Looking back to when an Iowa paper 'played the Lute' on April Fool's Day
'News' of departing Iowa's coach's reconsideration was April 1 prank
One of the most famous or infamous April Fool's jokes -- if you're an Iowa Hawkeye fan -- happened 41 years ago this April 1.
It was 1983. Venerated Hawkeye men's basketball Coach Lute Olson had just announced weeks earlier that he was leaving Iowa City after nine years to take a job at the University of Arizona.
All of Hawkeye fandom mourned the departure of the coach that had taken the Hawkeye men to just their second Final Four in school history.
The Quad-City Times in Davenport ran a big teaser headline on Page 1 of its April 1, 1983 edition that said "Lute changes his mind, will stay -- See Sports." Readers found a big "April Fool!" greeting them when they turned to the sports section.
Many Iowa fans who viewed Lute as something close to a deity in Iowa City were not amused. It prompted Times editor Forrest Kilmer to write a column on April 10, 1983, also attached here.
Mr. Kilmer noted in his column that not everyone in the newsroom agreed with the move, but he tried to address it and called for a little perspective, He wished readers were as interested in other more pressing issues of the day.
The Times was known for pushing the envelope in those days with splashy headlines and being a bit sensational -- though I know from working there for several months in 1984 it also had a top-notch news staff. In an Iowa Daily Press Association news awards contest, one judge wrote of a Times front page, "I feel like I'm staring at a lady wearing shocking pink stockings."
I'm sure many, if not most, faithful readers savvy to the paper's panache at that time took the Lute joke in stride and got a laugh from it. I’m not so sure it would fly today - which was something Mr. Kilmer's column presaged.
”If Americans can’t enjoy a good wholesome joke, we are in worse shape than I thought,” he wrote.
Make absolutely no mistake, Mr. Kilmer was as real and as tough a journalist as they came — right down to his crew cut. He worked at the Times 47 years, from cub reporter to editor, and received the Master Editor-Publisher Award from the Iowa Newspaper Association.
And if you’ll excuse the expression, he did not suffer fools lightly. As I recall, he was referred to as “Mr. Kilmer” in the newsroom.
I will never forget what he told me during a job interview: “We can teach you how to be a better reporter, but we can’t teach you how to write. And if you don’t know how to write by now, you might as well put on your hat and coat and go on back to Ames.”
I instinctively wanted to snap to and say, “Yes sir!”
However, in Mr. Kilmer’s seasoned news judgment, Coach Olson’s departure from Iowa had been “outrageously overplayed and emotions running so rampant that it was time for humor,” he said. “And only on April Fool’s Day could we have pulled it off.”
Forrest Kilmer retired from the Times in 1986 and died in 2002 at age 81. His obituary offers an additional bit of insight into his personal perspective on the news, and life. He was an Army paratrooper during World War II and received a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and five battle stars.
Given that background. as a member of my folks’ generation that lived through a depression, a world war and raised kids through the tumult of the 1960s, the departure of an athletic coach was, to Forrest Kilmer, something that was stunning news, but “was not the end of the world,” as he put it. “The sun would even shine again.”
I think Mr. Kilmer and my World War II veteran father, who once told me to “inject a little humor” in my writing, would have seen eye to eye on many things.
And, in this instance, faced with risking a gaffe for the sake of a guffaw, Mr. Kilmer and the Times decided it was time for some guffaws for the good of the order.
No one was worse for the wear. And, as Mr. Kilmer very accurately observed, the sun even shone again.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. Click on their links below to sample their work.
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Fantastic column
Oh, wow! I remember that one, Pat. Thanks for retelling it. The Davenport paper’s stunt had the whole state talking — and a lot of journalists chirping about a breach of ethics. But Forrest Kilmer handled it perfectly in that follow-up column. As super-serious as our whole society seems to be today, I imagine there’ve been some April Fools whoppers pulled today.