The inspiring and uncompromising Melissa Forsythe

On a busy afternoon early in my newspaper reporting career during the mid-1980s, an old friend of our paper's managing editor walked into the newsroom in Corydon, In.

Her name was Melissa Forsythe, but this visitor was much more than just a friend of the boss. Over the previous dozen years, Forsythe had been the best television news reporter in our area, a trailblazer for gender equity and workers rights, and my teenage crush.

Street reporting was at the root of
Melissa Forsythe's career

Forsythe, who died in 2022 at 71, had strong professional talents and unyielding personal will that enabled her to push gender and legal obstacles aside in Louisville broadcasting since she became a street reporter at age 22.

Before all that, Melissa Forsythe had been a high school journalism student of our editor Randy West.

"She just exuded talent," said West, who added that it was his mistake not naming Forsythe editor of the high school paper, though he attributes that to an outstanding journalism class of multiple superb students. "You knew she was going to be a big success. I always thought she was going to wind up on national television someday."

West taught at Corydon Central High School in the mid-1960s before becoming editor, and chief photographer of The Corydon Democrat in 1970. Corydon is 35 miles west of Louisville.

Instead of fulfilling her teacher's belief that she was network TV material, Forsythe achieved the status of Louisville's most recognized TV news fixture over two decades, achieving the highest anchorperson ratings at two stations. She became the city's first woman TV street reporter in 1972 just after finishing college at Indiana University, then in a few years she became Louisville's first anchorwoman.

She started off at WAVE-TV defying a socially conservative community's stereotypes of a sun splashed 22-year-old with a petite frame by carrying heavy TV film cameras made bulkier by tripods and rows of lights.

"She came in and got dirty and sweaty with the rest of us," former WAVE colleague Barry Bernson said in a TV news report of Forsythe's death in February 2022.

                      WHAS recalls the trailblazer Melissa Forsythe

Former WHAS Sports director Dave Conrad, who anchored the station's sports reports from 1976 to 93, said Forsythe, the station's news co-anchor for 12 years during that time, had some paradoxical qualities, including being "very outspoken" over professional issues yet a harmonious work colleague.

"She was personable. I would not say overly sociable," said Conrad, who now lives in Marysville, Ind., about 30 miles north of Louisville. "She was professional at all times. She was one of the best, if not the best journalist that I have ever worked with."

Randy West, who now lives in Bloomington, Ind., said he followed the career of his former student on the airwaves and by chatting with Forsythe at various news assignments where both went, including a few runnings of the Kentucky Derby.

''She was a good journalist. She knew what good TV writing was, and it is different from the kind of writing I knew," West said. "If she were going to be in a newsroom and you were going to be working with her, or for her, she wanted you to be the very best and she would help you."

He said Forsythe's quick reactions at sites of ever changing news stories was another of her strengths. I saw that verified during that impromptu Corydon Democrat newsroom visit.

It so happened that on the very day she dropped in, a state investigation had just resulted in charges of financial mismanagement in a county government office.

Instantly, Melissa was on one of our happily donated desk phones, calling in the breaking story to her employer WHAS-TV, who put it on the upcoming noon TV newscast. Even on a social call, Melissa's work went on, and she was unfazed shifting gears.

With the same methodical and probing technique, Forsythe covered stories of international interest, including the world's second artificial heart implant, the rise of singer John Mellencamp, and the deaths of 25 people -- 22 of them children -- when a drunk driver crashed into a church bus in 1988 near Carrollton, Ky. in the nation's worst drunk driving accident.

"I will always remember the work that she did on the bus crash," Dave Conrad said. "In light of the tragedy she was succinct in her reporting. It was factual and not overly emotive, which is what a journalist needs to be in such a difficult time."

Conrad also said an intangible aspect of the television profession helped Forsythe succeed. "She was so photogenic that on camera it looked like 3-D. She just popped out at you" he said. "She had the 'it' factor.... I can't explain what that is, but you know it when you see it."

Forsythe's even toned voice and unflappable style validated an image of seriousness those in the industry tended to hold of her. West said it's not the whole story.

