BLIND JOURNEY A Journalist’s Memoirs

Unchartered and beyond his control, Jack’s 43-year writing career was launched in 1948 on a midnight bus ride he shared with a lieutenant colonel, Fort Ord’s Public Inforation officer at the Army’s basic training post in California. After almost four years assigned to PIO learning to join two readable sentences, Jack faced civilian life with a wife, six-week-old daughter and no job. From a copyboy at a Hollywood newspaper, where he earned $5 to review plays, to his retirement from the Los Angeles Times at age 61, he tried to balance family life with his profession. He covered sports, entertanment, wrote TV dramas and radio scripts. His coverage of Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) and boxing at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and other major celebrities left limited time to raise his four children. His wife, not a sports fan, was thrilled when she met actor Cary Grant… at a sports event.