Joe's "Boys"

Damon Runyon chipped in. So did newspapermen in Denver. Funds came from Author-Scenarist Gene Fowler, Col lier's Editor William Chenery, Colorado Governor Ralph L. Carr, New York Mirror Publisher Charles B. McCabe, Manhattan Drama Critic Burns Mantle, many another journalist and ex-journalist who had cut his teeth on Denver papers, in the good old days.

The object of their solicitude was Joe Diner, 62, steward of the Denver Press Club -- one of the few surviving institutions of its kind in the U.S. and probably the only one with a club building of its own. Word had gone out that Joe had survived a serious operation, was about to undergo another, minor one. The "boys" made up a pot to pay his hospital fees.

Many of them recalled when it had been the other way round. Joe had grub staked them, paid their debts, put them to bed when they could not get there themselves, jacked them up with advice, taught them pinochle and penguingue (a Filipino game played with eight decks of cards). A New Jersey baker with a suspicion of tuberculosis, Joe went to work at the new Denver Press Club a few hours after he hit town in 1905.

Except for an occasional illness, he has seldom had a day off since.

Through the fabulous era (1895-1924) of Bonfils and Tammen, scandalmongering publishers of the Denver Post, Denver was a newspaperman's town. Its five scrappy dailies (only the evening Post and morning Rocky Mountain News remain) turned out good reporters by the score. Until they left for big-city jobs, Joe figured that each was his responsibility. Few of them had had a chance to return the favor until last week. But Denver's current crop of reporters have. Joe's son, Leon, is the left-end hero of the University of Denver's football team. Inasmuch as every newspaperman in town figures he has a half interest in Leon's upbringing, the coverage he gets is just short of scandalous.

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