Bernie Hunt was in the “hot seat” of the Tribune City Desk on Sept. 25, 1978, when a PSA airliner plunged into North Park after colliding with a Cessna, killing 144 people. He helped lead the afternoon paper’s coverage, which won a Pulitzer Prize.
Is Hunt hesitant to fly? Hardly.
A retired airline employee who avails himself of flights around the world, Hunt flew to San Diego this week from his home in Las Vegas. His mission: Visit the paper for the first time since 1982.
On Wednesday, Hunt, 72, was among 20 former Union-Tribune employees to tour the Mission Valley landmark’s third floor — the newsroom mainly — as staff packs for a move downtown in May.
Clerks and reporters. A page designer and a confidential secretary. The U-T alumni with cameras in hand followed U-T advertising operations manager Greg Johannsen up an elevator to the third floor.
At one point, Johnannsen described how former publisher Doug Manchester wanted to restore the old Copley Bell (“ring of truth”) logo to interior hallways. “But Copley told us the license fee and [Manchester] said nevermind,” he said.
Current staff said the building landlord doesn’t change lightbulbs anymore in the newsroom. A sofa sat unused near a failed cable-TV studio, now used for storage.
Fernando Romero of South Bay — a famed Baja California reporter during his 10 years — recalled with fondness being hired by Bedel Mack for the Evening Tribune in 1983 after an L.A. Times internship.
On the tour was Mack’s widow, Suzanne. She had been a clerk and secretary when she married Bedel (beh-DELL) in 1971. Now 66, she lives in Del Cerro. Another former clerk, Peggy Scott of Poway, recalled making El Indio runs for Mexican food.
Reporter Patricia “Pat” Dibsie of San Diego, who has trainer service dogs for decades, brought a black English lab named Max, 1 1/2, being readied for a wounded warrior.
Dibsie, 68, hadn’t been inside the former flagship of the Copley Newspapers chain since 2002. She recalled covering courts, police and other beats, a “wonderful experience.”
“When it stopped being fun, I left,” she said. She had worked for 29 years, 11 months. “I didn’t wait for 30 years.”
Dennis Corbran, who started as a news assistant, recalled the paper as the first place he worked in San Diego after a 1982-1987 stint in New York — working at the Buffalo News for the late Murray Light — father of current U-T editor Jeff Light.
Corbran, 57, also worked five years on the former U-T website, SignOnSanDiego.com, which helped set him up for his current job as webmaster for the Zoological Society of San Diego.
Among the oldest was 85-year-old Floyd Thomas of La Jolla, whose last job was night city editor. He retired in 2000 and hadn’t been back until Wednesday.
“It’s fun to go through here,” Thomas said. “It’s tinged with a little nostalgia — not necessarily positive. A little sad.”
Preston Turegano of La Mesa — a longtime Tribune reporter who became an entertainment writer and columnist when the Tribune and Union merged in 1992 — organized the alumni tour with Terri Spilecki, 80, who had been a confidential secretary to three Tribune managing editors and other top execs.
Spilecki has been hosting monthly lunchtime get-togethers of Tribune retirees for 24 years, mainly in the John Wayne Room of the Longhorn Bar & Grill on Mission Gorge Road, not far from her home in Allied Gardens.
What did it take to put the tour together?
“Courage,” joked Turegano, 68, who worked for the San Diego papers for 36 years. “I just wanted [the alumni] to see for ourselves. They were very receptive to this — the U-T.”
Spilecki’s husband, Bill, shared secrets of the newsroom.
Asked for permission to post one especially juicy story, Terri declined.
Twenty-four years after leaving the Trib, she’s still keeping confidences.
Ken Stone worked at the Tribune and Union-Tribune for 24 years, ending in 2010.
