ONE YEAR AGO today he departed the world, my friend and ex-newspaper colleague, Kerry Kohring. Here’s a story about how Kerry and I struck a blow for the First Amendment in a long, godawful labor dispute in which we played the part of the good guys. Hey, I’m the one telling this story, aren’t I?
Picture yourself, if you will, in the newspaper business…
Kerry and I worked under the old regime at the Providence Journal. He’d been on board a dozen years by the time I was offered a seat in the bilge-rat section in 1986.
One day all of a sudden it’s new owners cracking the whip, sort of a League of Fortunate Sons based in Dallas, Texas. A society of graying frat boys whose birthright it was to skate through life on astonishingly little talent, raised to inherit crazy-rich dad’s old job, bounced on Uncle Dealey’s knee, Dealey of Dealey Plaza fame, you get the picture.
Well, the new poobahs come to Providence meaning to break the Providence Newspaper Guild. We’re to start doing things Dallas-style, a just-shut-up-and-take-what-we-dish type of deal.
Not a lot of big changes at first… new seating assignments, mostly.
Then we notice we seem to be working for a poor paper all of a sudden. Truckloads of money looted from Providence are in-bound for Dallas, there to prop up the ancestral enterprise, a big-city paper that, even back in the heyday, was noted nationally for just how unnoteworthy it was.
Somehow we manage to buy a share of voting stock in the company we work for, despite that said shares are tightly guarded to protect them against the likes of us.
That one lousy share entitles us to speak at the annual stockholders meeting in Dallas.
The guy we send to speak for all 400 of us?—Kerry Kohring!
Kerry was just the man to beard the lion in his den. To stand up in a hostile room, keep his cool, stick to the facts, and be heard.
And, who knows? Maybe even change a few minds.
One day Kerry and I volunteer to take a ride up to Boston, to a conference at a swank hotel on the Commons. Our publisher will be there to hobnob with his fellow media titans and accept the fruits of our labors, the New England Newspaper of the Year Award.
We were getting stonewalled, hadn’t had a contract in years, couldn’t even get a hearing before the NLRB because it was stocked with political appointees friendly to the big boys, so… we do what we can. Kerry and I are in Boston to hand out Guild leaflets to the conference goers as they enter the hotel. Our newspaper wasn’t covering the labor dispute, so at every opportunity we all spread the word one-on-one with a good old New England Hear ye, hear ye.
As you may imagine, there were not a whole lot of executive hands reaching out to take our point-by-point account of the many unilateral and unlawful measures the reverse carpetbaggers had imposed. Years later we were proven right, finally got our case heard. Even a hostile board interpreted the law to say we were right on 17 of 19 counts, something like that. There are ex-Guild people here at the Nickels, someone will remember the actual numbers.
Hotel security, ever on the ball, spots Kerry and me for riff-raff. The bruisers try to move us along. We know the law, know our rights, we’re standing in the public right of way, nobody’s going anywhere.
Well, our publisher arrives. We try to speak with him. We’re polite, respectful, but we’re embarrassing him in front of his corporate peers. He brushes by, refusing even to look at us.
Hours go by and we’ve been on the sidewalk so long we start to look like the furniture. Security is lulled into complacency. Kerry and I take advantage by slipping into the hotel real stealthy-like. Then it’s into the elevator and up to the floor where the conference is going on.
We find the big room empty. The muckety-mucks are on break, or at lunch, or in the bar chatting about how they’re winning the fight for greater income inequality or whatever.
So Kerry and I monkeywrench that swell soiree. We stick a thumb in the oppressor’s eye by leafleting every seat in the place.
Then it’s back in the elevator, down to the lobby, we slip out of the hotel and reclaim our former places on the sidewalk.
About a half hour later, red-faced security no-necks with blown gaskets are out on the sidewalk with us, in an attitude something like this…
Their shorts are in a twist because they got yelled at, now they have demerits in their permanent files and etcetera etcetera and wahh wahh.
Sorry, men, you got lazy, we improvised. Nothing personal.
Kerry, ever the gentleman, was so well-spoken, right at home in a confrontation. And that million-dollar baritone! One of his many gifts.
An Army veteran, trained as a medic, Kerry had that kind of cool. Fazed by nothing. Intimidated by no one.
I like this snapshot of Kerry in his Guild denim. That’s our Guild logo above the pocket.
The man’s got a park named after him. I think this pic was taken on the day they dedicated it. Here’s my friend’s obit if you want to know more.
I’ll exit here and say there you have it, the extraordinary Kerry Kohring. A well-loved man in his community. One who touched lives for the better everywhere he went.
I admired him in every way and was proud to be his fellow riff-raff.
Tony DePaul, December 3, 2018, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Always love a fighter for worker’s rights.
What courage and presence, wished I had know Kerry. So often the fight is unnoticed and the hard fought wins are the target for the next negotiation. Love it when the people who do the work prevail. Kerry’s leadership is palpable! j
Thanks, Jody. The paper could really use Kerry’s spirit and drive now. Very tough sledding from what I hear, from friends still fighting the good fight.
The paper’s owned by a hedge fund now. They make those Dallas robber barons look good.
You said: “A society of graying frat boys whose birthright it was to skate through life on astonishingly little talent, raised to inherit crazy-rich dad’s old job, bounced on Uncle Dealey’s knee…”
My 27 YO son recently gave me a saying he picked up somewhere and used to describe one of his colleagues. “He was born on third base but thinks he hit a home run.”
I thought it was a really great snark. Might apply to your old frat boys.
Ha! I like that! Privilege and underachievement. A brilliant twist on the usual formulation.
Great story! Keep blogging!
John Hill here, and I was on the Providence Newspaper Guild board with Kerry for more than a decade. We called him our Secretary of State; if there was meeting of New England Guild locals, a national convention or, as Tony describes, a visit to the Halls of the Great and Powerful, Kerry was our guy.
He’d show up in his sunglasses and that trench coat, looking like some suave spy chief. No matter where he was, he was always the calmest voice and clearest mind in rooms often in dire need of both.
When we concocted that shareholder visit in Dallas there were more than a few people at the table who would have rather not gone. It took some courage, and Kerry not only volunteered, but was happy about it.
But it isn’t just the big battles that win you good contracts. Kerry was also there at the membership meetings to take attendance and count ballots, at the 7 a.m. coffee-and-donut handouts outside the Journal (lots of times after having finished his shift around 2 a.m. the same morning) and he was often the only one of us who showed up and picket outside the Verizon store in Smithfield in support our Communications Workers of America brethren in their contract fight.
Doing something good, big or small, what was he was about. He never thought to take a bow or wait for applause. And I know of no one who deserved them more.