Deadline for a Critic

it off.

Over the years, it was an unrelieved drag keeping up correspondence with the informants. They were, as far as Groendal was concerned, not especially interesting or witty people. But they were faithful. They wrote regularly with news of the city, or the parish, or the seminary, or other classmates. All of which they thought was where Groendal’s primary interest lay. Almost as an aside, they would include news of their assigned person: Jane, Mitch, Dave, or Charlie.

One reason the informants were faithful was due to Ridley’s careful selection of people whose prime virtue was fidelity. Another reason was Ridley’s pained but faithful response to their letters. Still another reason was that as the years passed, Groendal progressed from student to successful journalist to celebrity. It was gratifying to the egos of four lackluster citizens of Detroit to correspond with a famous personality.

But fame did not come to Groendal quickly or easily. It came as the result of a combination of talent, hard work, and meticulous planning.

Groendal began at the University of Minnesota trusting no one and using everyone. He was not by any means always justified in suspecting the motives of others. But it didn’t matter, not to him. For Groendal, it was cause and effect: a steady progression from one goal to another.

It did not take Groendal long to secure his bachelor’s degree. Many of the credits he’d accumulated at the seminary college were recognized by the university. He went on from there to graduate school, majoring in English and journalism. Finally, he won his doctorate in English.

Along the way, he free-lanced for all four St. Paul and Minneapolis papers. After graduation, he was offered a teaching position at the university. It was an opportunity most would have seized immediately. But teaching had no place in his scheme of things.

Instead, he applied at the Minneapolis Tribune, one of the papers for which he had been a stringer. Because of the very satisfactory work he’d done in the past as well as the prestigious degree from Minnesota, he was given his own column outright, without having to go through apprenticeship as a reporter or staff writer. In no time, he turned his column into a commentary on the arts, concentrating on stage, music, and books. This, also, was part of his grand plan.

Fortune smiled on him in a special way when the Guthrie Theater opened in May of 1963, with George Grizzard in Hamlet. Much of America had been hoping that the illustrious Tyrone Guthrie would open his proposed theater in their community. He surprised nearly everyone by opening in the unlikely minimetropolis of Minneapolis.

It was not considered an unlikely site by Minneapolitans, who knew they had an extremely livable city but, lest they be inundated, were keeping it a secret. Drawn by the Guthrie, theater buffs throughout the country converged on Minneapolis. In the middle of all the hullaballoo was Ridley C. Groendal as the renowned local critic.

It didn’t hurt. It helped him begin climbing the ladder to bigger newspapers and bigger cities. Not necessarily better, but always larger.

It was during the summer of 1965 that he learned from one of his Detroit informants that Charlie Hogan had quit the priesthood and applied for a job at the Free Press. It so happened that at that very time he was working at one of the Knight newspapers. The Free Press belonged to the Knight chain.

Most people would term that a chance occurrence; at most, fate. Groendal knew it was divine providence.

Inquiries revealed that the Free Press had recommended that Hogan gather experience before they would consider hiring him. This hiatus afforded Groendal the opportunity to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the Free Press management.

It was done in subtle but judiciously repeated ways. It was so laughably simple: All he had to do was grab every reasonable opportunity to mention some fictitious flaw in the character or performance of one Charles Hogan. After all, who would know Hogan better than a one-time schoolmate? And who better able to judge his journalistic talent than a fine arts critic with a now-respected track record?

As a result, Groendal effectively scotched Hogan’s chances not only at the Free Press, but throughout the entire Knight chain as well.

Hogan, of course, knew nothing of Ridley’s machinations. Hogan thought he was serving his time at the Oakland Weekender. He considered the months spent at that suburban weekly a purgatorial preparation. He completed assigned stories and initiated others with professionalism. He did not badger the Free Press to rescue him from veritable oblivion. He was patient. And confident that in God’s good time he would move onward and upward.

In a little more than six months, Hogan’s petition for laicization was granted. One obstacle overcome. He was not earning anywhere near the amount he considered necessary to support a wife, let alone children. Nevertheless, it was time. So, preparations were made for a modest wedding at St. Mel’s parish where Father Koesler had helped on weekends while he was editor of the Detroit Catholic.

Koesler felt some misgivings about this wedding. He had had similar presentiments about scores of other weddings at which he had officiated.

It seemed that seldom was any wedding free of all anxiety. Sometimes a bride and/or a groom had a problem, such as immaturity or marrying on the rebound. At other times there was in-law trouble. Over the years, Koesler learned there could be as many problems affecting a marriage as there were people entering the institution. Rarely could a wedding be described as trouble-free.

At the same time, one could be, and frequently was, fooled. Some unions that promised doom survived quite well. While some that seemed made in heaven quickly became hell on earth.

Charlie and Lil admittedly had a lot going for them. They very definitely were in love and maturely so. They were a good age, not too young or too old. Granted, Lil’s parents weren’t crazy about having an ex-priest for a son- in-law, but at least they weren’t making a fuss about it. However, neither set of parents was able to help financially. And that was the sore spot.

Lil was very close to getting her master’s degree, after which she anticipated no serious problem getting a job. But that wasn’t the plan. The scenario called for a family supported not by a social worker wife but by a journalist husband. Except that Charlie’s salary needed a second opinion. If he lived frugally, he might have survived alone. In the school of hard knocks, he learned that two could not live as cheaply as one. Their combined incomes provided enough for themselves with little as a buffer.

To afford children, both Charlie and Lil would both have to keep working. But if they both worked, they did not think it fair to have children they could not personally care for. A dilemma.

There was no escaping it: Unless Charlie accumulated so many merit increases that he approximated the income of the publisher of the Oakland Weekender, or until he landed that job with the Free Press, there could be no children.

That was reality, and reality was Koesler’s long suit. The money was not there to provide for a child, let alone children. And since Charlie and Lil plainly wanted a family, that was a problem.

However, neither bride nor groom, at the time of their marriage, viewed their future as problematical. Charlie was as certain as one could be that there would be a place at the Free Press for him.

Little did he know.

Little did he know that the tentacles of Ridley Groendal’s vengeance had already touched him and would continue to close about him. Short of death, Groendal was determined never to let up. Already his clout was considerable. It was growing and would continue to grow. Feeding Ridley’s ambition was the insatiable drive to destroy the hopes of those who had brought him to the nadir of his life at St. Joseph’s Retreat.

Not long after the wedding Charlie decided it was time to bring the matter of the Free Press to a boil. By mutual agreement, the ball had been in his court. But he was certain the Free Press had had enough time to evaluate his work.

So, carrying his now swollen portfolio, he applied once more.

His application was accepted and he was told it would be carefully considered. And it was. It was, indeed, one of the more hotly contested applications in the memory of many in management.

In the end, it was not so much that Hogan lost as it was that Groendal had won. After all, how could the