Quote:
Saturday, June 4, 2005
George Dusheck, a San Francisco newspaper and broadcast journalist whose erudite coverage of science informed Bay Area residents for nearly four decades, died Thursday from kidney failure at his Mendocino County home in Albion. He was 91.
Tenacious and well read, Mr. Dusheck was one of the first journalists in the country to specialize in science reporting. He covered many of the important developments of the post-World War II world, including the rise of nuclear power, the space race and the early days of genetic engineering.
He was a devoted proponent of science coverage, first as a reporter for the San Francisco News, an underdog afternoon paper in the heyday of the city's newspaper battles, and later for KQED-TV, as part of an innovative roundtable format that was later widely adopted by other broadcast outlets.
"He was an extremely knowledgeable and persistent science reporter who probed deeply into scientific developments and controversies of the 1950s, '60s and '70s," said Chronicle Science Editor David Perlman, who was his rival and friend for many decades. "He was an outstanding journalist and one of the early ones to cover science."
Born in Chicago, Mr. Dusheck grew up in Maywood, Ill., and, briefly, in the Bronx, where his father was an engineer for an electrical products company. His father and mother divorced when Mr. Dusheck was young.
After graduating from Elmhurst College, in Elmhurst, Ill., in 1935, Mr. Dusheck worked briefly as a reporter for the Chicago Times before moving to Oakland during the Depression. There he found work with Montgomery Ward and the Schilling spice company.
In 1944, he was called up for the military draft, but was rejected because childhood polio had weakened one of his legs. He walked over to the offices of the San Francisco News and showed the city editor the "4-F" stamp still fresh on his hand indicating that he'd been rejected.
The editor, who had lost three reporters to the draft that week, "handed me a story, pointed to a typewriter and told me to get busy on rewrite," he once told the San Francisco Examiner.
In the News' relatively small newsroom, Mr. Dusheck became known as an unshakable reporter and skilled rewrite man. "He was that breed of older reporters who were very enterprising, skilled and dedicated to their craft,'' said Hadley Roff, a former aide to several San Francisco mayors who began his career as a reporter for the News.
Mr. Dusheck was also invariably courteous and polite, even as he was doggedly pursuing a story.
Once, he returned to the newsroom with a bloody nose after covering a cable car accident. When asked how his nose got bloodied, Mr. Dusheck said one woman had suffered a broken arm and was in great pain, so he had asked her husband her name and age.
"He hit me in the nose, and I think he had every right to do so," Mr. Dusheck reportedly explained. In the end, he did get both her name and age.
Mr. Dusheck, who had failed physics in college, once told an interviewer that he had become a science writer because he feared his editors at the News didn't recognize the significance of many of the scientific developments of the day, noting that they had played the story about the bombing of Hiroshima second to a report of the death of former California Gov. and Sen. Hiram Johnson.
It was an exciting time in science, and Mr. Dusheck reveled in his many assignments.
"He was happiest when he was writing about science," said Marya Fitzgerald, his oldest daughter, who lives in Alexandria, Va. "That was his absorbing interest. He felt it was an important mission: to reach ordinary people in a way that was interesting and understandable to them."
The News merged in 1958 with the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, which in turn merged with the San Francisco Examiner in 1965. During the newspaper strike of 1968, he and colleagues from The Chronicle and Examiner launched a news show on KQED-TV, called "Newspaper of the Air," to provide coverage for the city's news-starved residents.
After the strike, Mr. Dusheck continued with the show, covering science. The show's format -- a roundtable discussion among reporters and editors about the day's news -- was novel and popular, and the Ford Foundation provided the funding for a sequel, called "Newsroom.'' Mr. Dusheck stayed on until 1979.
He was known as "a brilliant interrogator at scientific and medical press conferences," said Lynn Ludlow, a former Examiner editorial page editor. "He would go into a colloquy with these alleged experts and ask them questions they weren't always able to deal with."
In one famous encounter on "Newsroom," then-San Francisco State University President S.I. Hayakawa accused the show's staff of biased coverage of the campus' anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. Mr. Dusheck countered that Hayakawa seemed paranoid, at which point Hayakawa stood up and walked off the set.
In 1979, he retired and moved to Albion on the Mendocino Coast in an attempt to live the life he said he'd always believed in: cultivating the mind and living off the land. "He said he was going up there to be a half-assed Thoreauvian, to live on his own," said Fitzgerald, his daughter. "And he did quite a good job."
In addition to chopping wood and picking apples, Mr. Dusheck wrote for local publications and served for eight years on the state Board of Forestry. His house was filled with the latest scientific and intellectual journals, and his door always open to neighbors who would stop by for a glass of wine, his daughter said.
During his life, Mr. Dusheck lost both his wives. His first wife, Jessie Dusheck, died in a flu epidemic in Richmond in 1942. His second wife, Nina Hoffman Dusheck, was killed in 1969, when the couple's car was rammed by a logging truck on Highway 1 near Fort Bragg.
In addition to his daughter Marya, he is survived by his daughters Diana Dusheck of Eureka and Jennie Dusheck of Santa Cruz, 10 grandchildren and a great-grandson. At their father's request, Jennie Dusheck said, the family is not planning a memorial service.
