Mid-Michigan readers can hear Rick Cole every Wednesday at approximately 6:35 a.m. on Lansing radio station WILS 1320’s “am Lansing” program hosted by Walt Sorg.

by Richard Cole
August 16, 2009

If you’re starting to buy into that fiction about 60 being the new 40, think about this. Rock and roll stars and newspapers are dying of natural causes, for godsakes.

A few months ago, one of my colleagues in the J school told me he had a file of press clippings about me. It seems that the once-vibrant Booth Newspapers Lansing bureau was being dismantled. The journalism professor had been enlisted to figure out what to do with the contents of Booth’s file cabinets.

Apparently there is an insufficient parakeet population in mid-Michigan to absorb the collection of stories written about me “when I used to be Rick Cole.” So, I ended up in possession of the file. I must admit to having been somewhat disappointed that Booth had either not considered me significant enough to have written my obituary in advance, or my colleague was too considerate to pass it on to me.

The Capitol News Corps (or is that spelled corpse?) is just a shadow of its former self. And while I don’t know the backstory on this, I do know that the most recent casualty of Capitol news corps downsizing, however inspired, is one of the great Spartan reporters in Michigan history — former Detroit News bureau chief Charlie Cain. (An MSU-trained journalist, and that ain’t me, would surely know where to put a hyphen in the phrase “former Detroit News bureau chief,” so as to make clear that the reference was to the former chief and not the former newspaper.)

I am sure there are far more capable scribes who have done, or are doing, appropriate tributes to this great reporter Charlie Cain. But I want to throw my favorite Charlie Cain story into the mix.

I must say, I have done my best to check my sources, and I owe my pal, and now fellow academic, former Blanchard right-hand man Bill Liebold, for helping me check my facts.

Shortly after Jim Blanchard took office as Michigan’s governor, in January 1983, this rabid “Michauvinist” (that word, along with “profitization” and a couple of unmentionables, is one I like to take credit for having invented) decided that the observance of the 25th anniversary of the Mackinac Bridge deserved the proper recognition.

Sometime around the time of the announcement of the ceremonies on the bridge and Mackinac Island, the governor had approached the wife of his close friend and first chief of staff, Detroit attorney Tom Lewand, with the idea that he hire her to spend the next several months organizing every detail of the event. It had to be perfect, of course, and Kathy and Tom, after all, were summer residents of the Island’s East Bluff.

The idea of Kathy running the event may have been perfect, but Tom insisted that the governor could not put her on the state payroll. Those times were tough enough and (although I was not a member of the Blanchard Administration at that time) I am sure the conversation centered on the nature of the media frenzy that would be created by inevitable charges of nepotism. Based on the report I heard a few months later, Tom had, in fact, endorsed Kathy taking on this more than full-time, short-term job, but only if she agreed to do it as an unpaid volunteer.

As might be expected, the ceremonies were a great success — a joyous time for everyone and their families, and widespread media promotion of one of the state’s greatest treasures. Kathy had produced a flawless event — a demonstration of the competence of the governor and his team.

But, in the Governor’s mind anyway, one stone was left unturned. Kathy had not been paid. So apparently without the knowledge or consent of the chief, he had arranged for Kathy to receive a small state check compensating her for some of her time and expenses she incurred in managing this event. And this, of course, is where the skillful investigative reporting of the News’s Charlie Cain comes in. This is “the rest of the story.”

Charlie Cain had discovered that the wife of the governor’s top aide had received state funds to run the doings on Mackinac Island.

Somehow, Blanchard and Tom got wind of the impending News expose. Tom, of course, was upset that his agreement with the boss had been, however innocently or justifiably, breeched. But the governor explained the situation to Tom — it was only right, after all, that Kathy got some payment for her work — and he assured him the story would blow over.

I can just hear him: “Don’t worry about it, Tom. It’s a one-day story at most. We have more important things to do here.” So, apparently an agreement between them was reached. They’d let the story boil over and, especially under these circumstances, Tom Lewand would not comment to Charlie Cain or anyone else on it.

Within a few days, Lewand picked up his Detroit News and, much as he had expected, saw the front page story by Charlie Cain — the expose detailing the payment that had been made to the wife of the governor’s chief of staff for, of all things, managing the celebration (he may have used the word “junket”) on Mackinac Island. And there, right in the middle of this Charlie Cain, “above the fold” expose, Tom Lewand found himself quoted defending his wife. The Cain piece said: “Tom Lewand, reached at his cottage on Mackinac Island, said ‘Kathy did a great job and should have had a state contract for all her excellent work.’”

“When I read the story that ran mid week,” Tom said, “I called Charlie and yelled at him, saying I hadn’t been at Mackinac all week, and had not talked to him at all, which, of course, he vehemently denied.”

As Tom later found out, Charlie had not made the quote up. In fact, his Tom Lewand quote was exactly correct. The problem was the quote wasn’t from Tom Lewand, the near-40-year-old chief of staff. It was a quote from Tom Lewand, the chief’s then-14-year-old son defending his mom.

“It wasn’t until I drove north Friday night to join the family for the weekend on the island that Tommy, then 14, admitted to the interview.”

Tom Lewand — the lawyer, not young Tom Lewand the now-president of the Detroit Lions — stresses, perhaps in defense of Charlie Cain, “Most folks still can’t tell us apart on the phone.” We’ll let Tom, the Lion, speak for himself on that point. And maybe, just maybe, Charlie Cain will use the comment function of Domemagazine.com to tell us if I got the story right.

That’s Charlie Cain the great reporter, by the way, not Charlie Cain the character in Beverly Hills Cop.

Richard Cole is professor and chairperson of the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing at Michigan State University. The opinions expressed reflect his individual viewpoint and not that of the university.