Gerald Talbot rightfully got a beautiful sendoff column from the Portland Press Herald after he died recently at age 94.
Columnist Steve Collins praised the state’s first black legislator for his many, innumerable civil-rights accomplishments.
But Collins astonishingly left out of his remembrance what Talbot did for work outside of his legislative duties and groundbreaking work for minority rights.
Talbot worked 25 years for the paper Collins now purports to write for.
Talbot was a secret role model for us white folks in the newsroom. (He just didn’t let on.)
In fact, he was notably the first black news employee of the state’s largest paper, working in its production department starting 60 years ago.
For years Talbot was the only minority employee at the Press Herald, where he began working in 1966.
And for those of us who worked with him in those years, he has left us with the most wonderful memories of his presence.
Whenever Gerry Talbot walked into the newsroom, which we called the “city room,” it seemed like a celebrity was in our midst.
Not because of the color of his skin but because of his engaging, wonderful personality.
If that was the politician in him, damn he was good!
For all he was putting up with outside of the newsroom, on the streets as a black man in a sea of white, including the disgusting racism he endured in white Maine, Gerry Talbot’s cheerfulness belied the pain.
He never, ever let on what he was enduring outside of work.
Gerry seemingly always had a smile on his face. His optimism was infectious. He was just plain fun to be around.
Unfortunately the newspaper’s columnist was either totally unaware that the legendary Gerry Talbot once worked for the paper that carried an appreciation Monday of his life or knew it but decided it wasn’t news.
Actually quite hard to believe.
When Talbot worked for Maine’s biggest daily, he was subliminally making history with the help of the family that owned the paper in those days.
The Gannett family of Maine was colorblind.
Besides Gerry there was a sweetheart of a woman named Eva Mae Strothers who worked in the paper’s cafeteria.
The Gannetts were ahead of history in their hiring practices.
They didn’t need DEI initiatives to realize that minorities needed to be as equally respected as white people.
They hired from every race, color and creed. And this was 60 years ago, long before points were awarded for common sense.
The Gannetts did it because, well, they never even realized how progressive their hiring policies were – they had no “quotas.” They didn’t need lectures on equal opportunity because they couldn’t see color.
In Gerry and Eva they saw quality. That’s all that mattered to them. Unfortunately, they sold the paper in 1998, seven years after Talbot retired, and it’s never been the same since.
Dare say the current owners of the paper have fewer minorities on the payroll than the Gannetts did six decades ago.
None of the top editors and managers at the so-called progressive, liberal paper are anything but white as the pure driven snow.
Gerry wouldn’t call it stupidity. He’d shrug and chalk it up to ignorance. He had no hate or bitterness in his bones. He didn’t know what those words meant.
Gerry, Eva Mae and the white owners of the Press Herald were an unmatched, God-loving, colorblind team.
Too bad today’s Press Herald political columnist has no insight into who and what came before him at the paper.
The generous Gerry Talbot would give him a mulligan.
