THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972: Tom Landry's rotating quarterback system backfires

Weekly Compilation Nov. 1-7, 1971

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Why do we run this separate item peeking into newspapers from 1972? Because 1972 was part of the ancient times when everybody read a paper. Everybody, everybody, everybody—even kids. So Steve Bertolucci, the 10-year-old hero of the novel serialized at this Substack, read the paper too—sometimes just to have something to do. These are some of the stories he read. If you’d like, keep up with the 1972 papers every day on Twitter, @RoselandChi1972.

NOTE: Second to last post is about a really cool prank.

November 1, 1971

Chicago Daily News: Bears are getting that Super vision

By Ray Sons

“Doug Buffone dared to use the words: ‘Super Bowl.’ He used them in the Bear dressing room, and nobody told him he was crazy. By whipping Dallas 23-19 in sun-kissed Soldier Field Sunday, the Bears had won the right to dream.”

The Bears are 5-2 at this point in the season, one game behind the Vikings in their division, but they face the Vikings again, and Green Bay twice. “There’s no way we can get cocky with the schedule we’ve got,” says Dick Butkus.

Everybody’s still high on newcomer Bobby Douglass, again the starting QB. He “completed seven of 19 passes for 140 yards.” Ray Sons acknowledges, though, that the Bear offense is still weak: “All three of their field goals and one of their two touchdowns Sunday capitalized on defensive turnovers or sizzling (Ron) Smith runbacks.”

To rely on Bear defense in this era, of course, is to rely above all else on Dick Butkus. Coach Jim Dooley said in July that “three turnovers could take them to an NFC Central Division title, four a game to a National Conference championship, and five per game to the Super Bowl crown. The current average is 4.3 per game.”

Even Cowboys coach Tom Landry says, “You’ve got to think they’re a contender now.” Landry had to answer for the loss, having just debuted his problematic 2-quarterback system, alternating Craig Morton and Roger Staubach.

Chicago Daily Defender: Mrs. Ruby Mabry Blasts Politicians in aid crisis

By Leroy Thomas

Circuit Court Judge Daniel Covelli granted a temporary injunction to Cook County for what is being called Illinois Gov. Richard Ogilvie’s (Republican) ordered 60% cut in general assistance welfare payments, set to take effect today.

Ogilvie’s administration insists the cut in general assistance to unmarried adults is necessary to avoid slashing welfare to the elderly, blind and veterans. Mrs. Ruby Mabry, president of the Welfare Rights Organization (WRO), says a planned demonstration will proceed from the General Assistance office at Madison & Damen to the governor’s Chicago office in the State of Illinois Building at 160 N. LaSalle, because the injuction is temporary.

Mabry fears the holiday season will be the most violent ever in Chicago, because she says the Democrats campaigning for the nomination against Ogilvie next year, including then-Lt. Gov. Paul Simon and Dan Walker, “haven’t offered any assistance or comfort in the plight of thousands who face medical, physical, and financial disaster”.

Politicians, Mabry tells the Defender, “just don’t see welfare recipients as people. So it doesn’t surprise me that no one is doing anything to help us out.”

Reporter Leroy Thomas, by the way, was the Defender’s executive editor for over 20 years, and served as an assistant press secretary to Mayors Jane Byrne and Harold Washington. He later moved to Kilgore, Texas, where he died in 2018.

Sun-Times and Daily Defender coverage of Sunday Bears game

Don’t you wish we still had five daily papers, to read all the different ways something like a Bears game could be covered? Oh well. Today’s earlier Bears post drew from the Daily News. Let’s see what the Sun-Times and Defender had to say.

The Sun-Times Jack Griffin gives us a deliriously happy lede: “Coach Jim Dooley was hoarse, bare-chested, numbly delirious, but still up to his ears in victory, which hardly anyone could believe, especially if a guy saw it or read the statistics chart.”

The Sun-Times’ Griffin gives us more pessimistic info on the game than the Daily News: “The Cowboys chased them all over the lot,” he writes. “The Bears “had 26 first downs and the Bears could stutter up only seven.”

