Lynn Ludlow, award-winning journalist and S.F. State professor, dies at 91

San Francisco Chronicle​

10 hours ago

Longtime San Francisco journalist Lynn Ludlow loved newspapers. He loved writing for them, editing them, composing editorials for them, and making them better. And he loved showing generations of college journalism students how to do the same.
He was a historian of the Old West, a lover of opera, a basketball fanatic and a mandolin player. He was as good at plinking out a tune from his vintage Gibson mandolin as he was at coaxing eloquence from his vintage Royal typewriter.
And he loved telling stories about newspapers. He loved telling stories about anything. Most of the stories were long stories.
Ludlow died of cancer on July 28 in his Bernal Heights home, just days after playing old tunes with old friends in his backyard. He was 91.
Ludlow was born on Nov. 5, 1933, on a sugar beet farm in the Bitterroot Valley near Corvallis, Mont. His family moved in 1942 to San Francisco, where he grew up in North Beach, later moving to Mill Valley.
Among the many lessons he taught his five children was to pick up the bill whenever possible, never turn your back to the ocean, and never, ever cross a picket line.
'What a writer, storyteller, musician and human,' said former San Francisco Examiner reporter Carol Ness. 'He always gave a hand up to younger journalists, and he always had time for people.'
'He was an ink stainer to the very end, and a terrific wordsmith,' recalled former Examiner reporter Corrie Anders.
'Lynn was a truly great writer and a warm, fun guy,' said his friend and fellow Chronicle staff member Kevin Fagan, who began playing tunes with Ludlow in 1985. 'He's never been anything less than a gentleman and preeminently good human being.'
Most of Ludlow's journalism work was for the old Examiner, where he was a reporter and editor for four decades. As a general assignment reporter, he could be asked to cover anything — the shootings, ribbon cuttings, heists and fires that make up the grist of a daily paper. But he drew his share of big stories — Ludlow accompanied the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his historic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., covered the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley and the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and interviewed the Beatles before their final concert as a touring band, at Candlestick Park in 1966.
In 1989, he reported on the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake, writing the lead story during a power failure, using a borrowed headlamp so he could read his notes.
'The temblor struck at 5:04 p.m.,' Ludlow wrote, 'before the third game of the dream Bay Area World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's. With about 30 seconds of jolting, lurching and a kind of hopping motion, the dream dissolved into irrelevance.'
A pair of his investigations — a probe of shady real estate practices in the sale of near-worthless lots and a 1976 look at abuses by corporate Central Valley farms of legislation designed to help small farmers — led to changes in state law. Ludlow kept a framed copy of three bills passed by the Legislature, and signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan, that permanently ended boondocks lot-sales flimflams in California.
'To Lynn Ludlow, whose brilliant journalism made these laws a reality,' read an accompanying note signed by Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy.
His assignments took him far afield: to Saigon after the Tet Offensive, to Ireland following the death of Bobby Sands, to Mexico during an economic crisis, and to an ancient battlefield in the Jezreel Valley in the Middle East. The article began, 'Things are quiet here in Armageddon …'
As a beat reporter, rewrite man, investigative reporter, editorial writer and opinion editor, he won awards from the San Francisco Press Club, Scripps-Howard, the Associated Press, Consumer Action, the National Wildlife Federation and the American Political Science Association, among others.
His passion for the outdoors and for the workings of San Francisco infrastructure led to a memorable series where Ludlow and artist Don McCartney followed the path of a drop of water from above the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park down the Tuolumne River to an ordinary faucet in a San Francisco home. The reporting — which involved hiking, canoeing and helicoptering — examined the tangled history of Northern California water politics along with the grandeur of the droplet's path through the Sierra and the small towns and local lore along the way. He kept a jar of the Tuolumne River on his desk for the rest of his life.
After the 2000 merger of the Examiner with the San Francisco Chronicle, Ludlow joined the Chronicle, writing editorials and editing opinion pieces. To the issues of the day, he brought his characteristic insight and common sense, qualities often in short supply.
'Lives and careers were made better by this wonderful journalist and friend,' said former Examiner reporter and editor Stephen Cook. 'Young newsies at the Ex were blessed to have Lynn as a mentor and model.'
For decades, Ludlow taught writing and editing at San Francisco State University, where he had once edited the student paper as an undergrad. He brought the sensibility of a working reporter into the classroom, served as adviser to the Phoenix student newspaper and co-founded the regional press review Feed/back. He taught at Columbia University and Dominican University, and helped organize a minority intern program at the Examiner in the 1970s and '80s. He saw it as part of his duties to find jobs for promising students, many of whom became lifelong friends.