"She was funny. She loved to laugh" he said. "She was very smart.... She read a lot."

Forsythe died at her Louisville home of natural causes, but her family released no more details, reflecting a trait of Melissa herself.

"She was the most private public figure I have ever been around," former colleague Doug Proffitt said during Melissa's posthumous induction into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame shortly after her death.

Her public persona once took the form of a newsmaker rather than a reporter. By the late 1970s, though lighter minicams had replaced those film cameras which had been so ungainly, Melissa Forsythe deftly carried another burden - this one in the courtroom, rather than the newsroom.

In a drawn out and highly public legal case, Orion Broadcasting v. Forsythe, she won the right to move to crosstown WHAS-TV in 1979, despite an onerous non-competition clause WAVE tried to impose after its station management decided not to renew her contract.

In a case which media dubbed "The Forsythe Saga," the judge's precedent setting decision said that because Melissa Forsythe had not left WAVE voluntarily, the station's pre-existing requirement that reporters not work for a competing station for a full year infringed on her rights.

Though she was an equally great success over a dozen years at her new employer, WHAS decided to drop Forsythe in 1991. She served as the press spokesperson for Kentucky Governor Paul Patton from 1996 to 2000 during the first of his two terms.

While Forsythe was still at WAVE in the mid-70s, I recall reading in a newspaper profile of her that she and other college students had formed a self-made news service to cover the Democratic and Republican political conventions for various local media, phoning in news stories of interest to their clients' regions.

This endeavor stayed in my mind, and a couple of years after I left the Corydon Democrat staff in 1985 I co-founded, with the help of an independent photojournalist, a similar arrangement for regional print media.

This informal news service took us around the upper South and lower Midwest writing feature stories about people -- often athletes and musicians -- to be published by a small set of client newspapers in the hometowns or regions of the subjects.

The crescendo was a working trip in 1987 to Washington, D.C., where I wrote three feature stories for two newspapers about Southern Indiana people who had risen to various heights on Congressional staffs or other institutions.

Financial realities finally caught up with me, but after the gig was no longer viable, I started doing independent wire service reporting for Associated Press and United Press International, also traveling quite a bit.

Though that "it" factor may not so heavily impact print journalism, the many other factors of Melissa Forsythe have gone with me. 

             ___________________________________________________

Brian Arbenz is from New Albany, Ind., where he grew up watching Melissa Forsythe's coverage of his community and the wider Louisville area.

Colleague Doug Proffitt tells "the Hall of Fame worthy story" of Melissa Forsythe:

We never met, but I believe I can count this remarkable man as a friend

Have you ever felt close to someone you never knew? I don't mean via the Internet; I'm thinking specifically of a person who worked as a journalist in the same newsroom where I did -- but his stint, and life, ended four years before I set foot in there.
His name was H. Bruce Walker. He was referred to retrospectively as Bruce throughout my time as a reporter and columnist for The Corydon Democrat weekly newspaper in Corydon, Ind., an historic town of about 7,000 people 35 miles west of Louisville.
The frequency of my hearing his name mentioned soon after I took the Democrat job in 1982 testifies to Bruce's everlasting stature. He was someone you'd never forget, and someone I feel as though I know - not just knew.
I first became knowledgeable about Bruce after I decided during a quiet weekend afternoon following my shift to fill in the blanks on this deceased journalist with such indelible presence. I browsed a Democrat staff-produced booklet I had seen at the front counter called "The Writings of H. Bruce Walker."
I shortly found a person who had been part Henry David Thoreau, part Thomas Merton, and part Dave Barry.
After Bruce died unexpectedly at age 48 in 1978 of a heart attack, the Democrat staff compiled some of his best writings into that booklet. It also included several of their own thoughts and comments from readers about the pain of a shocking loss, but also the joy of having known this man about whom Democrat staffer Ed Runden wrote: "His virtues were plain and simple and uncommon in any age. He was the good and honest man we often speak of and infrequently meet."
Bruce Walker had been a professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. He had grown up in Whiting, Ind. a densely industrialized city on Chicagoland's south shore.
Bruce's columns gave measured but lively praise or criticism to county government officials for their actions he felt were in, or against the public interest. The columns also talked of such varied things as serving as a lifeguard during his youth on Lake Michigan's Whiting Beach, to General Electric's ominous efforts to win a patent on its new strain of bacteria (Bruce had studied physics and chemistry at Purdue) to the dubious distinction of being investigated by Harrison County's rural electric cooperative.

