W. PAGE PITT

By Bill Belanger

“Heads up, everybody!” The words came in a low roar.

“March is not the only thing that comes in like a lion,” I muttered to the student next to me. Professor W. Page Pitt, head of Marshall’s journalism department, strode to the big copy desk in the center of the classroom. The man had what we called “a commanding presence.” Actually, we were in awe of him.

This was 1931. It did not bother Pitt that Marshall’s journalism department, which he had founded four years earlier, was housed in a humble green and white frame house facing Fifth Avenue near 17th Street. The crowded little front room serving as Pitt’s office had two desks and one telephone. His secretary, Virginia Lee, needed no intercom. She and her boss shared the phone with a long cord when the department was organized in 1927.

The other room, a classroom unconventional by any standards, accommodated a big semi-circular table with a cutaway known to newspapermen as “the slot.” Some students took their places around it to get closer to the enigmatic teacher. Others sat beyond, hoping to escape his notice. A few of the desks held old Underwood typewriters. A newspaper rack leaned limply against the wall. It was the best semblance of a newsroom atmosphere Pitt could manage with minimum state funds during the Depression.

Although he was legally blind, rarely could students get by with absence or tardiness in class. He was a complex character. Even his blindness was an enigma — a story ofttold is that friends would brush past him unrecognized, yet he was known to hail a student across the street and comment on the color of a necktie or a new hairdo.

The blindness was the result of surgery for mastoiditis when he was a child. Many dates about Pitt’s life are subject to change. Facts that were established include his birth in New York City in 1900 and that his father moved to West Virginia and owned part of a coal mine, where the younger Pitt worked summers. After teaching high school English in the West Virginia school system, Pitt was summoned to Marshall in 1926 to teach journalism and serve as advisor for the Parthenon, the college’s student newspaper. The following year he organized the journalism department with a focus on newspaper work. As the world of mass communication expanded, courses were added in advertising, broadcast journalism and corporate relations. When the need for more courses became evident, he added faculty who were specialists in their fields.

Meanwhile physical changes were being made. The department itself moved out of the little green and white house to the basement of the expanding Morrow Library and a few years later to Smith Hall, where it is now located. A computer system was installed, and in 1979 the department was upgraded to the status of an official journalism school. When it was dedicated the following year as the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism, Pitt, who had retired in 1971, said it was the happiest day of his life. Later the name was expanded to include other courses, and today the school is known as the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

He enjoyed “shocking” people. While many gave raving compliments to the colonial-style Student Union (predecessor to the current Student Center), Pitt remarked in class that it “looks like Washington’s outhouse.” That was daring humor then, but it was characteristic of “the Grand Old Man of Journalism” who “liked to keep ’em awake.”

“The word ‘legend’ is one that’s often overused,” said James E. Casto, the former associate editor of the HeraldDispatch, “but it’s the one that comes quickly to mind when the conversation turns to Page Pitt.”

Casto, who studied under Pitt in the early 1960s, has published numerous books and (like Pitt) dozens of freelance magazine articles under his byline. He’s quick to credit Pitt for helping get his journalistic career off to the right start.

“I took Pitt’s class in feature writing,” said Casto, “although there were lots of days when we talked about ’most everything but feature writing. One of the things that made Pitt such a remarkable teacher was his wonderfully unpredictable nature. Most of the time our textbook was that morning’s newspaper, and the subject of discussion was that day’s big story — or, then again, maybe something Pitt had been arguing about with the other fellows down at the Elks Club.

“I suspect I learned more about the actual mechanics of writing from others, first at Marshall and later at the Herald-Dispatch. But from Page Pitt I learned that good stories are where you find them, and the world is full of them if you know how to smell them out. Pitt may have been blind, but he could smell a story for miles. I consider myself privileged to have studied under him.”

What about the man as a person? Depends on whom you ask. Strong-willed, unyielding on any point of controversy — these were frequent descriptors. Who could be neutral or impartial about Pitt? Whenever he heard (and he heard it often) that people either loved him or hated him, his reaction was the same: “I don’t care what they say, just as long as they say ‘Pitt.’”

At times flamboyant in his lifestyle, he was quick to anger and slow to forget yet could always show warmth. Above all else, Pitt was diverse, excelling at chess, bridge, bowling and fishing. And remember, this man was blind. But for all his independence, one of his greatest interests required help — reading. Many a Saturday morning, students, including myself, would read to him for a few hours from books or magazines of his choice. The reward was a luncheon that could not be found elsewhere. He was a gourmet cook.

For Pitt, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. In earlier years, he seemed to have little respect for the textbook, though he occasionally referred to it, whether to keep students prepared or uncertain no one knew. For most classes he thought it more relevant that students subscribe to a newspaper than buy a book.

He was a frequent contributor to magazines — detective, western, adventure fiction (to the pulps). His pen name was Roy Page.

Today’s United High School Media Program at Marshall tells more about his vision than any of his projects. Originally called the United High School Press, it is a summer convention that draws high school journalism students interested in media careers to Huntington for workshops, awards and contacts.

A list of distinguished careers that resulted from Pitt’s labors would be too long, but a few worth noting include Jack Maurice, Pulitzer Prize winner and newspaper editor; Soupy Sales, nationally known entertainer and TV personality; Burl Osborne, editor and publisher of the Dallas Morning News ; Marvin Stone, editor of U.S. News & World Report ; Jim Comstock, founder of the famed West Virginia Hillbilly; Gordon Kinney, senior vice president of the Ad Council; and Gay Pauley Sehon, senior editor at UPI.

Old and ailing, Pitt died in a hospital in Florida in 1980. Ask anyone who knew him, and they would attest that his fiery spirit and his refusal to let a handicap limit his life live on. His former student and colleague, Dr. Ralph Turner, expressed it best, gesturing toward a classroom. “He is still here, still with us, not only in this school but wherever. The legend still inspires us all.”

This article by Bill Belanger (1941-2000) was first published in the Huntington Quarterly in 1997. Belanger, a reporter and editor for Huntington newspapers for more than 50 years, earned her B.A. in journalism in 1935 and her master’s degree in journalism in 1972, both from Marshall University. She was inducted into the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism Hall of Fame in 1986.