George Dusheck, a San Francisco newspaper and broadcast journalist whose erudite coverage of science informed Bay Area residents for nearly four decades, died Thursday from kidney failure at his Mendocino County home in Albion. He was 91.
Tenacious and well read, Mr. Dusheck was one of the first journalists in the country to specialize in science reporting. He covered many of the important developments of the post-World War II world, including the rise of nuclear power, the space race and the early days of genetic engineering.
He was a devoted proponent of science coverage, first as a reporter for the San Francisco News, an underdog afternoon paper in the heyday of the city's newspaper battles, and later for KQED-TV, as part of an innovative roundtable format that was later widely adopted by other broadcast outlets.
"He was an extremely knowledgeable and persistent science reporter who probed deeply into scientific developments and controversies of the 1950s, '60s and '70s," said Chronicle Science Editor David Perlman, who was his rival and friend for many decades. "He was an outstanding journalist and one of the early ones to cover science."
Born in Chicago, Mr. Dusheck grew up in Maywood, Ill., and, briefly, in the Bronx, where his father was an engineer for an electrical products company. His father and mother divorced when Mr. Dusheck was young.
After graduating from Elmhurst College, in Elmhurst, Ill., in 1935, Mr. Dusheck worked briefly as a reporter for the Chicago Times before moving to Oakland during the Depression. There he found work with Montgomery Ward and the Schilling spice company.
In 1944, he was called up for the military draft, but was rejected because childhood polio had weakened one of his legs. He walked over to the offices of the San Francisco News and showed the city editor the "4-F" stamp still fresh on his hand indicating that he'd been rejected.
The editor, who had lost three reporters to the draft that week, "handed me a story, pointed to a typewriter and told me to get busy on rewrite," he once told the San Francisco Examiner.
In the News' relatively small newsroom, Mr. Dusheck became known as an unshakable reporter and skilled rewrite man. "He was that breed of older reporters who were very enterprising, skilled and dedicated to their craft,'' said Hadley Roff, a former aide to several San Francisco mayors who began his career as a reporter for the News.
Mr. Dusheck was also invariably courteous and polite, even as he was doggedly pursuing a story.
Once, he returned to the newsroom with a bloody nose after covering a cable car accident. When asked how his nose got bloodied, Mr. Dusheck said one woman had suffered a broken arm and was in great pain, so he had asked her husband her name and age.
"He hit me in the nose, and I think he had every right to do so," Mr. Dusheck reportedly explained. In the end, he did get both her name and age.
Mr. Dusheck, who had failed physics in college, once told an interviewer that he had become a science writer because he feared his editors at the News didn't recognize the significance of many of the scientific developments of the day, noting that they had played the story about the bombing of Hiroshima second to a report of the death of former California Gov. and Sen. Hiram Johnson.
It was an exciting time in science, and Mr. Dusheck reveled in his many assignments.
"He was happiest when he was writing about science," said Marya Fitzgerald, his oldest daughter, who lives in Alexandria, Va. "That was his absorbing interest. He felt it was an important mission: to reach ordinary people in a way that was interesting and understandable to them."
The News merged in 1958 with the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, which in turn merged with the San Francisco Examiner in 1965. During the newspaper strike of 1968, he and colleagues from The Chronicle and Examiner launched a news show on KQED-TV, called "Newspaper of the Air," to provide coverage for the city's news-starved residents.
After the strike, Mr. Dusheck continued with the show, covering science. The show's format -- a roundtable discussion among reporters and editors about the day's news -- was novel and popular, and the Ford Foundation provided the funding for a sequel, called "Newsroom.'' Mr. Dusheck stayed on until 1979.
He was known as "a brilliant interrogator at scientific and medical press conferences," said Lynn Ludlow, a former Examiner editorial page editor. "He would go into a colloquy with these alleged experts and ask them questions they weren't always able to deal with."
In one famous encounter on "Newsroom," then-San Francisco State University President S.I. Hayakawa accused the show's staff of biased coverage of the campus' anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. Mr. Dusheck countered that Hayakawa seemed paranoid, at which point Hayakawa stood up and walked off the set.
In 1979, he retired and moved to Albion on the Mendocino Coast in an attempt to live the life he said he'd always believed in: cultivating the mind and living off the land. "He said he was going up there to be a half-assed Thoreauvian, to live on his own," said Fitzgerald, his daughter. "And he did quite a good job."
In addition to chopping wood and picking apples, Mr. Dusheck wrote for local publications and served for eight years on the state Board of Forestry. His house was filled with the latest scientific and intellectual journals, and his door always open to neighbors who would stop by for a glass of wine, his daughter said.
During his life, Mr. Dusheck lost both his wives. His first wife, Jessie Dusheck, died in a flu epidemic in Richmond in 1942. His second wife, Nina Hoffman Dusheck, was killed in 1969, when the couple's car was rammed by a logging truck on Highway 1 near Fort Bragg.
In addition to his daughter Marya, he is survived by his daughters Diana Dusheck of Eureka and Jennie Dusheck of Santa Cruz, 10 grandchildren and a great-grandson. At their father's request, Jennie Dusheck said, the family is not planning a memorial service.
Bye grandfather.