“The Bears frittered away a safety and dropped a fumble on their own eight-yard line, and there were so many bad snaps from center that Bobby Joe Green should have been sent out to punt wearing a first baseman’s mitt.”

Griffin singles out for praise:

—QB Bobby Douglass: “The only time he threw an interception, he tackled the thief so hard that the culprit dropped the ball and the Bears took it right back. And once he ran for an extra point. Honest, he really did.”

—Ron Smith: “the self-described gingerbread man,” who fled 44 yards with three Dallas punts, and got 91 yards with three kickoff returns, one of them setting up a field goal. He stole a pass and set up another field goal.”

--and of course the Bears defense led by Dick Butkus: “The Cowboys were on the Bears’ doorstep so often they must have felt like relatives. But the Bear defense just wouldn’t give them the key, except once in the first quarter and again in the final period.”

What about that famous Tom Landry rotating quarterback system, trading Roger Staubach and Craig Morton back and forth? According to Griffin, “the Bears didn’t even notice he was trying to trick them.” “I don’t care how many quarters he had,” said Doug Buffone.

The Defender’s Lee D. Jenkins uses the money quote: “Bears coach Jim Dooley had only one regret after yesterday’s 23-19 upset come from behind victory over the Cowboys at Soldier Field. In noting Bobby Douglass’ second straight sparkling performance…Dooley lamented, “I should have started living with Bobby a long time ago.”

Dooley refers to what sounds like a publicity stunt, but the coach moved into Bobby Douglass’ bachelor pad before last week’s game against the Lions, Douglass’ first start. It was supposed to be a nonstop sleepover, with the two watching film clips and going over plays, and apparently it worked.

“We think alike now,” Jenkins quotes Dooley. “We have been over some things 50 or 60 times so that now it’s an automatic reaction for him when I send a play in.” Jenkins reminds us that Douglass used to be “prone to run when pressured, forgetting about possible receivers,” but says he didn’t make that mistake against Dallas.

Jenkins looks at Landry’s QB shuffle too: “Landry followed through on his announced plan to rotate his quarterbacks, and refused to back down on his double quarterback try. ‘I still think it’s a workable idea, it just happened that we made too many mistakes,” said Landry.”

November 2, 1971

Chicago Daily News: U.S. launches massive probe of police here

By Edmund J. Rooney

Chicago Daily News: Fire Dept. told to shape up

By Betty Washington

It was a no good very bad day for the real Mayor Daley.

But with a huge municipal government run largely by cronies and political workers, these things will happen. What’s fun is seeing how differently Mayor Daley handled the two very bad things on the same day.

The Daily News reports that a “federal strike force" supervised by U.S. Atty. Gen. John Mitchell is investigating Chicago police with a grand jury. They've already heard evidence that cops are "bribed to protect gambling, prostitution, narcotics and hijacking operations”.

The investigation is similar to a current investigation of New York police-- the one we all now know as Al Pacino in “Serpico.” Mayor Daley follows his normal script when asked if the Chicago police investigation is like New York’s—duck and cover:  

“I hope not. I hope that you can’t convict a man until proper evidence is disclosed,” says Mayor Daley. And, of course: “Daley sidestepped further questioning about the investigation.”

But then there’s the Fire Department, headed by Robert Quinn, a personal friend of Mayor Daley’s so close that Daley did not fire Quinn when he set off the city’s nuclear air raid sirens to celebrate the White Sox winning the 1959 American League pennant.

Daley has apparently pretended to be interested in shaping up the Fire Department by commissioning a study from the National Loss Control Service Corp. Now he holds a press conference with Quinn to present the results.

The report says the Fire Dept is awful and should cut 291 mostly upper level jobs because they’re unnecessary. As reporter Betty Washington masterfully puts it: “the people employed in them are engaged in activities that do little to further the department’s primary aims.”

What a fabulous way to say the Fire Department pays a lot of money to 291 people who do nothing to fight fires, or even to help others fight fires. Kudos, Betty Washington.

Surprise: Mayor Daley praises the critical report, and so does Fire Commissioner Quinn! “We shall study it closely with a view towards beginning quick implementation,” Daley declares. Hunh?

