Editor’s Note: The proceedings of The NewsGuild’s 2021 Sector Conference included the tribute below to Guild members who have passed away.
Today we remember and honor TNG-CWA members we have lost since the 2019 Sector Conference. We are eternally thankful for their advocacy for workers’ rights and dedication to their craft.
Betsy Wade
Betsy Wade, first woman president of the NewsGuild of New York and the first woman to edit news at The New York Times, where she worked for 45 years, died Dec. 3, 2020. She was 91.
A fierce fighter for workers rights for journalists, especially gender equality, she was the lead plaintiff in a 1974 sex discrimination lawsuit against The Times, on behalf of the 560 female employees on its staff of 6,000 at the time. A settlement reached four years later included The Times agreeing to place more women in jobs, and to create annuities covering costs of “delayed career advancement or denied opportunity.”
Wade was hired by The Times in 1956, four years after being fired from The New York Herald Tribune for being pregnant. In recognition of her unprecedented role on the male-dominated copy desk, Wade recalled in a past interview, cuspidors were removed from the city room and men told clean jokes “to make me feel less like a temperance worker at a brewery picnic.”
Her wit was, indeed, among many attributes remembered by colleagues and friends upon her death.
“She navigated the media industry during precarious times with strategy, wit, and a sincere gratitude for her newsroom colleagues,” said Susan DeCarava, president of The NewsGuild of New York, adding that Wade’s “fierce dedication” to the union mission “continues to serve as an example to us all.”
Herb Goodrick
Herb Goodrick, a longtime executive secretary of the United Media Guild before his retirement and a dogged presence at the bargaining table, died April 10, 2021. He was 79.
Goodrick was described as “a gigantic figure” in United Media Guild’s local union history and credited with many of the valuable worker protections in contracts at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Review, Labor Tribune and KSDK-TV.
Known as an unrelenting enforcer of contracts, he is especially heralded at the Post-Dispatch for helping repel repeated efforts to allow an open shop and create a two-tier pay system.
His family noted that while Goodrick’s union work was a “city slicker job,” he was “a farm boy at heart with a passion for Missouri countryside. An avid outdoorsman, he particularly liked hunting squirrel and coon, and fishing. He was also a U.S. Navy veteran, serving from June 1959 to June 1961.
Leo J. Ducharme
Leo J. Ducharme, who began a career-long devotion to what was then The Newspaper Guild upon his return from serving his country in the Army in 1963, died May 30, 2019. He was 80.
Ducharme became active in the union as an employee in the advertising department at the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts. He was a member of Local 31167 NH NewsGuild. In 1973, he went to work as an international representative for the Guild, remaining until his retirement in 2004. He also served as president of TNG’s staff union, the Federation of Guild Representatives.
That work to him “was not only his job, it was his passion. He worked tirelessly fighting for workers’ rights, wages and benefits,” according to a tribute to him. To many, he was considered a patient mentor.
And he always finished his pep talks with, “Go get ‘em!”
David Perlman
David Perlman, a legendary journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle for 77 years and the longest dues-paying member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild and TNG-CWA, died June 19, 2020. He was 101.
Perlman retired from the Chronicle in 2017 as a science editor, rising far from his early days as a copy boy. In between, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and as a journalist in Europe, before returning to the Chronicle in 1951 as a general assignment reporter, then a science writer, a city editor, and finally back to the science desk, where he traveled the globe on varied assignments and was widely known as “Dr. Dave.”
Despite his high profile — he covered moon landings, assassinations, earthquakes, the AIDS epidemic, even 100 million-year-old ants, among other things — and many awards, including some named after him, Perelman was never unapproachable or too busy to teach or advise, said colleagues.
“He was a great reporter and a proud union member who always supported his colleagues when it mattered,” Carl T. Hall, a former longtime executive officer of the Pacific Media Workers Guild and former Chronicle science writer, told the paper.
In 2019, at age 100, Perlman picked up another honor: a TNG-CWA resolution noting “his remarkable contribution to our craft.”
Mel Sufrin
Mel Sufrin, whose journalism career spanned 69 years, nearly 45 with The Canadian Press, died Sept. 19, 2021. He was 96.
As much a stickler for grammar as he was unfailingly a gentleman and a calming presence, Sufrin advanced at the news agency from a 16-year-old messenger to eventually vice president of editorial. His varied writing career would include a seemingly ever-present lit cigar while he covered the United Nations, one National Hockey League season and two Olympics, among many other notable assignments.
As a parliamentary reporter in 1950, Sufrin encouraged many of his Ottawa bureau colleagues to join what is now known as the NewsGuild. According to his obituary in The Canadian Press, company executives had warned Guild members they couldn’t cover politics out of “concern about bias,” and Sufrin was removed from the House of Commons beat. Nevertheless, he refused to quit the union.
After retiring from The Canadian Press in 1986, Sufrin would go on to serve as the executive secretary of the Ontario Press Council until 2010, leaving that role at age 85. The organization, which investigated public complaints about newspapers, merged in 2015 with the National NewsMedia Council.
