"Grams" of the Journal

The Portland (Ore.) Art Museum celebrated its 50th anniversary last week, invited Portland's upper crust to a preview of birthday exhibits. A reporter for Portland's Oregon Journal was there, accompanied by a photographer who popped flash bulbs until he was told he was "annoying the guests," was asked to leave.

When Maria Jackson heard about it, she hit the ceiling. To Journal editors went an order: let art museum news be ignored for awhile, the Journal must have proper respect.

For 40 years that is the way it has been in Portland.

"Rid Says." Charles Samuel Jackson, a native Virginian, headed west when he was still in his teens, reached Pendleton, Ore. By 1882 he had acquired a half interest in the Pendleton East Oregonian, by 1886 had persuaded Maria Clopton, another Virginia native, to become his wife. Of Sam Jackson's many ventures, his marriage was the most successful.

In 1902, when the afternoon Portland Journal was only four months old but already dying of stiff competition (from the morning Oregonian and the now defunct Portland Telegram), Sam Jackson moved to Portland, bought it, with it proceeded to acquire profits and prestige.

Even in those early days Maria's influence was potent. Editors often were told by Sam that "Ria says" this or that ought to be done; they did it. She heard that the outworn U.S.S. Oregon, relic of the Spanish-American War, was to be decommissioned by the Navy. Said she: it ought to be brought to Portland, turned into a shrine. Soon the massive battleship was anchored in the Willamette River in downtown Portland.

Mother Says. In 1924 Sam Jackson died. To Maria he left controlling interest of the Journal, to son Philip Ludwell Jackson one-third (a second son, Francis, had lost his life in an accident at sea shortly after World War I). Once he decided to cut down the size of the paper's "Poets' Corner"; when Maria Jackson heard about it her foot came down. Phil Jackson had to go to Sunday Editor Sam Raddon and say: "Mother says we should build up the 'corner' again. . . ."

Grams Says. Until recently, when he went off to war, "Young Sam" (Francis' son) worked in various Journal departments. Once he decided that page numbers cluttered up the top of a streamlined page, should be at the bottom instead. A few days later he admitted to City Editor Arthur Crookham: "Grams says she doesn't like it." The numbers went back to the top.

Maria Jackson is frail and wrinkly now, and at 80 a great-grandmother. She lives in the family homestead on the fringes of Portland's business section with a cook, a companion, a chauffeur, a Pekingese named Charlie.

Last summer President Roosevelt eyed the old Oregon's 10,300 tons of metal, decreed it should be demolished for scrap. Had he ordered the wrecking of the eleven-story pile of granite, ink and eloquence that is the Journal itself, Maria Jackson would hardly have been more shocked. She complained some, but being patriotic she did not resist.

This week the old vessel is being given a proper funeral, complete with oratory & oomph. And in the pages of the Journal it is getting an obituary greater and longer than any the Journal ever published for any mere man--except Sam Jackson, who got a whole page. "Grams" wants it that way.

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