As Page discussed his career, there were times when he stuttered, and that brought a smile to his face. Looking over his trademark circular glasses, Page said as a youth, he competed in speech contests and Fred Ross, a Middletown attorney, served as his mentor. He said during his first contest, he stuttered throughout the five-minute memorized speech. When he finished, there was polite applause in the room, he said.
“I felt embarrassed for Fred because he was such a great coach,” Page said. “When I got to the back of the room, he said, ‘That was great. When are we going to start on next year?’”
Now, 50 years after Page graduated from MHS in 1965, Fred Ross, and his wife, Sondra, are like his second father and mother, and they remain close friends today.
Page, who lives in Chicago with his wife, Lisa Johnson, and son, Grady Jonathan, periodically visits his hometown, whether for a book-signing, or delivering the commencement speech at MHS.
Q: What goes through your mind when you return to Middletown and drive around town?
A: Driving around what strikes me is how much the town has changed and how little my classmates have changed, especially after a few drinks. When I grew up, this was a classic Midwest, factory town. It was a 50s sitcom. Everybody had their own house. All the fathers worked, and the moms took care of the house and worked in most cases. Everybody went to church, and everybody knew you in church. When you were a kid, you couldn't get away with nothing. When you got in trouble at church, the deacons would take care of you. And then they would send you home. And you better not be crying when you got home because the neighbors would say, 'What you crying about Page boy?' And then you tell them and they give you a whoopin' too. And when you tell your mom and dad you know what's waiting for you then. It was a great place to be a kid. It makes me think of all the people I've written about over the years and how things didn't work out. I see how blessed I was.
Q: What do you think of the revitalization downtown?
A: I am delighted to see it. When I was a little kid downtown was like a paradise for me. You had all these stores down there, and everybody knew everybody. Some of my favorite events: Homecoming parade, Memorial Day parade. We had all these things that were a tight-knot community with lots of role models. They cared about you, where you were going and what you were doing. But it was too damn dull as a teenager. You said, 'Nothing ever happens in this town. Nothing to do…blah, blah, blah. I'm going to get out of here and get to the big city where things will be exciting.' It's remarkable after you grow up you realize your town isn't as boring as you thought it was. There is a lot of things we take for granted.
Downtown was thriving in so many ways. Then the first Middletown shopping center opened up when I was in high school. Back then, that was big. That was the beginning of the decline of the downtown.
Q: With the problems with race relations, does this remind you of what was happening in the 1960s?
A: In the late 60s, you had the Watts riots, that was the beginning of urban unrest. That was a time when a lot of focus shifted to the cities and police relations. There is nothing new about cops being rough in low-income neighborhoods. That was true when those neighborhoods were Irish and Italian. Now they're black and Hispanic, and that gives an extra angle to it and really excites people. We are still talking about those same problems today. When I grew up even though we were low income, blue collar, we grew up around middle class and upper class people. The boundaries of class didn't seem so strong during my generation. I feel bad for this generation of kids because they need more mentoring, and volunteers. The police situation has gotten more tragic because of the lack of communication between people ironically during the age of high communication.
Q: Would you like to be a police officer today?
A: We're not getting enough young people to be police officers today. Not enough young blacks and Hispanics who want to be police. I am aware of the crime troubles in the cities because I have been covering as a reporter for so many years. I know police officers. I have ridden with them in Chicago and Dayton when I was interning at the Journal Herald back in the 60s. The most effective policing comes from officers who care about their community.
The biggest problem now in law enforcement is the lack of witnesses. The drying up of witnesses. I heard something that upset me today on NPR. A police chief in Milwaukee said there may be a case when a police officer is wrestling a felon to ground, but instead of assisting, those witnesses whip out their cell phones and start video taping. This is the age we are in. That is exactly what you don’t want happening.
Q: Would you like to see body cameras on officers?
A: We gotta have it for the civilians and the police. They need some back up too. This has happened several times when police officers were accused of something, and they play the video back and you say, 'The guy did have a weapon.'
Q: What would be your message to this ‘Blacklivesmatter’ group?
A: I'd say get a different slogan. Language is very important. I'm a word man. I pick my words very carefully. I care about words. I understand the context of what they're saying when they say, 'Blacklivesmatter.' When the slogan is out there, all alone, it can give people the impression that they don't think other lives matter. What that movement is saying is black lives matter too. That difference of context can be problematic too. That's just words. That doesn't bother me as much as people who want to exploit racial differences. Either for circulation or whatever.
Q: How many words you still have in you?
A: That's like how many more beats are left in your heart. I heard somewhere that everybody was born a certain number of beats, a daunting thought.
Q: So retirement is not in your future?
A: I'm too poor, No.1. Secondly, retirement to me does not mean you leave your job; it means you do the work you want to do instead of what you have to do. You want to be set well enough financially that you engage yourself in work that gives you some satisfaction. I feel that way now. I always wanted to be a columnist. I always dreamed I'd win a Pulitzer Prize and I did that 25 yeas ago. But I'm endlessly fascinated by the world and by people.
I got some book ideas inside me. I wrote a book about race relations 25 years ago, and I definitely need to write another one. The whole atmosphere is different now than it was then. I just don’t seem to have the time. I’m way too distracted by the Internet. I love to surf and surf and surf. I have to force myself to stay on focus. I told my wife to put on my tombstone, ‘Nothing concentrates the mind like a firm deadline.’
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