RONALD T. FARRAR

RONALD FARRAR

By Janet Worthington W ill Norton, dean of the Meek School, asked me to tell you about my dad, Ronald T. Farrar, because he thought I did a great job with my mom’s eulogy. There’s a key difference here: Dad isn’t dead! Far from it! In fact, he just got back from Hawaii, books, he took a cranky, divisive, tenured faculty and somehow made them work together. “Dad is like Red Adair,” says Bradley Farrar, a lawyer, lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve and an excellent fiction writer. “He would come into a place, put out fires, inspire people, get things done, and always leave it better than he found it.” For years, Al Scroggins, dean of the college of journalism at the People love my dad. And he loves them. Dad would not do well on a deserted island. There would be nobody to talk to. No stories to tell, and no people to interview — because that’s what Dad does. He interviews. — JANET WORTHINGTON “ where he acquired a righteous tan that has impressed his cardiologist University of South Carolina, had been recruiting Dad to come join and horrified his dermatologist. Before that, he was in Puerto Rico; the faculty. In 1986, he did, becoming the Reynolds-Faunt Professor before that, Scandinavia. of Journalism, finally able just to teach and write. That didn’t last My father is a newspaperman, a world-renowned expert on libel long. Scroggins retired, was succeeded by someone who also retired law, a graceful biographer, a heck of a teacher and, although he never after a few years, who was succeeded by someone whose dismal peoreally set out to be one, a miracle-working administrator. He started writing for the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway, Arkansas, while he was still in college at the University of Arkansas, and went on to work for the Arkansas Gazette, the Democrat in Trumann, Arkansas, and to contribute articles to newspapers around the country, includple skills alienated most of the faculty. USC needed a leader, a peace maker, someone who was not only actually liked, but beloved. They asked Dad to take over, and so Dad got back into administration, as interim dean of the college of journalism. He could have been the permanent dean, but he didn’t want to. ing the Kansas City Star, Dallas Morning News, the Courier-Journal While he was there, he did some amazing things, including in Louisville, the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, the Commercial Appeal partnering with a German group, Ifra, the world’s largest association in Memphis, and numerous professional journals. of newspaper publishers, to build the Newsplex, a $2.5-million I was born when Dad was getting his doctorate in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia. His doctoral thesis became a book: Reluctant Servant: The Story of Charles G. Ross, about President Harry S Truman’s press secretary. That book, the first of eight Dad’s written so far, won the Kappa Tau Alpha Frank Luther newsroom of the future, where journalists from all over the world have come for training. Dad raised tons of money for USC. He wrote a lot, too, including another acclaimed biography, A Creed for My Profession: Walter Williams: Journalist to the World, about the founder of the school of journalism at the University of Missouri. Mott Research Award as the best scholarly book on journalism for Bradley remembers coming to meet Dad for lunch one day and 1969. Dad’s first faculty job was at Indiana University; my brother, noticing a big case in the lobby with USC Journalism Faculty PubliBradley, was born in Bloomington. In 1970 we moved to Dallas, cations. Texas, where Dad was professor and chairman of the department of “There were basically 10 things in there,” he recalls, “and nine journalism at Southern Methodist University. He became professor of them were Dad’s. He was always sought after, getting job offers and chairman of journalism at Ole Miss in 1973. His biggest goal even after he retired. He just instantly upped the productivity and was to get the department accredited, which he did. We moved to prestige, wherever he went.” Lexington, Kentucky, in 1977, where Dad was professor and director Dad retired in 2001, earlier than he probably intended to, because of the school of journalism. At UK, Dad not only published more my mom got sick, and Dad felt like his more important job was to

take care of her, which he did for the next seven years. When my parents were married in 1961, Dad told Mom, “I may not have much money, but I’m loyal as hell.” And he was. He was her knight. He just took care of her, especially during the last two years, which were very difficult, and some of that came at the expense of his own health. He is just a rock, and always has been for his family and friends.

