VOICES
REMEMBERING ULLMANN
REMEMBERING HARRISON ULLMANN
1
4
A look back at the man who made us truly relevant
A
BY ED W E NC K EWENCK@NUVO . N ET
s I began researching the 25-year history of NUVO, one thing kept popping up: Commenter after commenter, essayist after essayist pointed to the arrival of Harrison Jordan Ullmann as the moment NUVO became relevant. Ullmann gave NUVO what it desperately needed in those early days: teeth. Ullmann had the journalist’s equivalent of a pit bull’s jaws: When he locked onto something, he rarely let go. Just ask Indy’s former Mayor Stephen Goldsmith. Or Evan Bayh. Or anyone who had the dubious honor of serving in the state legislature in the ’90s. Harrison, though, wasn’t a mad dog of some sort: he was archly intelligent, and he only chewed on the posteriors of those he felt deserved it. And what really set Harrison apart from 99 percent of the pundits and verbal pugilists on both sides of today’s political spectrum was simply this: The man could write. The best gauge of his talent? Even people who hated everything about the guy read him every week. That’s the mark of a quality columnist. * * * I mentioned Steve Goldsmith. Harrison and Steve got along so well that every time NUVO went looking for any scrap of data from the Goldsmith administration, the paper had to follow the guidelines outlined in the Freedom of Information Act. Instead of a comment, a figure, a confirmation, whatever; the city handed Ullmann a set of bureaucratic hoops designed to stop deadlines in their tracks. In Ullmann’s collection of columns, the posthumously published Rat’s Ass Republicans and Other Hoosier Tales, there’s even a section devoted to the city’s post-Hudnut power structure, a section called simply “The Mayor.” In a column first published in March of 1995, Ullmann drilled what he perceived as Goldsmith’s Nixonian lack of transparency: The Mayor of Indianapolis, Stephen Goldsmith, has told us things that are not true. He has broken faith with us and perhaps broken our laws. ...
Two weeks ago NUVO began reporting how and why Mayor Goldsmith had been hiding the facts of his legal address from any public scrutiny. The house where he seems to live is held in a trust that hides the identity of its owners. Ullmann went on to give Goldsmith’s justification: that the Mayor and his family lived in fear of assassination and kidnapping. Ullmann also pointed out why it was so important that elected officials had actual addresses that could be verified. “The records help protect us from felons and impostors,” Harrison wrote. The implications in that sentence must’ve brought monumental chortles from every registered Democrat who read those words. Ullmann, though, insisted that he wasn’t a member of either party; having been both Republican and Democrat, he spent the last years of his life as an independent, a self-described “radical moderate.” Although he might’ve been “moderate,” Ullmann was never accused of subtlety. This was a good thing. NUVO turned out to be the last chapter in Ullmann’s life and career, and Harrison attacked the job like a man who seemed to sense he had just a single shot left at leaving a mark on his city. * * * While I was scanning the big bound books that house NUVO’s back issues, I began to make note of the columns that seemed to define Harrison Ullmann, picking one here, discarding one there. A great many of those that I chose paralleled the ones that his son Thomas had picked for the compilation of Ullmann’s work. Ullmann seemed to be at his most eloquent when his sights widened; when, for example, he critiqued the broad concepts embedded in the stereotypical Hoosier notions of governance. In his column of August 17, 1995, Harrison said, We Hoosiers are as hospitable to the whims and wishes of perfect strangers as any people in America. We are told the proper purpose of our schools is to give the hospitality of low taxes and willing workers to S E E , U LLM A N N , O N P A GE 2 2
5
2
6
3
FILE PHOTOS
1. “Corky” Ullmann on the front steps of his parents’ home on Cape Cod. 2. Ullmann in the army, stationed in Hawaii. 3. Ullmann during his days as an Indy Star reporter. 4. Ullmann and his wife Laurie on their wedding day in Hawaii, Dec. 21, 1955. 5. Ullmann playing piano in a Press Club folly. 6. Ullmann on his porch in Indy.
25 YEARS OF NUVO // 100% RECYCLED PAPER // 03.14.90 - 03.25.15 // VOICES 21