The latest in a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.
This is a book that Super Sam gave me during my intership at my hometown weekly newspaper, the Farmington Valley Herald, during the summer of 1986.
"Who was Super Sam?" you ask. His full name was Louis H. Sampliner, and he had quite a journalism and fiction-writing history, some of which I vaguely recall him telling me about. Picture Wallace Shawn, but perhaps a little shorter and absolutely much less lively, although possibly with a similar slight lisp. And Super Sam was older, as he was in his early 70s when I worked with him, and Wallace Shawn is only 79 as I write this.
Like anybody working at a small-town newspaper, I wore many hats during my internship and my employment the following year, after I graduated. I reported on town meetings (planning and zoning), wrote features about local residents, helped the sports editor cover high school sports once in a while, took photos, copy-edited news and feature stories and columns, typeset articles and picked up lunch orders from local restaurants.
Sam was a mentor to me. He taught me that good news writing was tight, concise. He would point out my editing and writing errors and patiently wait while I fixed them. He was smart and confident and sometimes a little bit cocky when teaching me things. But he was also funny and self-effacing.
He worked as an assistant typesetter, alongside an amazing woman named Sally, and wrote columns once in a while. At age 73, he wasn't there full time, but he was a well-known and respected presence in the small office. He could be grumpy and short-tempered, but he was always loveable and just about always right.
I had to set up a free trial with Newspapers.com to access Sam's obituary from May 28, 1993. He was 80 when he died, and had spent his entire adult life working with words. He was the director of the University of Hartford news bureau for many years, according to the obit from the Hartford Courant. "Mr. Sampliner, better known as 'Sam' to most students and local media representatives, was a publicist since 1946, when he founded the news bureau of Hillyer College in the basement of a Hudson Street building," the appreciation indicates. "When the college joined the Hartt School of Music and the Hartford Art School to form the University of Hartford in 1956, he moved to the Bloomfield Avenue campus. He was director until 1978, but continued to work part-time until his death."
After graduating from a New Jersey high school in 1932, he worked for Atlantic City News; Standard Magazines, a New York-based publisher of pulp magazines such as Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, per Wikipedia; and Popular Library, where he was a comic book editor, the obituary indicates. He never attended college.
Additionally, he published more than 50 science fiction and adventure stories. He is listed on Fancyclopedia as one of the hundreds of attendees of Chicon, the World Science Fiction Convention held in Chicago in 1940. Sam seems to have been somewhat on the periphery of the science fiction publishing world. I found a blog post about two Badger State writing groups, the Milwaukee Fictioneers and Allied Authors of Wisconsin, in which Sampliner is briefly mentioned. "In 1940, writer Louis Sampliner and Palmer swing through Milwaukee for Bloch, while making a pilgrimage to visit Derleth in Sauk City."
Let's break that down: Palmer refers to Raymond Palmer, an early member of Milwaukee Fictioneers best known as the editor of Amazing Stories and an author of books including the UFO-themed The Coming of the Saucers. Bloch is Robert Bloch, another sci-fi author who was first published at age 17, and was a member of the Fictioneers. Derleth is August Derleth, a native of Sauk City, Wisconsin, who was the first publisher of H.P. Lovecraft's books.
You'll notice that Super Sam is the only one of that bunch without his own Wikipedia page. Nevertheless, he seems to have worked alongside Palmer for quite some time. Addtionally, he published freelance articles in numerous publications, including the Farmington Valley Herald, the Hartford Courant, the West Hartford News, the New Britain Herald and New Haven-based The Elder.
At his death, he left two nieces, so I'm assuming he never had children.
As for the Farmington Valley Herald, I believe it was established in 1894. It went out of business in 2005. The publisher when I worked there was a wacky, energetic guy named Lou Ball, who was always the center of attention when he was in the office. When I knew him, he was in his 60s, and drove an orange Datsun 240-Z with the license plate "BALLS." He was known to dress head to toe in red-white-and-blue on July 4th, and show up in the office once in a while with an arrow through his head, a la Steve Martin. He was loud and funny and smart and most everybody loved him.
Below is a picture of me with Lou, taken at the going-away party the paper had for me when I left on my road trip in 1988.
Over the years, I have only used Soule's synonyms book infrequently. But I love coming across it once in a while, as it reminds me of my first "real" job all those years ago. And it has all the best words! Like "party-colored," a synonym for piebald and variegated.
The dictionary's namesake, Richard Soule, was born in Duxbury, Mass., in 1812, and died in St. Louis in 1877, according to Famous Americans. A descendant of a signer of the Mayflower Compact, he graduated from Harvard and worked as a civil engineer before turning toward literary pursuits. Other books he edited include Memorial of the Sprague Family, a poem, with genealogical and biographical notes; Manual of English Pronunciation and Spelling, with a Preliminary Exposition of English Orthoepy and Orthography with William A. Wheeler; and Pronouncing Hand-Book, with Loomis J. Campbell.
Giving me this book appears to fit one of Super Sam's life patterns. According to his obituary, "For at least 30 years, he wrote poems he read at special occasions and major university affairs to honor individuals."
I'm honored that he shared this book with me.