Dad taught himself Spanish after he retired. Every day, with a Spanish-English dictionary by his computer, he would read newspapers online from Central America, Mexico, and Spain. He wanted to compare how they covered stories! He and Bradley have also done some volunteer work at church, helping Spanish-speaking immigrants with their English, so they can get better jobs and improve their lives. Being Dad, he got to know his assigned guy, Hector, and when Hector’s wife had a baby, Dad showed up with a car full of presents. Even though Dad has retired from administrative life, he will never actually quit working. He has too much to do. In addition to writing Powerhouse, the history of Journalism at Ole Miss, he has written another book about growing up in Fordyce, Arkansas, which as far as I can tell is the actual Mayberry.

People love my dad. And he loves them. Dad would not do well on a deserted island. There would be nobody to talk to. No stories to tell, and no people to interview — because that’s what Dad does. He interviews. Meet him, and he will not only get to know your story, he will care about it. Once, Dad went to a meeting in New York City. He forgot to pack his underwear, so he got on a subway late at night to go buy some. My mom was scared to death when she found this out, but Dad just had a basic Dad experience; he talked to people on the subway, got the names of some good bagel shops and delis, and had a great time. We used to joke that Dad knows so many people, if he ever had his photo taken with the pope, or the president, or somebody else really famous, people would see the picture and say, “Who’s that guy up there with Ron?”

Dwight Teeter, who was on the faculty at UK and went on to become dean of the college of communication at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, describes Dad as a “terrific raconteur with a Huck Finn grin.” Dad does have a great grin, and a robust laugh. It is very easy to crack up my father, and I have always taken great pleasure doing that in places where we’re supposed to be silent, like in church. Back in the day, the Oxford-University United Methodist Church was particularly quiet, except for us, on many a Sunday.

Dad taught me how to write, how to think and approach a story. In high school, when my classmates were using flowery language and passive voice, my papers cut right through the crap and got to the heart of the story. I was the only one in AP English to have a lede.

My parents had great parties for the faculty and students. There was always a keg, always lots of food. Dad had a special soft spot for foreign students. He worried about them, being so far away from home, and so every single Thanksgiving, for as long as I can remember, we always had at least two or three students, usually from Taiwan or China, who had nowhere else to go, who got to stuff themselves with my mom’s good cooking.

Dad is not the most patient man. Once, for weeks, every few days, the phone would ring in the wee hours, that “Oh, God, somebody’s died” time of the night. Nobody was there. The head of the phone company, Mr. X., assured Dad that this was just a testing of the phone lines, and it would stop. When it happened again, Dad called him in the middle of the night. “This is Ron Farrar. The line testing didn’t stop.” It never happened again. Another time, during one of the countless interminable faculty meetings that he has sat through in his lifetime, a professor was pitching a fit about unautho

rized use of a copy machine, winding up to a big finish, “the people for which it was put here!” There was dead silence for a minute, and then Dad said, “For whom.”

Another faculty meeting, in South Carolina, was very brief. Dad called the faculty together to announce that one of his graduate students, Terry, was going to change genders and become Teri. Dad knew some of what Terry had been through to reach this decision, including a suicide attempt, and he told his faculty that he had better not hear a word from anyone about it. “If she can deal with it, then I reckon we can, too.” Meeting over.

Eight of Dad’s students have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes. But one of the things Dad is proudest of as a teacher is that nobody ever knew whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. He didn’t think it was anybody’s business. I know it grieves him to see how biased journalism has become. To Dad, opinion is one thing, and reporting is another.

My father happens to share an honor with legendary coach Bear Bryant: both are in the Fordyce High School Hall of Fame. (Bryant got his football scholarship to the University of Alabama in 1931, before Dad was born. However, we do have a family connection: my grandmother once hit Bear Bryant with her car.) Dad received this honor two years ago. The man who introduced him kind of rambled and didn’t speak into the microphone very well, and the crowd of several hundred people was the least bit rude, talking, going back for seconds on the fried chicken, catfish and sweet tea. Then Dad got up to accept the award, and within a few seconds, everyone was silent. All those years of giving lectures and leading discussions paid off. He owned the room. When it was over, I leaned across the table and whispered to Bradley, “He killed!”

Of course he did. Dad was in his element, in a room full of people, with stories to tell, and new ones to hear.