Raising a glass to a fellow journalist

It was good news last week to hear that the doggedly dedicated Courier Gazette reporter Steve Betts was named Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press Association.

At least he is a journalist.

I worked with Steve for too many years covering the Rockland beat. He was adept at hassling city officials, demanding open meetings and questioning the wisdom of certain members of the bench.

So a lot of people hated him. I thought he was great. Anything that afflicts the comfortable is fine with me.

When I think of a young Steve Betts, I think of the night of the 16 beers. In those days everything happened at the Red Jacket lounge, coincidentally right across the street from the Courier.

I believe we had all been to some sonorous City Council meeting – or even worse, the school board – and ended up at the RJ with cheerful host Dick Libby, right at last call.

Betts and I were sitting with two distaff staff members of the Courier, and all four of us went off to find a waitress and order four beers.

You guessed it.

We ended up with 16 draft beers on a tiny RJ table. Try as we might, we could not finish the 16 beers in the few minutes before closing time. But we tried mightily.

As far as I know, that was the last beer Mr. Betts ever drank. He even runs every day now and is disgustingly healthy.

Then there was the time he burst into a Red Jacket motel room, accompanied by Dianna Benner of radio station WRKD, to interrupt a clearly illegal meeting of the selectmen from some island or the other. They mistakenly decided that the best way to avoid public (and press) scrutiny was to go to the mainland for their session.

Wrong. That was Betts territory.

But the best memory was the day the Maine State Police SWAT team had someone holed up in a Burkettville house. Shots were fired. Police roadblocks tried to keep everyone back. I always carried a 300 mm lens in the car, so I snuck around the back of the houses for a good shot. I got one, too, when the police smashed the window and threw in a flash grenade. (I still regret that the picture never made page one.)

I thought I was the bravest journalist since Ernie Pyle until I looked at the house ahead of me and there was Betts, even closer to the action than I was. He said he heard a bullet whiz by his head.

A trooper noticed us and angrily demanded that we “get the hell out of there.”

Neither of us decided to argue and we had to make the long walk back to the roadblock and even angrier police officers.

I don’t know about Betts, but I was greatly relieved to get back to safety.

Betts is an editor now and rarely leaves the office for shootings and roadblocks. But he still punctures city councilors and judges for their perceived sins in his column.

If he ever went back to a bar again, I would gladly buy Betts a beer to celebrate his JOY honor.

But not 16.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@verizon.net.