Daily Iowan and Missing Burnie

Baseball was big this fall. It was difficult to focus on school. Most of the girls I knew were not at all interested in baseball. They didn’t know a foul ball from a pop fly. I didn’t have a hard time meeting boys, because there were a lot of them in my classes. In journalism, it was mostly men. Very few women went the journalism route in college. There were women authors and poets, but most people thought of the newspaper business as pretty gritty, thus making it an unsuitable career path for a girl. I loved to write and I loved sports, so there just didn’t seem to be any other choice for me.

Without Burnie to talk baseball with, I had to strike up conversations with some of the fellas in my classes. I only had one journalism class that first semester, and I was the only girl in it. As a freshman, the expectation was to take only general liberal arts requirements, but since I was going to be on the Daily Iowan staff right away, they let me take Journalism 101. I had to submit a portfolio of articles I had written for the North High Oracle in order to be accepted by the Daily Iowan, along with a letter of recommendation from my journalism teacher at North.

When I listened in on the baseball conversations of my classmates, I discovered that they were mostly Chicago Cubs fans, but there were a few St. Louis Cardinal fans mixed in. One poor fella was from Canada and didn’t get much of an opportunity to contribute.

One time, when the fellas were talking baseball, I had a chance to tell them about one of the most interesting men in baseball. He was Burnie’s favorite pitcher from the Brooklyn Robins, Dazzy Vance. Well, now they were called the Dodgers. First of all, he had a nifty nickname and he was from Iowa. Second, he had some amazing records. Dazzy had won the National League MVP Award in 1924 and also won the Triple Crown, with the most wins, most strikeouts, and lowest ERA! You had to respect a man who could do that, even if he beat up on my Cubs! He fanned FIFTEEN of them in one game in that year. That same amazing year, he also struck out three Cubs batters with only nine pitches in one half-inning. He had one out of every thirteen strikeouts in the National League. It was an astounding year.

Dazzy Vance always wore a shirt when he pitched that had a tattered sleeve. Some managers complained about it, because they said it distracted the batters when he threw the ball, but Dazzy told them there was nothing in the rule book against it, so he kept wearing it, as his ‘lucky shirt.’ He pitched a no-hitter in 1925, and in 1926, my Dad told me about how Dazzy was one of three runners who ended up at third base at the same time in a game against the Boston Braves. Fellas like him made baseball the best sport ever!

All the DI guys were a bit surprised that I knew so much about baseball, but it didn’t get me any interesting reporting assignments. The other DI staff told me that I would not get any real assignments to cover around the campus until my sophomore year. That was disappointing, but none of the other freshmen got assignments either, so I believed it was just their policy. I had to pass Journalism 101 first, they said. That class was a snap! I had scored an A on all my work so far, so all I had to do was wait until next year. It seemed like a long wait.

So, I enjoyed my classes, except anatomy, but I was not enjoying the Daily Iowan as much as I hoped I would. Running errands and making coffee were my major responsibilities, and that was quickly becoming tiresome. The only other girls in the DI office were the girlfriends of the writers. I began to wonder if it was the same in a real newspaper office.

My letters to Burnie gave him the scoop on all of this. We actually both got pretty good at letters. It was strange after just being able to stroll across our front yards and knock on his door to tell him something. That first long letter I wrote had to have three stamps on it. I decided not to do that again now that I had Burnie’s address and he had mine. We both agreed that our letters were too short, but a little news was better than no news. Some of my letters to Burnie were more like short notes, but I appreciated his and he appreciated mine. It was difficult to wait for those letters to be delivered to my dorm postbox, but it was always worth it when they came. I also received letters from Mother at least once a week.

I was a bit homesick, or at least that’s what I thought it was. Even though I was busy with going to class, swimming with the Seals, doing my little jobs at the DI, and keeping up with my homework, I missed my mother and Burnie. Dot was fun to be around but she was busy, too, and the only time we were certain to see each other was after the 10:00 P.M. curfew when we had to be in our dormitory.

I wouldn’t say I didn’t like the University of Iowa, but I started feeling that college in general was getting to be too much for me to handle. It was exciting all right, but maybe it was more excitement than I needed after the difficult senior year I had.

Dad’s sudden death, the house fire killing Grandma Von Dornum, and then mother selling the house in Des Moines and moving back to Steamboat Rock; it felt like I never had time to recover. I had only been back in Des Moines for a week before I had to leave for Iowa City. Mother and Burnie had been supportive, but now I didn’t have them around. Dot was a good listener, but it wasn’t the same as having my mother and my best friend to talk to. I was feeling pretty down in the dumps, and then it happened.