Conscience of Cincinnati

At a luncheon in Cincinnati this week, the National Conference of Christians and Jews paid a signal honor to one of the country's longest working columnists. The newsman: Alfred M. Segal, 71, who was celebrating half a century on the Scripps-Howard's Cincinnati Post (circ. 167,260) and 34 years as a columnist. Read the special citation: "[Segal's] writings and his personal life . . . have been the ideals and aims of the National Conference of Christians and Jews." Back in the Post's city room. Editor Dick Thornburg and his staffers had another way of saying it. At a surprise party, the Post gave Al Segal a gold wristwatch with the inscription: "To Al, the Conscience of Cincinnati."

In his column "Cincinnatus," Segal plays both big brother and conscience to the Past's readers. His mild, low-keyed column shuns gossip, rarely stirs up sensation, never thunders. Instead, he may tell of a child with cerebral palsy, the of a 90-year-old friend, the good work of a priest he knows. Then again, he may just write about a pleasant, sunny day. Says Segal: "Cincinnatus looks with some tolerance on the sinner, with compassion on the pauper, with a sense of humor at the millionaire, and attempts to understand even the murderer . . . This is the world with all its variety."

Cincinnatians read him with affectionate respect, and when he points out a flaw in the city, they hurry to patch it up. When he wrote that Cincinnati's Longview Hospital was short of wheelchairs, 18 were quickly provided. Another time, he told about the hard time a family was having after the breadwinner was sent to prison for stealing a factory payroll. Reading "Cincinnatus," the factory owner called the holdup man's wife, hired her at $20 a week, and told her to earn it by staying home to care for her children.

"King of Vagabonds." Actually, Al Segal might have been a rabbi had he not found a wider pulpit in print. He was just out of Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College when he got his job on the Post.

Within three years he was city editor. A year later, hating his desk job, he went back to reporting, started his column in 1921. Soon he became known as a friend of the down-and-out. Hoboes tapped him for "coffee money" so often that Post staffers put a sign next to his desk proclaiming Segal "King of Vagabonds." (His penchant for giving away his money finally got to the point where his wife put in a rationing plan--just enough for carfare, lunch and two daily glasses of sherry.) Between columns he covered news stories, and the friends that he made helped him score some notable beats.

His biggest came in 1924, when boss-ridden Cincinnati was at the depth of political corruption and the Post was thundering at the city hall gang, led by Rud Hynicka. One day, just before the city council was to vote on an ordinance reducing gas rates, a local Western Union operator showed up at Segal's desk. Said he: "I could go to jail for this, but I feel it's my duty as a citizen to bring this to you." He showed Segal a telegram from Hynicka in New York to the president of the city council. It ordered the council majority to vote against any rate reduction, saying: WE'VE GOT TO TAKE CARE or OUR FRIENDS. The Post published the telegram, and Segal followed it up with a series of columns demanding a new city-manager form of government with a nine-member council elected on a nonpartisan ballot. Cincinnati got its nonpolitical city manager, and cleaned up its graft.

Someone Worthy. As a civic conscience during the Depression, Al Segal used his column to save people from eviction, send poverty-stricken youngsters through college. An old friend, Cincinnati's late Grocery Tycoon B. H. Kroger, told Segal: "You meet a great many people who need help. If I can be of service, let me know." Al Segal did, got a $6.000 grant for a scientist to carry on experiments in tuberculosis. Of the thousands of letters he has received, one he prizes is from a Protestant minister, who wrote: "I envy you, Al Segal. You have the largest congregation in the city, and you don't have to live with it."

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