evening editions, and combined its evening edition with the Dispatch. Grasty’s style was not well accepted in the Twin Cities and he soon sold the papers back to their original owners and took an extended trip to Europe. However, Grasty was already eyeing the Baltimore Sun, which was still run by the Abell family. Grasty found investors and struck a deal with the Sun founders to leave them with a majority stake, but took for himself preferred shares that guaranteed absolute control of the Sun by him personally. The Abells relented out of fear that Grasty would roll up the local competing papers and compete against the Sun.
After taking control of the Sun, Grasty acquired the Baltimore World at auction in April 1910 for $63,000, overpaying, but fearing a play by William Randolph Hurst to enter the Baltimore market.
By 1911, Grasty used the Sun to back Woodrow Wilson in a successful contest for the Presidency against Taft and Roosevelt. In 1914, after the death of President Wilson’s wife, Grasty telegrammed the President with his regrets. A letter signed by Woodrow Wilson on Whitehouse letterhead thanks Mr. Grasty for this.
His life was that of a newspaperman. He was in the business from the time he was about 17 until his death at 61 years old. He ran papers from the perspective and ethic of a reporter. He was an idealist, and even in his bid for control of the Sunpapers, his focus for control was not financial, but an effort to ensure that he could separate editorial control from investor involvement. His retirement was that of a war correspondent, a well-informed writer, who is said to be the most informed in all of Europe in the years before his death. His leadership touched into Baltimore politics, and helped Wilson’s bid for Presidential election. His name is associated with The Baltimore Sun, The Evening News, Kansas City Star, New York Times, Washington Post, and half-dozen other regional newspapers. From 1900 to 1910, Grasty was a director of the Associated Press. Few men in newspaper history have the same resume.
In 1915, after retiring from the Sun, Grasty went to Europe as a war correspondent for the Kansas City Star. He returned to the US in 1916, served as the Treasurer for the New York Times, before boredom caused him to return to Europe and his work as a war correspondent. In 1918 he published a book, Flashes from the Front. He continued as a war correspondent for the Times until his death. He wrote a number of pieces that were published in the Atlantic while he was a correspondent in London.
While living in London, Grasty fathered a daughter with Englishwoman Louisa Bennett. This, his only daughter, Joan Bennett Grasty was born XX, 1919. Grasty and his wife had no natural children. Grasty remain involved in the life of his daughter, and paid for she and her mother to relocate to the United States, and he financed their living, eventually leaving Joan “Winifred” Bennett Grasty as his sole heir. Joan Grasty became a world traveler, attended University of Southern California, was a one-time Hollywood actress and later supported Ronald Regan in his successful bid for California Governor. Joan Grasty had only one child Pete Robinson, whose eldest son attorney Dana Robinson became an entrepreneur with investments in publishing businesses. Robinson is also a co-founder of ['Esquivel Designs'], a highly acclaimed American bespoke maker of shoes and leather goods.
Grasty died January 19, 1924, and while many things were said about him at the time of his death, and after, the Sun’s editorial after his death stated:
“Probably no citizen of Baltimore ever performed greater public services. Our municipal government today, whatever its defects, is at least a hundred times as honest, intelligent and efficient as it was in 1892. For that change we may thank Charles H. Grasty more than we may thank any other man.... His monument belongs in Baltimore, not in New York or in London, where he served the Times so long. He left an indelible mark upon journalism here, and he left a no less indelible mark upon municipal history. He changed our newspapers and he changed our politics, and both changes were for the better.”
Sources:
Dictionary of Literary Biography Daniel W. Pfaff, Pennsylvania State University. Dictionary of Literary Biography. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_Literary_Biography
Dana Robinson, Esq. http://www.danarobinson.com/charlesgrasty
130 Pen Pictures of Live Men http://books.google.com/books?id=IOQDAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA174&ots=Wbze-FU2TJ&dq=charles%20grasty%20baltimore%20sun&pg=PA174#v=onepage&q&f=false
Outbound Links by or about Charles Grasty:
Grasty’s Editorial upon the death of Joseph Pulitzer http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0410.html
New York Times 1915 Article by Charles H. Grasty http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0F16FC385B17738DDDAC0994D0405B858DF1D3
Charles H. Grasty Assumes Control of the Baltimore Sun http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50C12F63C5417738DDDA10A94D9405B808DF1D3
Baltimore History Chronology http://www.mdoe.org/baltimoresun.html
http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/chron/html/chron18.html
Biography from the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library http://wwl2.dataformat.com/HTML/27377.htm
Mentioned in these Books & Articles:
Mencken: the American iconoclast By Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
The skeptic: a life of H.L. Mencken By Terry Teachout
130 pen pictures of live men By Orlando Oscar Stealey
The Outlook, Volume 101 By Ernest Hamlin Abbott, Lyman Abbott, Francis Rufus Bellamy, Hamilton Wright Mabie
Negotiating in the press: American journalism and diplomacy, 1918-1919
By Joseph Hayden
Proceedings of the National Newspaper Conference, Volume 1
By University of Wisconsin. University Extension Division. Dept. of General Information and Welfare
The World almanac and book of facts
By Facts on File, Inc
The Independent, Volume 75
Baltimore Sun, 20 January 1924, pp. 4, 6, 16.Meyer Berger, The Story of the New York Times 1851-1951 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951), pp. 142-143.
Gerald W. Johnson, Frank R. Kent, H. L. Mencken, and Hamilton Owens, The Sunpapers of Baltimore (New York: Knopf, 1937), pp. 285-339.
William Manchester, The Sage of Baltimore (London: Melrose, 1952), pp. 56-61.New York Times, 20 January 1924, p. 9.
Auction for a letter to Grasty signed by Woodrow Wilson http://www.historyforsale.com/html/prodetails.asp?documentid=30768&start=5
LETTER SIGNED BY WOODROW WILSON Acknowledging sympathy upon the death of the First Lady.
The White House, Washington, 1914 August 15. To Charles H. Grasty, Baltimore. In full: "I want you to know how real a comfort it was to me to get your telegram of sympathy. It is very delightful to feel the warm touch of a friend's hand at such a time, and your telegram has served to give me strength and courage."
Nine days earlier, on August 6, 1914, Wilson's wife, Ellen Louise Axson Wilson, had died of Bright's disease at the age of 54. She was the last First Lady to die while her husband was President.
Career Highlights for Charles H. Grasty:
Managing editor, Kansas City Star (1884-1889) Publisher, Baltimore Evening News (1892-1908), St. Paul Dispatch and St. Paul Pioneer Press (1908-1909) President and general manager, Baltimore Sunpapers (1910-1914) War correspondent, Kansas City Star and Associated Press (1915-1916) Treasurer, New York Times (1916-1917) Special editorial correspondent, New York Times (1917-1924).
Author of:
Flashes from the Front (New York: Century, 1918).