Spring 2012 - Indiana University School of Journalism

Gina FerazziCourtesyCourtesyObituariesLeo Melzer, BA’40, a former editor of theIndiana Daily Student, died Nov. 27 in SantaMonica, Calif. He was 96. Melzer servedin the U.S. Air Force during World War II.Although his IU degree was in business, hespent his career in news. He worked for theCity News Bureau in Chicago, United PressInternational and the Los Angeles Mirror.He then joined the foreign service of the U.S. InformationAgency and served as information officer in Seoul, Korea, andDusseldorf, Germany. Later in life, he volunteered as a docentat the Will Rogers State Historic Park in California, where heentertained visitors with stories about the cowboy-turned-actorturned-reporterwho was a household name in first three decadesof the 20th century. Melzer, then a Civilian ConservationCorps volunteer, met Rogers at a tree planting ceremony nearLake Tahoe in the early 1930s. Melzer established three giftsto the School of Journalism in honor of his friend, Tom Miller,BA’40, who was sportswriter and sports information director atIU; his mentor, Tom Buck, BA’39, who was an editor-in-chief ofthe IDS, a reporter, a press agent for the mayor of Chicago anda teacher of journalism; and his brother, Joseph L. Melzer.Betty Firth Lewis, BA’41, a former executiveassistant and spokesperson for mediaanalyst Marshall McLuhan, died Jan. 26in Middleton, Wis. She was 92. At IU,Lewis was a member of Theta Sigma Phijournalism honor society and worked onthe Indiana Daily Student. There she mether husband, Carl, ’39, who served as thepaper’s editor. When Carl Lewis was sent overseas with theU.S. Army during World War II, Betty briefly took his job at theIndianapolis Star. Carl Lewis eventually joined a New York publicrelations firm, and Betty became executive assistant to theMayor of New Rochelle and then assistant to McLuhan while hewas on the faculty of Fordham University. In 1969, the Lewisesmoved to Manhattan, and Betty became a freelance magazineand newspaper writer. The couple eventually retired to Wisconsinand Texas. Lewis continued to write throughout her life andwas working on a novel before she died.John Mahan, BA’63, a career newspaperreporter and editor, died Oct. 12 inAnderson, Ind. He was 71. He held severalpositions at the Indiana Daily Student andalso worked at WFIU radio. As a student,he worked at the Bloomington (Ind.)Herald-Telephone and at Bloomington’sweekly Star-Courier. In 1963, a scholarshipfrom the Inter American Press Association,through the William Randolph Hearst Corp., took him to theUniversidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he workedfor the Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report. From1965–67, Mahan served in the U.S. Navy as a Journalist ThirdMark CornelisonCourtesyontherecord thescoopClass with the public affairs office on the USS Forrestal. Afterreturning from duty, he spent two years as a reporter and editor atthe Courier-Tribune in Bloomington before moving to the Anderson(Ind.) Herald, where he eventually became assistant managing editor.He finished his career at Anderson’s Herald Bulletin, retiring in2004 as a copy editor and page designer.Edward “Ed” Reinke, BS’96, an AssociatedPress photographer based in Louisville, diedOct. 18 in Edgewood, Ky., after being injuredon the job in early October. Reinke, 60, wascovering the Kentucky Speedway in Sparta,Ky., when he suffered a head injury that lefthim in a coma. Reinke attended IU in thelate 1960s and early 1970s and was a staffmember at the Indiana Daily Student. He left IU in 1972 beforegraduation and became a staff photographer at The CincinnatiEnquirer before joining the Associated Press in Cincinnati in 1979.He transferred to the AP bureau in Washington, D.C., returned tothe Enquirer in 1983 and transferred to Louisville in 1987. Duringmore than 25 years with AP, Reinke covered Super Bowls, OlympicGames, the Indy 500, the inauguration of President Bill Clinton,Hurricane Andrew and every Kentucky Derby from 1988. He completedhis IU degree in 1996. His friends and family established theEdward Reinke Scholarship in Photojournalism at IU in his memory.Zeki Mohammad Al-Jabir, of Basra, Iraq,MSc’60, PhD’78, died Jan. 29 in Corpus Christi,Texas. He was 80. After obtaining his first IUdegree, in education, Al-Jabir began his careeras an educator, working as an instructor andprincipal in Iraq’s teacher-training institutes.In 1963, he served as director of programmingand then director general of BaghdadRadio and Television. Returning to academia in 1964, he taught atthe Academy of Fine Arts and then at the Journalism Department,Baghdad University, holding the post of department chairman from1968 to 1969. After a two-year stint as his country’s vice minister ofinformation, Al-Jabir resumed his post as chairman of the JournalismDepartment until 1972, when he returned to Bloomington topursue his doctorate.In 1978, he returned to the Journalism Department at BaghdadUniversity as an assistant professor. In 1980, Al-Jabir became directorof communications of the Arab League Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organization in Tunis, Tunisia, a post he held until1986. He then served as professor of journalism and mass communicationsat King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and theInstitut Supérieur de Journalisme, Rabat, Morocco.Al-Jabir authored numerous papers and studies in both Arabicand English, and his writing regularly appeared in newspapersthroughout the Arab world. He also served as editor-in-chief of theArab Communication Journal from 1981 to 1986. Al-Jabir also wasa renowned poet in the Arab world, and some of his poetry waspublished in two anthologies, Standing at Stations Left by the Trainand I Know Basra in Her Rain-Soaked Garments.Spring 2009 2012/ / newswire < 35 >