Bruce and Dietgard, happy with each other
and with simplicity.

The $4 electric bill one month for his family of four was not believable (the average bill was $24, Bruce wrote), but the coop learned what friends of Bruce already knew - that he devotedly practiced simple living and conservation.
Democrat managing editor Randy West told me Bruce would sometimes spot a device or piece of old furniture lying outdoors which a Harrison County property owner might have written off as junk, then buy it for a few dollars and turn it into something useful and restore it to its original charm.
Bruce owned no telephone or television. Democrat sports editor and columnist H. O. Jones wrote after Bruce's death that he and his wife Dietgard raised chickens on their property and expertly gathered plants and berries from the wild as part of their determination to avoid prepared foods with artificial ingredients.

Jones added that Bruce insisted on keeping his old Volkswagen going long past its natural life by rebuilding or replacing "every single bit of its ailing anatomy."
Bruce had great and varied technological savvy and fix-it skills, along with a philosophy of relying on the simplest technology possible.
Randy's farewell column called Bruce "a latter-day Renaissance Man," adding:

"(H)e was accomplished in physics, chemistry, mathematics, politics, religion, philosophy, literature, botany, conservation, organic gardening, nutrition, carpentry, mechanics, farming. The last time Bruce was at our house, he played the piano and did a Greek dance to the music from 'Zorba the Greek.' (Like Zorba, he was an Earthy, sensual man who relished food, drink and tobacco.)"
Bruce was a conservationist, and also a conversationalist.

Office holders local and national, such as U.S. Sen.
 Birch Bayh, felt Bruce's scrutiny. 

"He had few peers as a storyteller. Gestures, dialects, the works," H. O. Jones wrote. "He had a penchant for detail in his storytelling which missed little.... He loved to nose into public records around the courthouse, find discrepancies and write about them. Just about the only enemies he had were the ones he caught with their hands in the cookie jar and readers who couldn't tell the difference between satire and seriousness."
Randy West wrote that along with Bruce's writing prowess and intellect, his easy and colorful speaking style and boisterous laugh displayed during his 1974 job interview helped persuade Randy and Democrat publisher Robert O'Bannon to hire Bruce.
Those traits never failed Bruce during his four years covering the governments of Harrison and occasionally neighboring Crawford County.
"A natural actor, his irreverent impersonations of some local public figures often left us in hysterics," staff reporter Mary Ann Sebrey wrote nine days after Bruce died.
Joy Lindauer, then a recent addition to the Democrat staff, said: "As an admirer of Bruce's writing since moving here four years ago, I marveled at how he came up with such good stories when he only started writing about two hours before deadline. He would spend a lot of time running around the courthouse, talking on the phone, scanning the newspapers, and shooting the breeze with colleagues. Then about 2 o'clock Tuesday afternoon he would begin putting his thoughts on paper in the concise professional way we all became used to in his stories."
This frenetic routine, Joy Lindauer added, did not detract from Bruce's appreciation for simple pleasures like opening his lunch bag at work and declaring: "Oh Boy. Waffles with blackberry jam!" as she recalled from one day.
Even those who did not know Bruce personally understood the love he had for his and Dietgard's two sons, Arpad and Istvan, both named for Hungarian political figures from history.

Bruce's first born son Arpad gets a hoist
from his dad in the natural setting that was
 their home. After Bruce died in 1978,
 his widow Dietgard moved the family
 to Illinois.