'I owe him a lot as a teacher, mentor and friend,' recalled ex-student Leonel Sanchez, a former reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune.
'People throw around words like 'beloved,' but Lynn really was beloved at San Francisco State,' said his friend of 60 years, Chronicle reporter and columnist Carl Nolte, who taught alongside Ludlow. 'Lynn loved his students, and they loved him. He was a super mentor. Besides being a terrific reporter, he had a social conscience.'
Even after he retired in 2003, Ludlow never stopped researching and writing. On his desktop are books written, books in progress and books planned. A small fraction of his work can be found on his Substack newsletter, True Yarns, Ltd.
Ludlow's interests were many and wide-ranging. In his youth, he was a long-distance runner, competing in the annual Dipsea Race, one year finishing in seventh place. He wielded both a pick as a ditchdigger at Mount Tamalpais State Park and a surrogate kithara in experimental composer Harry Partch's Gate 5 Ensemble.
He was fond of wordplay, arias in Italian, the annual San Francisco Carnaval parade, long days at Stinson Beach, and hiking on Mount Tam and Point Lobos. He enjoyed Mitchell's ice cream and almond torte from Dianda's Bakery in the Mission. He was a lifetime subscriber to the San Francisco Opera and a longtime member of the West Point Inn, and he never missed a Golden State Warriors game.
He admired historic murals, good puns and manual typewriters. He kept a collection of the latter on display in the Bernal Heights home he shared with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and a large white dog named Lucy. The family home also accommodated Ludlow's library of more than 3,000 books.
Ludlow was a founding member of the Flapjacks, a musical troupe of family and friends who played traditional songs that were older than he was. His daughter Kenny Ludlow and son-in-law Kevin Owens played guitar, his son Paul sang, and his wife Margo plunked along on an antique stand-up bass fiddle. Countless musician friends from all areas of his life were proud to call themselves Flapjacks. For decades, the Flapjacks were regulars beneath the evergreens at Camp Mather, the San Francisco family camp just outside Yosemite, leading lively sing-alongs that lasted right up to — and occasionally beyond — lights-out hour. Ludlow returned to Camp Mather nearly every summer since the mid-1960s with, at various times, his five children and six grandchildren.
He was an accomplished pianist who didn't read music but could play a song by ear after hearing it once. He sang with passion, played with precision, and had a fondness for songs about desperadoes, drunks and derelicts.
'Frankie and Johnnie were sweethearts,' Ludlow would belt out at any opportunity, before continuing with a dozen more verses in his deep baritone, interspersed with inspired mandolin solos. Other favorite tunes involved the labor movement, the Irish rebellion, and standards of bluegrass and folk. For years, he sang his children to sleep with a gruesome ditty about the Titanic disaster.
A big man with broad shoulders and a broad smile, Ludlow was not slowed by editors, college deans or more accomplished musicians. He was barely slowed by a devastating plunge as a child through a plate-glass store window, by two heart attacks (in 1991 and 1998), and by a stroke in 2007 that compromised his gait and his speech. Ludlow told the same stories and sang the same songs, more circumspectly.
His father, John, was an editor, schoolteacher and piano instructor, and his mother, Melda, was an editor and poet. Upon graduation from Tamalpais High School, family finances prevented him from accepting an offer of admission to Harvard University. He was an Army veteran, serving as a clerk at Fort Ord in Monterey County ('I hated every minute,' he often said). He was a reporter for the Champaign-Urbana Courier in Illinois, the Marin Independent Journal and the San Jose Mercury News before joining the Examiner in 1963, when John F. Kennedy was president and a San Francisco cable car ride cost a quarter.
It was at the Illinois paper that Ludlow conducted a singular interview with Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a personal hero to the young reporter. He recalled being so awestruck that he couldn't speak or even think. Posing a question was impossible, so she helped him out by asking her own questions and answering them while the tongue-tied Ludlow scribbled down her responses.
Ludlow admired the sound of a bouncing basketball as much as a ballad. He was an imposing forward with a sweeping and occasionally successful hook shot. His love of basketball led him to the love of his life, fellow journalist and pickup basketball aficionado Margo Freistadt. The couple had been married for 36 years.
Lynn and Margo loved to travel. In 2009, they loaded up their DIY camper van and took a three-month, 13,000-mile road trip, circling the country on a trip they called the Victory Lap. And for more than 20 years, he enjoyed camping at Anini Beach on Kauai. His beloved Gibson mandolin joined him on his journeys.
For many years, the mandolin accompanied him on his signature tune, 'Old Bones.'
'I love life, and I'd do it again,' Ludlow would sing, with joy and not a hint of pathos. 'Though I might not be much more than I've been. But to have the chance to turn back the time and let my life begin … Oh yeah, I'd do it again.'
Ludlow is survived by his wife, Margo; children, Chris Ludlow, Amy Grigsby, Llewellyn Ludlow, Kenny Ludlow and Paul Moran; grandchildren, Jenna, Lauren, Tucker, Cameron, Cade and Jackson; three great-grandchildren; brothers, Conrad and Roger Ludlow; a niece; and three nephews.
A memorial celebration is planned for 3 p.m. Aug. 23 at the Polish Club of San Francisco, 3040 22nd St.