In Memoriam: John Patrick Hunter

John Patrick Hunter, former Daily Cardinal columnist and board member, inducted into the Daily Cardinal Hall of Fame in 1999, died in November.

The newspaper he joined following his Cardinal service, The Capital Times, published the following account of his life, reprinted here with permission.

When John Patrick was hired to replace Bill Proxmire as a reporter in 1951, The Capital Times was in its fourth decade of publication. The paper had survived World War I, the Depression,World War II and the start of the Cold War with its progressive values intact. But as with human beings,middle age can be challenging for newspapers. Often, newspapers that begin as crusading tribunes of reform succumb to the business and political pressures that have corrupted so much of our media. But John Patrick ensured that The Capital Times would never conform to conventional wisdom, that it would never defer to the powerful, that it would never abandon the powerless, and that it would fight the good fight not with a sense of duty but with a sense of delight.

John Patrick fashioned himself a thickskinned, no-nonsense journalist, and he could be one when the circumstances required. He could always be counted on to ask the embarrassing, difficult, yet necessary questions that other journalists were afraid to raise. And his willingness to publish the truths that embarrassed the powerful earned him insults, barbs and at least one punch from an angry legislator. But it was not John Patrick's aggressive reporting that most distinguished him. Rather, it was his passion, optimism and idealism that defined the articles, the columns and the editorials John Patrick wrote for The Capital Times, and that ultimately inspired younger members of the paper's staff to follow his example.

John Patrick was an unlikely idealist. Born a year before this newspaper, he came of age as bloody labor battles were waged in the coal fields of his native West Virginia.He started job hunting during the Depression. He served in World War II, witnessing the horrors of Hiroshima firsthand. He arrived home as the dark clouds of McCarthyism were gathering. John Patrick could have given in to the cynicism and conformity of the 1950s. Instead, he retained all of the bright-eyed enthusiasm, determination and fearlessness of a cub reporter opening his first notepad.

Years before Edward R. Murrow condemned Joe McCarthy on television, John Patrick confronted the red-baiting senator face-to-face. When McCarthy turned his venom on his questioner, John Patrick wore the attacks as badges of honor. His courage inspired others to fight McCarthyism.

When he circulated a petition with lines from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and only one of 112 people he approached signed it, John Patrick provoked a debate about the damage McCarthy had done to freedom of speech that President Harry Truman would eventually join.

Over the next five decades, John Patrick's journalism challenged presidents and governors, confronted the cruelty of racism and the madness of nuclear proliferation, and introduced Wisconsinites to Gene McCarthy, George McGovern, Paul Soglin, Midge Miller, Paul Higginbotham, David Newby and Kathleen Falk. His body of work made him the state's most revered political journalist.

When a revered figure dies, as John Patrick did Wednesday at age 87, there is talk of what has been lost. Certainly, John Patrick's beloved wife Merry, the children he treasured, and his hundreds of friends have lost a cherished part of their lives. But there can be no sense of loss for The Capital Times.

After 50 years of John Patrick writing articles, editorials and columns, and guiding our editorial decisions as a reporter, an editor, and a very engaged retiree, his spirit is so much a part of this newspaper that it cannot be separated out. And it will not be lost. For so long as this newspaper comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, for so long as our commitment to peace, progressivism and the pursuit of difficult truths is retained, John Patrick Hunter will remain the still-beating heart of The Capital Times. Services were held in Madison Dec. 13.