Our Own Hall of Fame

 SCOTTY RESTON

PULLS NO PUNCHES

Scotty Reston Has Ear of Those Who Make News

DAYTON DAILY NEWS,  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1961

BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH

Daily News Staff Writer

Tenth of a Series

     When the late John Foster Dulles granted an exclusive interview to a reporter, it was considered quite a journalistic coup.  The only trouble was that sooner or later the secretary of state would preface a revelation with: “Now as I was telling Scotty Reston the other day….”

     For in the sharp, hard-digging Washington press corps ex-Daytonian Reston knows few peers.  From $10-a-week sports writer on the Springfield News to the $40,000-a-year head of the New York Times Washington bureau, middleweight Reston (158 pounds) has hammered out a heavyweight career as a newsman.

     He is called “Scotty” (even by the copy boy at the bureau) because he was born in Scotland.  The family lived in two rooms, walked eight miles to services and vespers at the Presbyterian church on Sundays, sanctioned no cooking on the Sabbath and no card playing anytime.

     IN 1920, when Scotty was 11, the austere-living Restons came to the United States and settled in Dayton in a house on Jersey St.  Reston’s father got a job as a machinist at Delco Products and Scotty attended first Stivers and then Oakwood high school—almost flunking out of the latter.

     Young Reston worked part time in the sports department of The Daily News, then entered the University of Illinois where he won a letter in golf (he was Ohio high school golf champion in 1927), played on the varsity soccer team and made indifferent grades as a journalism major.

     AS A CHILD he had wanted to be a minister, later considered turning golf pro.  But his adult life has been spent in newspaper work except for a one-year stint back in 1933 as traveling secretary for the Cincinnati Reds.

     In 1934, with an assist from a fellow Daytonian, cartoonist Milton Caniff, Reston landed a $175-a-month job with the Associated Press.  In 1937 he went to AP’s London bureau and two years later was hired by the London bureau of the New York Times.  (He had tried vainly to land a job for years with the Times in New York)

     RESTON WAS in London during the Blitz, but his big news story came in 1944 after he had been assigned to the Times’ Washington bureau.  He came up with a series of exclusive stories at the Dumbarton Oaks conference which won him a Pulitzer prize.

     In 1953 Reston was asked to become editorial page editor for the Washington Post and Times Herald.  He was about to make the change when his boss at the Times, Arthur Krock, offered Reston his own job--chief of the Times’ Washington bureau.

     SINCE THAT time Reston has supervised the biggest newspaper bureau in the capital, an operation that sends out upwards of 35,000 words a day.  His views are considered probably the most important in the Washington press corps and politicians and newsmen alike watch his no-punches-pulled columns carefully.

     Reston favored Eisenhower in 1952, Stevenson in 1956, Kennedy this time.  His managing editor says of him: “I would think he is somewhat on the liberal side, but he’s still young.”

     RESTON, 51, was the subject of a Time magazine cover story early this year.

     During Dean Acheson’s last two years as secretary of state he refused to see Reston alone.  Later asked why, he paid a tribute to the ex-Daytonian’s prowess as a penetrating and perceptive newsman: “Because you would bet the combination to the safe before you were through.” Acheson told Reston.

     Reston married Sarah Jane (Sally) Fulton of Sycamore, Ill., in 1935.  Scotty and Sally, a Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year at Illinois, have three sons.

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