Police: Nobody can be surprised if cops are taking pay-offs. It’s only ten years since the Summerdale police scandal, when it turned out eight cops were operating as a burglary ring. But the police investigation is a federal one, under a Republican federal government, not a sham one run by Daley’s people.  

Fire: While it may look like Mayor Daley is throwing his friend Fire Commissioner Quinn under a fire truck, this is a classic strategy to pretend to welcome oversight, and profess eagerness to change. Then somehow nothing will ever come of it.

I checked with UIC Prof. and former Ald. Dick Simpson, who agreed. As Simpson drily notes, Quinn set off those air raid sirens for a baseball game, so…“He wasn’t a terribly effective head of the fire department. He was Daley’s guy.”

And, of course, Mayor Daley would steer any actual “reform” his way. “There was no major reform of the fire department—or the police department—in any substantive way," says Simpson. "I imagine they fired a few people, somewhere, sometime.”

November 3, 1971

Chicago Daily News: Sonia’s dress a sex-sation

Last week the supposedly more dignified broadsheet snuck cheesecake onto the front page by running an AP picture of a sexy stewardess featured in the infamously sexist National Airlines ad campaign. Today, the News runs an AP article titillated by a full-length dress worn by Australia’s first lady to a White House state dinner.

“Australia’s tall, blonde first lady, Sonia McMahon, created fashion history at the White House wearing a white dress slit almost to the hips on both sides and featuring glittering see-through bands,” pants the AP.

Oh, what's cheesecake, younger readers? Unnecessary pix of sexy women.

Third paragraph revelation: Everyone at the White House commented!

The AP doesn’t mention that their reporter no doubt approached everyone asking for a comment, because that is their job.

And oh, the comments! “I thought it was very pretty,” said Mrs. Agnew. “She can get away with it. I couldn’t.”

As you can see from the picture of Sonia McMahon below, she was hardly competing with Cher. She’s wearing what looks like rather clunky short-heeled pumps, the dress is a sheath and not clingy, and the slit goes to her thigh, not her hips. Perhaps merely having blond hair is considered too flashy, but the hairstyle would fit on a nun. In fact she looks exactly like my second grade nun.

November 3, 1971

Chicago Daily News: Weenie Queen

November 4, 1971

Chicago Sun-Times, front page: Bare warning on A-Test.  Quake chain, tidal wave

By Thomas O’Toole

Chicago Daily News: Last-ditch court plea on A-test

Daily News Wire Services

Admittedly we're all still here, but still.

A U.S. Court of Appeals refuses to stop an American 5-megaton underground nuclear test explosion on Amchitka Island, part of the Aleutian Islands, planned for Saturday at 4 PM Chicago time—

even though President Nixon’s chief environmental advisor wrote in a previously secret memo that it could trigger a chain of earthquakes and subsequent tidal wave that could reach Japan and California. 

The secret memo by Dr. Russell Train, chair of Nixon's Council on Environmental Quality, was in classified papers ordered released by a U.S. District Judge. Train predicted irradiated ground water would leak into the ocean within 1 to 2 years, not the 100 to 1,000 years predicted by the Atomic Energy Commission.

The U.S. plans to test its Spartan ABM warhead, and conservation groups led by the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility are seeking an injunction to stop it. Now, they say they’ll take it to the Supreme Court.

Hundreds of Canadian students have protested by blocking traffic on international bridges, and D.C.-area college students plan an overnight vigil Friday near the White House.

The Appeals panel issued a singularly confusing opinion: “In our view the case does present a substantial question as to the legality of the proposed test. But it does not necessarily follow that plaintiffs are entitled to an injunction against the test.”

Chicago Daily News: Elrod vows war on club gambling

By Dave Canfield

Chicago Tribune: Elrod vows crackdown on clubs

No byline

Well last Saturday night, Cook County Sherriff Richard Elrod’s vice detectives raided the fancy schmancy Olympia Fields Country Club, arresting a bartender “for serving liquor after hours” and busting up a poker game.

