Re: Buddy Davis Alas Buddy, I did not know you were here. I would have loved to talk with you again. It's a problem for us in and out part-timers, even when our lives are intricately bound with Cedar Key. We don't know who all is here or get to know many we would enjoy knowing, and likewise, (or so I would like to think) people here sometimes miss out on getting to know part-timers of interest. In Buddy's case, he was worth knowing.
He was a dark-haired, shiny-faced, bespectacled dynamo with a fiery bombastic style and a fondness for oratory. He was a true believer in the duty of the Fourth Estate to look out for the little guy.
"Great Zot!" as he might say.
Or so he scrawled next to passages on my journalism assignments decades ago. I can still see his dashed off substitute for cuss words and his dark, bold handwriting followed by anywhere from one to three exclamation marks, depending on how bad he felt the passage was, even though I don't remember a word I wrote. Buddy imprinted himself on every student he taught in his 31 years on the University of Florida's journalism faculty.
He taught a fairly easy history of journalism class, one of those survey classes required for journalism, broadcasting and advertising majors, and a superb photojournalism course with hands-on lab experience; but those did not build his legend. It was the first real honest-to-God journalism course you took in your second year of college that made his reputation--and made some of us feel we were walking across burning coals. Especially during weekly review sessions. This was when Buddy flashed the work of each class member up on a large projector screen so we could profit from seeing each other's errors and good points, if any. I dreaded the moment my turn would come, when everyone might see Buddy's trademark "Great Zot" on my article or lightning bolts drawn for emphasis, and hear his caustic comments. He folded back our names, but after the first time or two, you could pretty much tell whose work was whose. He deducted half a grade point for each typo, and try as I might, I lost a full letter grade most times. He reduced several women I knew to tears. He presented particularly bad students with a crown of thorns-- real thorns. He flunked you if he thought you could not go out and hold a hold a newspaper job right then. It was do or die, and he was Mr. Tough Love, with a big heart. (He once put up a money tree in his office, with a dollar bill dangling at the end of each twig. Anyone needing a buck could come in and borrow it on the honor system. It lasted a month of two before someone cleaned him out.) History will say Buddy was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorialist for the Gainesville Sun, but I think his deepest mark was on his students, and through them, to the extent they practice what he preached, on readers of the newspapers for which they work. He took journalism as seriously as any Bible-thumper does religion, and was not, when I knew him, cynical about reporters the way we are today. To Buddy, reporting had rules: accuracy, decent, AP style writing; and fairness. He believed in a free press being a watchdog for the people, especially when it comes to government accountability or corruption. Among the students I brushed shoulders with back then, David Lawrence went on to be the publisher of the Miami Herald; Jeff Nesmith became a Washington correspondent for Cox newspapers; Walker Lundy, last I knew, edited the St. Paul Pioneer. And those are only the ones I knew. I left the newspaper biz after a few years of working on a daily paper, yet that experience was so central to me that I cannot envision my life without it. Nor can I imagine having been halfway good at reporting without the rigors of Buddy's class. So thanks, Buddy, from me, and a whole lot of others. Now go stir up things somewhere else, please. The only thing I can't figure out, is how you kept so quiet in Cedar Key. -30- (Back in the ancient days when I studied journalism –30-was used to designate a story's end.)
Christena Bledsoe | 