OPINION: McCulloch's honor by Nevada Press is an important reminder to fight the good fight

Last weekend in Reno, Frank McCulloch was inducted into the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame. It was a nice gesture, well deserved and long overdue.

There was no shortage of worthy recipients of this award this Saturday, but even in this group, McCulloch's contributions to journalism are special.

At the ceremony, McCulloch's proud grandson Christopher Parman spoke on behalf of the family, remembering the man he knew as a great teacher and lifelong student. His grandfather was not only a giant of journalism, but also someone who took him fishing and taught him baseball.

“He was a Marine first and foremost,” Parman said. “I mean, if you look at him, if you look up Marine in the dictionary, you'll probably find a picture of him. He acted like a Marine. He talked like a Marine. … And when I was 9 years old, he coached my little league baseball team.”

But it's safe to assume that the Nevada native's name isn't as well known in Nevada these days, even among many of the state's veteran journalists. That's unfortunate. The country and its beleaguered press can benefit from McCulloch's story. From San Francisco to Saigon, his life and career were marked by integrity, courage and determination on deadlines.

As a reporter and editor at Time And Life Magazines, together with the Reno Evening Gazette, Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee And San Francisco Examiner McCulloch broke big stories in the newspapers and led investigations that uncovered Mafia influences in the casino business as well as corrupt politicians and businessmen. And when push came to shove, McCulloch never failed to back his people after their best efforts resulted in millions of dollars in defamation lawsuits. Most notable to Nevadans was his dogged and successful defense of his Sacramento Bee Reporter against then US Senator Paul Laxalt.

It all began in Fernley. He was born in 1920 into a pioneering family of ranchers. He courted his future wife Jakie Caldwell on horseback and dreamed of pitching in the major leagues. Talent scouts recognized potential in his fastball, but he was too wild for the pros. He enrolled at the University of Nevada in Reno and turned to journalism. He edited the Sagebrush campus newspaper and writing stories for UPI. These efforts earned him a job in San Francisco and beyond.

“Without that journalism school,” McCulloch liked to tell his friends, “I would still be cutting up hay bales on the ranch in Nevada.”

At the beginning of World War II, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, but a heart murmur kept him from the front. Instead, he contributed to the war effort by writing stories of bravery and glory for the Marine Information Office in San Francisco. When the war ended, McCulloch worked for the Reno Evening Gazette.

Almost immediately, he turned the state upside down by exposing the corrupt casino licenses of men with direct ties to organized crime. The stories earned him a reputation as an excellent reporter, death threats from countless gangsters, and spurred Time to hire him first as a correspondent in Los Angeles and then as bureau chief in Dallas. There, his coverage of the segregated South brought the issues of racism and discrimination to the attention of the magazine's readers. In 1955, his cover story appeared on a young black lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, who had just won his victory in Brown v. Board of Educationmade the civil rights icon and future US Supreme Court justice known to many Americans.

Not only is McCulloch the last reporter to interview American tycoon Howard Hughes, but he is also responsible for exposing writer Clifford Irving for writing a fraudulent autobiography of the reclusive billionaire.

On Los Angeles TimesMcCulloch was instrumental in transforming the newsroom into a professional operation that emphasized investigative reporting. Revelations about the political influence of the John Birch Society and the financial ties of the Teamsters Union to land development in the Los Angeles area helped the paper enter a new era and gain national recognition.

At TimeMcCulloch served as Southeast Asia bureau chief in Hong Kong and Saigon during the build-up to the Vietnam War, building a reputation that reflected his training in the U.S. Marine Corps. In the service of facts in a war-clouded country where truth was often hard to find, he became disillusioned with America's mission and that of his magazine. As David Halberstam explains in his masterful The powers that be “Frank McCulloch was a legend in Vietnam. … It is characteristic of the war that he was one of its best reporters and that no one outside his profession knew his name, partly because of the anonymity of the Time and even more so because of his magazine's unwillingness to accept his reporting.”

He later held senior positions at Sacramento Bee And San Francisco Examinerfounded his own educational magazine and plunged into court battles defending the First Amendment, while remaining connected to UNR and its Reynolds School of Journalism, receiving an honorary doctorate and being named a Distinguished Nevadan.

McCulloch received the highest award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1984 “for outstanding journalism in the public interest” and “outstanding achievement and outstanding service to journalism.” But Pulitzer Prize-winning Nevada journalist and author Warren Lerude says his longtime friend wasn't interested in awards or even recognition. He was interested in fighting for journalism at every level because he recognized its importance to a free society.

“Frank McCulloch stood for one thing above all else: integrity,” says Lerude. “Generations of reporters at all levels, from the small daily and weekly newspapers … to the large organizations like The New York Times, Time-Life News ServiceAnd PBS, revered for his consistent performance and his vision of what journalism is all about.” Journalists face major conflicts in times of war and peace, and McCulloch believed in “public service” at all times, according to Lerude. “He was a great blessing to all of us who in our profession must always learn more about how to do what we do and always get better at our craft.”

In his own long career as a journalist, Lerude has faced many issues related to the First Amendment, and over the decades, “Frank was always the first person I turned to because of his vision, determination and position to advance the cause of freedom of information.”

McCulloch was a great inspiration to several generations of reporters, Lerude said, teaching them to respect themselves and everything they stood for. “He was always in the fight and he was always the leader.”

Frank McCulloch died in 2018 at the age of 98. His legacy lives on in those who continue to fight the good fight to get history right.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family's Nevada roots date back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters, and Desert Companion, among others. He is write a biography about McCulloch.