"Dietgard, Arpad and Istvan became household words in Harrison County through Bruce's columns. Whether it was telling about their awe of Smokey the Bear or their delight in their new sleeping bags, his love for his little boys shone through."
Randy West wrote: "Bruce impressed everyone he met. He amazed us first by showing signs of being a natural born investigative reporter. Countless times he rushed into our office with the same pronouncement: 'VERY interesting. I just found out that....' County officials soon realized, perhaps nervously, that someone was VERY interested in their work, particularly when it concerned tax dollars, and some of them caught Bruce's carefully-thought-out criticism on the editorial pages. It's pleasant to note that many of those same officials, who often heeded his words, became his good friends."
Much as Bruce and Dietgard found the natural surroundings of Harrison County (after making just one trip there from the Chicago area) perfect for trying lives of simple independence, it was nature that supremely tested their commitment.
On April 3, 1974, the worst outbreak of tornadoes in U.S. history was centered on Kentucky and Southern Indiana, destroying 900 homes in Louisville, and hundreds more in rural parts of the two states, including the dream home of two Chicago-area idealists who had relocated.
Bruce yielded to pragmatism (even Thoreau would have understood), getting a job bagging groceries in a supermarket, then soon seeking work at The Democrat.
The Walkers were not alone in feeling the call of rustic, woodsy Harrison County, which began growing in the 1970s as Louisville professional people, particularly new arrivals to the city, often made the same move, if for lives more tied to subdivision convenience than Thoreau's self-reliance.
Corydon was the first capital of Indiana, and the original State Capitol building (built between 1814 and 1816 of area limestone and logs) still draws visitors who quickly are charmed by a surrounding town square, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, and preserved homes of two early governors. 

Bruce pretends to gloat as he
and Sports Editor H.O. Jones add
Hoosier State Press Association
 awards to the newsroom wall.
It was a yearly ritual at the
 acclaimed Corydon weekly. 

Rollercoastering gasoline prices in the last 50 years have made the city commuter population growth uneven, but Harrison County has steadily attracted esoteric free thinkers, initially via the 1970s back-to-the-land passions. Big draws are Blue River, a waterway ideal for canoeing, and some tall bluffs overlooking the Ohio River where hang gliders step into the sky.
And it has to be said that many like Harrison and its adjoining and even more rustic Crawford County because of their thin law enforcement coupled with ample marijuana, often produced in far corners of the many absentee owned wooded patches and meadows.
When I lived in Harrison and covered news in both counties from 1982 to '85, there still was a seventies live-and-let-live ethos.
But Bruce and his family valued not just the freedom and self-determination their venue gave them in that decade, but also a discipline from lives rooted in religion and philosophy.
"Bruce was a Christian," Randy West wrote, "and he shared Christ's disdain for the Pharisees. He had no time for arrogance, vanity and pretension."
Two column excerpts among the vast array in "The Writings of H. Bruce Walker" well illustrate his grasp of complex problems with which the U.S. is still beset, and the simple values that could solve them, explained by Bruce in the clear and conversational style that won him readers.
He wrote this in September 1978, though the words are central to today's situation:

"Because energy was cheap, we didn't feel a twinge of guilt or even have a remote sense that wasting all this energy was wrong.
"But now energy is no longer cheap, and it never will be again. The days of cheap and abundant oil are gone, and the price of coal is going up. We're in the position of having to learn new attitudes toward energy."

In December 1977, these seasonal words offered timeless advice for anyone - religious or not - seeking to reconnect with truth and authenticity. The conclusion touches me like the words of the good friend I have in the person I never met:

"Times have changed. The simplicity of the first Christmas has become complicated for many into a frenzy of activity that clouds this original simplicity.
"From about the day after Halloween, we're bombarded by advertising displaying hundreds of gift suggestions.... There are hundreds of Christmas cards to sign and stamp and decisions made on who to send them to.
"All this takes place to the strains of 'Peace on Earth, Good will to men.' By the time Christmas arrives, many if not most people are so physically and emotionally exhausted  that the day brings relief rather than joy. But buried in all this, the original simplicity and joy is still there.
"All we have to do is find it."

 

Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA. The pictures used in this story are reproduced from, "The Writings of H. Bruce Walker" with permission of Randy West, retired editor of The Corydon Democrat and member of the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.