Today, Elrod announces “his vice control unit is going to crack down on any gambling and liquor law violations found in the 31 private country clubs” in unincorporated Cook County. He’s writing to them all now to warn them, and they’re under “surveillance.”

“Just as we would arrest a steelworker who is gambling with football cards in his local tavern, we will arrest a millionaire businessman who plays in a high-rolling poker game,” Elrod tells reporters.

But why start with the Olympia Fields Country Club, and without warning? Could it be a retaliation against federal Judge Richard B. Austin, who is on the real Mayor Daley’s shit list and happens to be president of the club? Elrod “refused to comment,” says the Trib.

News reporter Canfield doesn’t tell us directly it’s political, but hints with some facts: The real Mayor Daley is Elrod’s “sponsor,” and Mayor Daley “is at odds with” Judge Austin “over Chicago Housing Authority plans to build integrated, low-income housing.”

Actually, Judge Austin and Mayor Daley are at odds over CHA’s plans to NOT build integrated low-income housing, and not in white neighborhoods. Daley “has blasted Austin for threatening to halt $26 million in federal Model Cities funding if the City Council doesn't approve 412 more units in white areas ASAP. They were supposed to approve 850 units by Sept. 15, according to a "letter of intent" Mayor Daley signed with HUD to get that Model Cities money.

This grows from Judge Austin ruling for the ACLU in 1969 that the CHA perpetuated segregation by building projects in black neighborhoods, and by allowing aldermen to nix public housing in their own wards.

HUD is willing to fork over the dough, but the ACLU asked Judge Austin to halt the Model Cities money until the CHA and city comply. Judge Austin admits the city’s contention that Model Cities money has nothing to do with CHA housing, but as he considers it, he says:

“Maybe this will melt the iceberg. The time may have come when nothing else will work to put a little pressure on a recalcitrant City Council.”

At the hearing, Chicago’s corporation counsel says poor people will suffer if the $26 million is held back because they rely on “such social services as breakfast programs.” Oh, does Judge Austin give it to him:

“You’re telling me,” says Judge Austin, “it’s better for a child to have breakfast than to have the opportunity to move out of the ghetto. [In other words], let them have cake, but don’t let them move to the Northwest Side or the Southwest Side.”

Mayor Daley issues a statement complaining that the federal government is not forcing suburbs to take public housing, only the city. “Is it right that you have integrated housing in the city and not in the suburbs?” he asks.

But on Oct. 1, Austin froze the $26 million in federal Model Cities money until the Council approves sites for 412 public housing units in white neighborhoods—and singled out Mayor Daley to blame:

“There have been occasions in the past, in other parts of this country, when chief executives have stood at the schoolhouse and the state house doors with their faces livid and their wattles flapping, and have defied the federal government to enforce its laws and decrees.”

He said this to a “hushed courtroom,” the Trib related, and “his voice rose, especially when he referred “directly or indirectly to Mayor Daley.”

Judge Austin would die in 1977, less than a year after finally settling this case.

November 5, 1971

Chicago Daily News: Owners of Stock Exchange to save, restore entry arch

By M.W. Newman

Guess what, the owners of Adler & Sullivan’s Old Stock Exchange Building at 30 N. La Salle, already covered in scaffolding and under demolition, finally figured out they would be social pariahs if they didn’t at least save some small pieces of this fantastic landmark.

The “majestic entry arch,” writes Newman, will be dismantled and rebuilt at a site to be chosen by the city. “Each stone will be numbered and crated. Cost of the restoration project to the owners has been estimated at $250,000.” I didn’t realize the owners paid for that. That must have hurt. Remember what Mike Royko wrote on Oct. 19:

“Maybe the heritage lovers are wringing their hands in misery at the impending destruction of the Old Stock Exchange Building. But the eight La Salle St. money men who own it are rubbing their hands in anticipation. They bought it for only one reason—to destroy it and put up something new—and their only regret is that it is taking so long. Delays cost money.”