Others remembered by Sector Conference delegates
Byron Charlton – 32035 past AFL-CIO Unit Chair
Scott Reynolds – 32035 – past AFL-CIO Unit Officer
Nicole Barker – 1096 – Location Director
Tia White – 37074 – Denver NewsGuild – Unit Chair for the SEIU Local 105 Unit
Lou Panarale – 32035 – Member
Chris Gloeckner – 31034 – Pension trustee and activist
Kathy Hacker – 38010 – Shop Steward
Charles Bjorgen – 37002 – Minneapolis Star Tribune
Kent Gardner – 37002 – Minneapolis Star Tribune
Michael Bonfeld – 37002 – Minneapolis Star Tribune
Dave Matheny – 37002 – Minneapolis Star Tribune
Geraline Crump – 32035 – Member
Dave Dutton – Ottawa Newspaper Guild – Past member of the ONG executive committee
Terry Garner – Ottawa Newspaper Guild – Former ONG President
Nick Oza – 39213 – Arizona Republic Guild – Member
Susan Ackerman – Newsweek – Member
Alison Schwartz – People Magazine – Member
David Alinkofsky – New York Times – Member
Joshua Barbanel – New York Times – Member
Steven Berman – New York Times – Member
Gladys Bourdain – New York Times – Member
Elizabeth Boylan – New York Times – Member
Joseph Brennan – New York Times – Member
Nelson Bryant Jr – New York Times – Member
Joseph Burgess – New York Times – Member
John Caffrey – New York Times – Member
Joseph Caramanico – New York Times – Member
Jose Cartagena – New York Times – Member
Albert Christensen – New York Times – Member
Hilda Connelly – New York Times – Member
Charles Costantino – New York Times – Member
Sally Crawford – New York Times – Member
Stanley Crawley – New York Times – Member
Raul Cruz – New York Times – Member
Eleanore De Cea – New York Times – Member
Nicholas Difiore – New York Times – Member
Nicholas Digiovanni Jr – New York Times – Member
Joan Dinneen – New York Times – Member
Dolores Dolan – New York Times – Member
William Dowdy – New York Times – Member
Theresa Dowling – New York Times – Member
James Dwyer – New York Times – Member
Edwin Egan – New York Times – Member
Thomas Ferrell – New York Times – Member
Alan Finder – New York Times – Member
Sue Flynn – New York Times – Member
Shirley Fried – New York Times – Member
Michael Gable – New York Times – Member
Margaret Gablenz – New York Times – Member
Richard Gallagan – New York Times – Member
John Geddes – New York Times – Member
Leslie Gelb – New York Times – Member
Patricia Giery – New York Times – Member
Howard Goldberg – New York Times – Member
Francisco Gonzalez – New York Times – Member
Alexandra Grullon – New York Times – Member
Luis Guevara – New York Times – Member
Richard Halloran – New York Times – Member
Gary Hartmann – New York Times – Member
Henry Iken – New York Times – Member
Christopher Jones – New York Times – Member
Lynn Karpen – New York Times – Member
Marguerite Kurajian – New York Times – Member
Dorothy Kushner – New York Times – Member
Warren Leary – New York Times – Member
Gilbert Lenio – New York Times – Member
Barbara Litrell – New York Times – Member
George Macdonald – New York Times – Member
Richard Madden – New York Times – Member
Gary Mccardell – New York Times – Member
Peter Mcparland – New York Times – Member
Richard Meislin – New York Times – Member
Donald Melanson – New York Times – Member
Antoinette Melillo – New York Times – Member
Joel Merzon – New York Times – Member
Karl Meyer – New York Times – Member
Roland Miller – New York Times – Member
Cornelius Morbley – New York Times – Member
Richard Morgan – New York Times – Member
Stuart Nassauer – New York Times – Member
Jon Nordheimer – New York Times – Member
Peter Pappas – New York Times – Member
Eleanor Pareres – New York Times – Member
Lambert Porter – New York Times – Member
Norman Prager – New York Times – Member
Errol Rampersad – New York Times – Member
Della Reda – New York Times – Member
Audrey Sandberg – New York Times – Member
Dorothy Schiavo – New York Times – Member
Bernard Schiff – New York Times – Member
Harvey Schulman – New York Times – Member
Jack Schwartz – New York Times – Member
Anne Semchuk – New York Times – Member
Kathleen Shanahan – New York Times – Member
Audrey Shavick – New York Times – Member
Edith Shelby – New York Times – Member
William Shelley – New York Times – Member
Charles Shelton – New York Times – Member
Robert Sheridan – New York Times – Member
Gail Slatter – New York Times – Member
Robert Smith – New York Times – Member
Carl Sommers – New York Times – Member
David Stout – New York Times – Member
Charles Strum – New York Times – Member
Angela Tomasetti – New York Times – Member
Nereida Vasquez – New York Times – Member
Clio Vias – New York Times – Member
Dennis Walsh – New York Times – Member
Evette Waterman – New York Times – Member
Nancy Woods – New York Times – Member
Matthew Zuccarello – New York Times – Member