The Colonel Carries On

High up in Chicago's Tribune Tower, the door to Colonel Robert R. McCormick's sanctum flew open. Out strode the colonel's niece, 30-year-old Ruth McCormick Miller, editor of his Washington Times-Herald. Mad as a wet hen, she took the elevator to the lobby, hustled off to her suite in the Ambassador East Hotel. There Newshen "Bazy" confirmed a fast-spreading rumor: she had just had a "heated showdown--not loud but emphatic"--with Bertie McCormick. Furthermore, she was all washed up as boss of the Times-Herald.

Only 19 months before, the colonel had proudly installed Bazy in her new job, underscoring the fact that she was the heir apparent to the McCormick publishing empire. "Tradition is an important thing . . ." Bertie said on his 65th birthday in 1947. "When, 15 or 20 years from now, I am no longer here, Ruth Elizabeth--Bazy --will be carrying on . . ."

Complex Explanations. Last week the colonel flew to Washington in his flag-emblazoned plane (a converted B17) to carry on for himself. "Now I'm 70," he told a hurriedly convoked meeting of T-H staffers, "and I wanted to send someone else down here from Chicago, but they told me I was the only one who could handle the job." He would handle it from Tribune Tower, he said, commuting back & forth to Washington. His on-the-spot deputies would be T-H Executive Editor Frank Waldrop and Business Manager Willard Shelton, both veterans of the late Cissy Patterson's regime.

Bazy's explanation of her walkout was simple: "I understood when I went to the Times-Herald I was to have full control. That control was not given me ... There is some difference in our political beliefs. I have broader Republican views than he has. I am for the same people as the colonel, but I am for some more people."

But Washington had more complex explanations. McCormick was apparently fed up with Bazy's autocratic way of running his newspaper. During her reign, nearly a dozen loyal, valuable T-H veterans had quit in disgust ("No matter what you may think of Colonel McCormick's policies," said one of them, "he is a wonderful boss. People just don't leave the Chicago Tribune . . ."). The T-H had fallen behind rivals in circulation and advertising increases.

Complex Denial. The paper had also been smudged with bad publicity. Early last month. Columnist Drew Pearson charged, in a $3,100,000 damage suit, that the Times-Herald was in league with Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy and others to ruin him (TIME, March 12). Then a congressional investigating committee called Bazy, Assistant Managing Editor Garvin Tankersley, and other T-H staffers to Capitol Hill to explain why they published a composite picture showing Maryland's Senator Millard Tydings and Communist Earl Browder together (TIME, March 26).

Colonel McCormick was also displeased last January when Bazy divorced her husband, Maxwell Peter Miller (who got her profitable La Salle, 111. News Tribune and a radio station as part of the settlement). Shortly afterward, all-knowing Bertie whisked handsome Garvin Tankersley to Chicago to work in the Trib's Sunday section. Last week when Bazy quit, Tankersley was summoned "upstairs" at the Trib, then left "on extended vacation." Asked if she was planning to remarry, Bazy replied: "No--not Mr. Tankersley or Joe McCarthy or any of a half dozen other men whose names have been mentioned with mine in the gossip columns."

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