“A frantic civic effort to avert destruction failed when Mayor Richard J. Daley allowed a wrecking permit to be issued,” writes Newman. Then New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art asked for the arch and the first four floors of the façade, “for installation in its garden.” Now suddenly Mayor Daley thinks again:

“Mayor Daley, however, has decided the monumental stone arch should remain in Chicago, and the Metropolitan withdrew its bid.” As Newman reports, the Art Institute plans to reconstruct the famed trading room “in a new wing to go up east of the museum building in Grant Park.” We know that happened.

We also know Mayor Daley will give the arch to the Art Institute too, which will erect the arch outside at the southwest corner of Columbus and Monroe. And that’s great. But if it weren’t for Mayor Daley’s vanity, we could visit the entire four-story façade in New York. Sheesh.

The churlish, greedy eight owners “have commissioned a photographic record of the old building as it crumbles behind its wrecker’s scaffolding.”

Newman, one of the Daily News’ most cherished architectural and cultural writers, also mentions something I did not know: “A medallion on the left side of the arch represents the house of F.W. Peck, which originally stood on the site.” The right side medallion shows the year the Stock Exchange construction began, 1893.

Chicago Daily News: ‘Did City Hall order raid on my club?’

By Ed Kandlik and Edmund J. Rooney

How was there not a Judge Richard B. Austin Fan Club? See yesterday’s installment for the full backstory, but basically, this guy is badass.  

Austin went up against the real Mayor Daley, and Daley had Cook County Sheriff Richard Elrod send vice cops to Olympia Fields Country Club, where Austin is president.

Judge Austin has frozen $26 million in federal Model Cities grant money to Chicago until the City Council approves sites for 412 more CHA units in white neighborhoods. They’ve blown their deadlines with his 1969 federal court order, and an agreement with HUD. So last Saturday, Elrod’s cops arrested a bartender at the Olympia Fields Country Club and broke up a poker game.

Today, the Daily News reports Judge Austin challenges Elrod to take a lie detector test on whether the raid was political payback. Austin says he’ll contribute $200 to Model Cities programs if Elrod passes. “I understand the city is short of dough in that fund,” says Judge Austin.

Judge Austin doesn’t just offer to PAY for the polygraphs, he’s got the questions: Has Elrod ever seen gambling at the Covenant Club, where Elrod belongs, and has he arrested anybody there? Did Elrod get a call “from a city official” ordering him to make the raid?

Did the deputy who executed the raid do so at any other club in Cook County? And does he think forcing the bartender “to post $1,000 bond for this heinous offense is adequate?”

Well, Elrod isn’t gonna do it:“My only regret is Judge Austin apparently has been affronted personally by our attempt to enforce the laws equally and justly.”

Chicago Daily News: A-test foes pin hopes on Burger

By Chicago Daily New Wire Services

In less than 24 hours, the Atomic Energy Commission will explode a 5-megaton hydrogen bom warhead 6,000 feet underneath Amchitka Island off the coast of Alaska. Opponents have one last hope, an appeal to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger.

Yesterday, papers reported a previously secret memo from President Nixon’s top environmental advisor, who thinks the test could set off a chain of earthquakes and a deadly tidal wave. He also thinks irradiated ground water will leak into the ocean within 1 to 2 years.

This planned nuclear test is 250 times bigger than Hiroshima, “and the largest explosion yet set off in the Western world.” “Three Nobel Prize winners and nine other scientists said there was ‘a real possibility’” that it’s a mistake. The Nixon administration insists it’s necessary for national security.

And that's not even the craziest part.

James R. Schlesinger, then AEC Chairman and later Defense Secretary, says, “I have no apprehensions.” OK, so far.

Schlesinger is on the island to observe the test. OK, he’s head of the Atomic Energy Commission.

But Schlesinger brought his wife and two of their daughters with him “to observe the test from an underground bunker 23 miles away.”

Why would you bring your wife and kids to “observe,” from an underground bunker 23 miles away, the biggest nuclear test ever (not counting Russia), which is happening 6,000 miles underground? Even if there wasn’t a chance it might touch off a string of earthquakes and a killer tidal wave.

I mean, what did he think they were going to see?

November 6, 1971

Chicago Daily News: Lakefront wind may be pivotal

By Jack Schnedler

“The Bears are learning to live with the artificial turf at Soldier Field,” writes the Daily News’ Schnedler, but now they find “the wind in their new lakefront home can be an even bigger hassle.”

