By Brandon Aebersold
Bob Schulman, a man who has invested 19 years of hard work and dedication in the University of Louisville, has recently taken his leave. Schulman, 87, a member of The Louisville Cardinal’s Board of Directors and advisor to its faculty for some 14 years, has held many of the most integral roles affiliated with U of L. He has brought substance and stability to The Cardinal and the university from the amazing depths of his past accomplishments in the world of news and journalism.
Indeed, the story of Schulman’s life and pursuits reads like one big list of outstanding achievements. Born in New York in July 1916, Schulman attended New York University from 1932 to 1936, where he earned his BS in journalism. From there, he went on to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism to complete his masters. Fresh out of his fifth year of college, he took a reporting job at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, followed three years later by a similar job at St. Louis’ Star-Times.
Bob calls his experiences at the two papers “very colorful” and much different from those of the modern reporter.
“You start out at the lowest possible denominator,” he says, describing his early hardships. “It was months, sometimes years before you got a byline.”
Bob recalls one of his first positions as a hotel beat in which matters became more interesting for him. “I had to check hotels to see if someone of consequence or newsworthy was coming in and arrange to interview them.”
One of his first interviews was with the U.S. Post Master under Franklin Roosevelt, a man named James Farley who had an uncanny ability to remember everyone’s name. Bob tells the story of how once, at a big banquet almost six months after his interview, Farley unexpectedly yelled out “Hey, Schulman!” and stood waving to Bob from a tier above in the banquet hall.
In 1942, after about two years at the Star-Times, Bob was inducted into the U.S. Air Corps and Air Transport Command as a private. After completing four years of service there, he was discharged as a captain and received the Award of Merit. At that point, he resumed a job at the Star-Times, this time as a columnist and feature writer, and headed out to Arizona to cover a story for Time-Life about a man who had quit his job at General Electric to start a dude ranch with his aunt.
The success of that article prompted the editor of the Star-Times to send Bob to Hollywood for two months, where he would interview stars who had originated in St. Louis. Among those he interviewed were such big-name icons as Betty Grable, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Vincent Price.
Eventually, Bob lost his position at the Star-Times when the owner of an opposing newspaper got together with the Star’s owner and pulled the plug on the Star, leaving its employees with only a 24-hour notice of the paper’s impending disintegration.
“After that,” he said, “I was the only person from the news desk with a job.” Because he was able to secure a position as staff correspondent with Time-Life in 1951, it was as if Bob had been given the single life preserver on a crowded, sinking ship.
In three years, Bob was moved out to Seattle to become a Time Inc. Pacific Northwest Regional Bureau Chief. From that position, he oversaw Time’s dealings in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Western Montana, and Alaska. In 1960, after 7 years of regional management for Time, he was to be moved to Los Angeles. Bob then left Time Inc., citing the restrictions of his family situation. Left with the necessity for local employment, Bob soon joined Seattle’s King Broadcasting Company, where he began work on prime-time television documentaries.
Apparently fate approved of Bob’s new career path, because his first 90-minute documentary on the ports of Seattle, Lost Cargo, resulted in a crowded town meeting at which a $10 million deal took place to make Seattle the number-one port of the entire Pacific coast. “We were very lucky,” he says of Lost Cargo’s production team.
Shulman’s accomplishments in Louisville were no less extraordinary. Coming to Louisville in 1968 at the request of two of his associates, who were at the top of the Bingham family-owned newspapers, that he “stop by,” Bob very quickly obtained a spot as staff writer for The Courier Journal’s Sunday magazine. Naturally, he opted to stick around Louisville. About a year later, Bob caught word that the Binghams’ radio and television stations (WHAS TV and Radio) had decided to start editorializing.
“The Binghams had decided that their editorial voice in the newspapers was enough because they were accused of monopoly,” he relays of the initial debate.
“But it was okay to establish a voice,” he said of their final decision.
Presumably, that voice’s opinions would not be attributed to the executives of WHAS radio and television. Eventually, the stations held auditions, and Bob, a natural because of his prior television experience, was asked to be their voice.
“So, for the next four years I was One Man’ s Opinion,” he declares in an announcer’s voice.
“I had a platform on the news every weekday night on radio and television: I had total freedom to say whatever I wanted to say.
That platform lasted him from 1969 to 1974. Bob became associated with the University of Louisville in 1983, when he joined U of L’s task force for establishing a communications department. A year later, while teaching a 400-level course called “The Press and the City,” which was cross-listed by U of L’s sociology department and its newly established communications department, Bob took the position of advisor for The Louisville Cardinal student newspaper. From that point on, he became increasingly more involved at the university. In 1985, he directed a symposium called “Liberal Arts and Livelihood–A Match for All Reasonsâ” which was a collaborative effort with U of L’s then Dean of Arts and Sciences, Lois Cronholm, to reinvigorate the A&S program.
In 1987, he became executive director of the U of L Center for Humanities and Civic Leadership. From 1988 to 1993, Bob directed one of the university’s more beneficial programs, an annual ethics award lecture series called “Victory of Spirit.” The purpose of the series was to bring forth a single individual nationally recognized for either one dramatic commitment to ethical conduct or for a lifetime of ethical conduct.
The series’ committee would then present him or her with an award, as well as an opportunity to lecture.
“The first winner was the U.S. Attorney General of the Nixon Administration who refused to kowtow to Nixon over his [Watergate] tapes and was fired,” Bob recalls. “It became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. His name was Elliot Richards.”
The list of Bob Schulman’s past involvement and achievements at the University continues with participation in sessions held by the Kentucky Bar Association, the U of L United Way campaign, and U of L’s Community Service Awards, among others. His roles at the university and on The Cardinal’s board of directors have obviously been entirely essential to both institutions.
With Schulman leaving, it’s like watching one of U of L’s most beneficent patrons ride off into the sunset. Still, as his life’s pursuits illustrate, the end is hardly near for Schulman’s influential role. He intends to stay on at The Cardinal’s Board of Directors for a bit longer while he carries out his duties on a committee to find a new advisor for The Cardinal. Describing his continued work on the board, Bob says, “It’s a labor of love.”
Finally, when asked what words of advice he had to offer future generations of writers for The Cardinal and otherwise, Bob replied, “Learn to honor that mother tongue. Learn to use it well, because then it’s gonna serve you damn well in whatever you do in your future life. And for heaven sakes, don’t object to reasonable editing!”
