Posts Tagged ‘Ritz-Carlton’

Where was I to go in this town on a weekday night? In the long nights of the old days, I used to make the rounds until 2 a.m. (Imitate Walter Winchell – earn big money!) Ah, that’s when I began plugging away through blurry eyes on the newly-installed computer at the old Globe-Democrat. Most of them are gone now – publisher G. Duncan Bauman, editors Paul Tredway and Ed
Presberg – to name a few. Some are still around such as the talented Sue Ann Wood Poor and octogenarian Martin Duggan, whose last stand there was as editor of the editorial page. Duggan, as most of us know, retired and became a television star on KETC, Channel 9′s “Donnybrook.” Before he was to be honored Wednesday night at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, we chatted about his 45-year career at the newspaper and oh, the stories he could tell – and did. Most of all, he said he enjoyed being a news editor, but being editor of the editorial page “was more prestigious.”

“When I was with the feature page, my mentor was (the late columnist) Bob Goddard,” he recalled. “In those days, we had great friends at the Post-Dispatch. We had fun and there was a great deal of rivalry. Every day it was Super Bowl time.” Then, he reminisced about his early stint on “Donnybrook” and the bashing by then Post-Dispatch television critic
Eric Mink. Duggan pointed out, “Mink wrote we’re all an embarrassment to the city of St. Louis and he likened me to (zany appliance pitchman) Steve Mizerany. And, yet, we did win two Emmys.” (I later asked Mink about his critique and he said, “I take it as a compliment that Duggan remembers what I wrote a thousand years ago; I certainly don’t. That said, I love the Mizerany comparison. Didn’t Martin do ‘Donnybrook’ on roller skates a couple of times?”) In his retirement, Duggan won’t be sitting back and listening to Rush Limbaugh on KMOX. “I’m not a fan of his,” said Duggan. Asked if he’ll write his memoirs, Duggan insisted,”Memoirs are pretty boring. But, I might write about snobs, slobs, deadbeats and drunks.”