Who didn’t know the Bears started off playing at Wrigley Field—show of hands.

1971 is the Bears’ first year in Soldier Field, after 50 years in Wrigley. Papa Bear George Halas made a “handshake” deal every year Cubs owners Bill Veeck Sr. and P.K. Wrigley, to share 15% of the ticket sales and concessions up to $10,000, and 20% over.

Back to Soldier Field: “It’s a swirling wind here,” says Bears coach Jim Dooley. “It seems to shift a lot. It’s definitely much more of a factor than normally. It has to affect your thinking in a game.”

“A 34-mile-per-hour wind was whipping across the field during Friday’s practice, overturning chairs and playing tricks with Bobby Douglass’ passes. The breeze is expected in the 10- to 15-m.p.h. range when “the Bears and the Green Bay Packers take the field at 1 P.m. Sunday.”

Douglass thinks the wind factor could deter visiting teams from throwing long. Punter Bobby Joe Green says “You’ve got to watch the flags and try to outguess it (the wind).” The Bears are in second place in the NFC Central Division at this point in the 1971 season, and the Packers are “in the cellar.”

Remember this is long before the 2002 overhaul that turned Soldier Field into a UFO or toilet bowl, depending on your POV. So field conditions could be different.

Steve's tickets now are 50 yardline nosebleeds, west side. He says he feels nothing there, but can see the referees' pants flapping in the wind. When he moves down to the 10th row of the 400 section, he feels a little wind.

Chicago Daily News: DuSable tribute gets nowhere

Daily News op-ed columnist L.F. Palmer Jr. –better known as Lu Palmer—writes today about a classic real Mayor Daley political tactic: create a committee for something he doesn’t want to do, let the committee quietly die.

Lu Palmer, BTW, was a legendary Chicago journalist who segued naturally into activism. He arrived in Chicago working for the Chicago Defender in 1950, then worked for Chicago’s American and finally the Daily News before quitting over an editing dispute.  

Palmer instantly questioned whether Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan’s police had flat out murdered Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a 1969 raid, when some other papers reported just the official version of events.

Palmer and his wife, Jorja English Palmer, were prime movers behind Harold Washington’s successful 1983 campaign to become Chicago’s first Black mayor. Lu Palmer is credited with inventing the slogan “We shall see in ’83.” Later, Palmer founded groups like Chicago Black United Communities.

Five years after Lu Palmer wrote this column, the Palmers bought a 1888 mansion at 3654 S. King Drive, where he died of pneumonia in 2004. The house sat vacant for almost 20 years, landing on Preservation Chicago’s “most endangered” buildings list. But The Obsidian collection, a nonprofit devoted to digitizing archives of Black history, just bought the house for its headquarters and plans to open it in 2022.

Back to Palmer’s column today: “On March 25, 1969, Mayor Richard J. Daley established the Chicago DuSable Committee and set into motion a classic example of the politics of default.”

Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, as we all know by now, built the first permanent house in about 1770 in what would become Chicago on the north bank of the Chicago River, about where the Apple store stands today.

“Official Chicago has only grudgingly admitted that the founder of the city was a black man and has consistently refused to erect a proper memorial for its founder,” writes Palmer today.

So far, he says, there is a school named after Du Sable, and an alley. “But for many decades, blacks have petitioned City Hall for a proper memorial for its founder.” The DuSable committee was supposed to figure out a memorial, and where to put it.

It’s been three years. Palmer calls to see what’s happening. The committee’s office has a new business in it, and their phone forwards to a new phone number, which forwards to a third number. “Nobody at the last number has ever heard of the Chicago DuSable Committee,” writes Palmer.

The high-profile committee heads and the committee members Palmer calls don’t know what’s going on, but guess perhaps they may not still be members. Only legendary independent Ald. Leon Despres is forthright: “What’s happened with the committee? Absolutely nothing.” You can almost hear him snort.

Chicago Daily News: Amchitka!

