The Lantern

Issue date: 5/1/08 Section: Campus

Photo courtesy of Richard Stelling

Richard Stelling still remembers the names of people he photographed amid the rubble of their homes.

"It was touching, thrilling and sad," he said of covering the devastating Palm Sunday tornadoes of 1965 that killed more than 200 people and left more than 3,000 wounded for The Lantern.

Taking photographs of students following the assassination of President Kennedy was another memorable moment at Ohio State.

After a long career in journalism and public relations, Stelling now lives in Columbus, has returned to OSU and is taking classes through the continuing education program. He is interested in city planning.

As a freshman, Stelling, a former photographer for his high school paper, quickly became a member of The Lantern staff.

"I walked over to see if I could use their dark room," he said. "They asked if I wanted to be a photographer."

There was only one other photographer at the time, and the staff wasted no time getting Stelling into the action.

"They were like 'here's an armband, go to the football game Saturday,'" Stelling said. "From then on it was an everyday thing. We didn't go to class; we just shot pictures all day."

In those days, The Lantern printed 18,000 copies of the paper in a basement, on a press that had been made before the turn of the century.

At one point, the apprentice printer was sick for a while and Stelling took over his job.

He said the old web press they used sometimes created problems for the paper.

"If the web tears, it has to be completely rethreaded," Stelling said. "That would cost us an hour or so."

He said some stories were run from The Associated Press and United Press International wires, but they used fewer than today. Photos took three minutes to download and had to be engraved on plastic plates by machine before they were printed.

"There were four different police stations on campus then: campus, city, sheriff and state," Stelling said. "And nobody (was) in control."

He said The Lantern ran pieces questioning police tactics in breaking up various demonstrations, such as the use of tear gas near the medical complex.

Stelling said one of the paper's goals was to scoop The Columbus Dispatch and The Citizen Journal, adding that on one occasion The Lantern ran a story contradicting the reports in the other papers.

"The downtown papers ran stories questioning if there were really as many as 1,000 marijuana smokers at Ohio State," Stelling said.

The Lantern talked to a lot of people and came up with what he would later refer to as a S.W.A.G. (scientific wild-ass guess) for the number of marijuana smokers at OSU.

"There were a bunch of people smoking reefer," Stelling said, "It was over 1,000."

On Nov. 22, 1963, Stelling was goofing around in the newsroom with fellow Lantern staff members when a wire machine dinged.

"Bulletin, bulletin, stay off this wire. Three shots have been fired at the president's motorcade; the president has been shot, perhaps fatally," the wire read.

Initially people thought it must be a joke. "The wire editor tore off the printout and said 'no, this is real,'" Stelling said.

The staff remained glued to the wire until subsequent reports confirmed President John F. Kennedy had been shot. Permission was granted from OSU to run an extra addition that afternoon.

"It's the only extra edition ever printed of The Lantern," he said.

Stelling immediately went out to photograph peoples' reactions.

"You can still pull them up on the microfiche," he said. "Kids (were) glued to the TV set in the main room of the Student Union. People everywhere in shock."

Stelling received a bachelor's degree from OSU in 1966 and a master's in 1968, both in journalism. He was the first photographer to become editor-in-chief of The Lantern.

He has worked for television news programs, was assistant press secretary for former Ohio governor John J. Gilligan and has worked for the Illinois Department of Transportation as a spokesman.

As for the current Lantern, Stelling disagrees with its addition of "The student voice of the Ohio State University" under "The Lantern" on the front page.

"In my day it just said 'The Lantern,'" he said. "What a smug thing to say."

Adam Konvalinka can be reached at konvalinka.1@osu.edu.

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