Chicago Tribune: A-Test Today, Unless…

…U.S. High Court Acts to Postpone

When a planned nuclear explosion on an island off the coast of Alaska might cause massive earthquakes and tidal waves at 4pm CST, it’s front page news in Chicago.

The Nixon administration plans to detonate a 5-megaton hydrogen bomb, the biggest U.S. nuclear test ever or since, underground on the Aleutian island of Amchitka.

Readers learned yesterday that Nixon’s government kept secret a memo from his top environmental advisor that the blast could cause a chain of earthquakes and massive tidal wave.

Huge protests against the blast have taken place especially in Canada. Environmental groups led by the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility are fighting the test in court. With mere hours left the U.S. Supreme Court agrees late Friday night to a Saturday oral session to hear the last appeal, 8:30-9:30 AM Chicago time.

This is the third underground U.S. nuclear test on Amchitka. Ironically, the first one was deemed necessary for scientists to figure out how to identify Soviet underground nuclear testing vs regular earthquakes. This blast, named Cannikin, will test the warhead for Spartan ABM missiles. A 5-megaton bomb would be 4 times more powerful than any previous U.S. test, and 250 times bigger than Hiroshima.

Pleas to President Nixon to stop the test have come from scientists headed by three Nobel prize winners including Linus Pauling; a bipartisan group of 34 U.S. Senators; and 3 countries—Canada, Sweden and Japan. The bomb is suspended 6,000 feet underground in a cavern that cost $2.3 million to drill--$15 million in 2021.

As mentioned in this space yesterday, nutty Atomic Energy Commission head (later Defense Secretary) James R. Schlesinger is on Amchitka for the explosion. And he brought his wife and two daughters—Anne, 13, and Emily, 9. For today’s papers, he says he did it to show people who are scared by the protesters that it’s safe.

I guess Schlesinger would be the first one in the water in Amity on Fourth of July weekend in 1975, dragging those poor kids across the beach and into the waves with him.

For context, consider a letter to the Toronto Star in 2019 from resident Deb Loughead, writing about the danger of global warming. She’s reminded of what it was like growing up during the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, hearing regular testing of nuclear air raid sirens . And then came the 1971 Amchitka test.

“And my young anxious mind and fast-beating heart concluded that when the five-megaton explosion took place, the world as we knew it would instantly cease to exist,” Loughead wrote. “I even mentioned to my mom, ‘I guess I’ll never get to experience having sex.’”

Chicagoans (and everybody else) spend this day 50 years ago not knowing what the hell is going to happen at 4:00 PM.

Chicago Daily News: Amchitka! (The funny version)

There’s only one thing better than a good prank—a newsroom prank that however small the chance, could go really, really sideways. Especially when it involves a 5-megaton nuclear test that might cause massive earthquakes and tidal waves.

Chicagoans (and everyone else) spent today wondering what would happen if/when the U.S. government set off that 5-megaton test on Amchitka Island off the coast of Alaska. By mid-day Saturday, they knew the U.S. Supreme Court had NOT granted an injunction against it.

In 1971, former Tribune editorial page editor John McCormick was a Daily News night copyboy. He writes about the overnight Friday-Sat 11/5-6/1971 shift in a recent issue of the Chicago Daily News alumni newsletter. My God, would I love to be on that mailing list.

So much was happening in 1971, McCormick wrote, “you may not recall one sudden cataclysm: the deadly nuclear explosion that ravaged an Alaskan island, blew scientists into the Bering Sea and washed away oceanfront towns in Siberia. The story was a classic—that is, a classic eruption from the prankish imagination of the late Art Gorlick. And it caused quite a kerfuffle in the Daily News newsroom.”

Gorlick was then the overnight city editor. In the wee small hours of the morning, when the whole wide world was fast asleep, Art’s attention wandered from his actual duties.

Art Gorlick noticed nearby Jim Fabris, the overnight news editor. Fabris didn’t know yet if the US Supreme Court would stop the Amchitka explosion, and if it didn’t, he didn’t know if the blast would cause massive earthquakes, tidal waves and deaths, or nothing. But he had to set up the headline anyway for the Daily News’ single weekend edition.

So Jim Fabris wrote “a huge but ambiguous banner headline—just the word ”AMCHITKA!”—with some readout heds about the test and the noisy national debate it provoked,” wrote McCormick.

Then: “On or right after deadline, (Art) grabbed a long piece of paper and wandered away from the city desk…Moments later Art emerged from the wire room with what appeared to be an AP bulletin reporting a catastrophic explosion on Amchitka…His faux wire coding made it look genuine,” McCormick recalls.

Art hurried his fake AP copy over to a news editor—McCormick doesn’t remember exactly who was there at that point.

The lede: “AMCHITKA ISLAND, Alaska AP—A small nuclear explosion, a preliminary blast to the major test bomb explosion scheduled for here later today, has triggered an earthquake that has devastated much of the Atomic Energy Commission’s encampment here. At least 45 people are dead. More than 100 other scientists have been washed to sea in the massive landslide that followed the earthquake.”  

“Imagine being the startled news editor, with your suddenly obsolete front page rolling off the presses downstairs,” McCormick writes.

The targeted news editor grabbed Art’s copy, skimmed it, and figured out the ruse a little quicker than Art would have liked. But, writes McCormick, the news editor had the great stage presence to conceal that fact and give his own performance. He considered the grave news, then “theatrically bellowed to a near empty newsroom, ‘The line stands!’”

After the Daily News folded, Art Gorlick served as editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and died in 2004.

John P. McCormick was working as a night copyboy at the Daily News while finishing his senior year at Northwestern (poli sci and journalism) 50 years ago today.

McCormick started out at the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, and returned to Chicago first as Newsweek Midwest correspondent before joining the Trib in 2000. Follow this link to find out what it was like for him to be on Rod Blagojevich’s enemies list.

Here’s the full text of Art’s prank AP copy:

“AMCHITKA ISLAND, Alaska AP—A small nuclear explosion, a preliminary blast to the major test bomb explosion scheduled for here later today, has triggered an earthquake that has devastated much of the Atomic Energy Commission’s encampment here.

At least 45 people are dead.

More than 100 other scientists have been washed to sea in the massive landslide that followed the earthquake.”

The giant quake, which measured eight points on the Richter scale of 10, was felt in Anchorage, Nome and as far away as Victoria, British Columbia.

An AEC spokesman said a huge tidal wave was triggered by the earthquake and that waves as high as 35 feet were rolling toward the Alaska coast.

The AEC spokesman said that scientists in the Soviet Union reported that a tidal wave washed ashore in nearby Siberia and that at least three coastal towns have disappeared. There was no report on how many persons may have perished in the disaster.

The AEC spokesman termed the earthquake and subsequent landslide and tidal wave “unfortunate,” but said the major test would continue.

“Our contingency plans include a course of action in the event of an earthquake following the preliminary explosion, which is intended to activate the main test bomb’s residualary mechanisms,” the AEC spokesman said.

“We do not anticipate further difficulties following the main blast now that the subterranean structure has been shifted as a result of the preliminary explosion.”  

November 7, 1971

Chicago Sun-Times: Amchitka A-blast ‘successful’ - AEC

By William Hines

After all that, nothing happened anywhere but on Amchitka. The Atomic Energy Commission insists no radiation escaped, and the test went great. There were no earthquakes or tidal waves elsewhere, except the earthquake on Amchitka itself.

AEC head James Schlesinger, who was crazy enough to bring his wife and two daughters, tells reporters what the earthquake felt like from the control center on the island, 26 miles away from ground zero: “fairly substantial…what you would feel in a stable cable car.” Whatever that means.

The AEC official spokesman makes more sense, saying the quake could be felt for 1 1/2 minutes, and rated a 7 on the Richter scale. The blast “carved out a large chamber in the earth beneath it, melting rocks with temperatures equal to those on the sun.”

Do you dig spending some time in 1972? If you came to THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972 from social media, you may not know it’s part of the book being serialized here, one chapter per month: “Roseland, Chicago: 1972.” It’s the story of Steve Bertolucci, 10-year-old Roselander in 1972, and what becomes of him. Check it out here.