Longtime Gazette editor Fleming dies

Ann Scholl Rinehart was an intern in The Gazette newsroom in the mid-1980s when Phyllis Fleming had an embarrassing question for her.

“Phyllis never yelled, but she had this commanding voice that carried,” said Rinehart, a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Bertram. “One day, from her desk in the newsroom, she asked, ‘Ann, how do you spell cemetery?' I responded that I must not know since she was asking me. She answered, ‘It's all e's, no a's.'

“I've not misspelled it since.”

The exchange exemplifies Fleming's style during her 45 years in various newsroom editing positions at The Gazette. Direct. Matter of fact. Always easy to hear.

Fleming, who retired in December 2002 as the newspaper's deputy managing editor, faced her death from duodenal cancer in much the same way.

"What can you do?” she said earlier this month. “I've never been real emotional. I see no need to start now.”

Fleming, 75, died last night at St. Luke's Hospital. Services are pending at Cedar Memorial.

Those who worked with Fleming recalled her integrity, professionalism and insistence on putting the reader first.

This is a huge personal loss, but Phyllis' impact on The Gazette will continue to be felt for a long time because of the high bar she set for the standards she expected for any story, whether it be a small brief or a larger, in-depth piece,” Gazette Editor Lyle Muller said. “Her concern always was whether readers were satisfied with all the information they sought and in a clear manner that could be understood.”

Fleming graduated from the University of Iowa School of Journalism in 1956, where she worked for the Daily Iowan. She had been a member of the DI's board of directors for the past 22 years.

“We were all very lucky to have known a woman of such great integrity,” Daily Iowan publisher Bill Casey said. “Her wisdom and common sense will be missed and impossible to replace. We will miss her.”

Fleming, whose father was a teacher, worked her way through the UI, first as a secretary to a priest and then as a hall monitor at Currier Hall.

She worked one year at the Billings (Mont.) Gazette before returning to Iowa as an assistant state editor at The Gazette on Sept. 2, 1957.

“I remember thinking, a couple of years into reporting, that, ‘Gosh, this is fun,' ” she said. “I found that I liked editing better, though, because I had a chance to make something OK better.”

The UI journalism faculty earlier this year voted Fleming into the school's Hall of Fame. The award, presented to her Jan. 27 at a Cedar Rapids care center, surprised her.

“I'd certainly done a lot of work, but not a lot of it won prizes,” she said.

David Perlmutter, director of the UI School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said Fleming was an inspiration, friend and benefactor of the school for almost half a century.

"She always encouraged us to move forward and helped us to overcome challenges, tutoring us and our students in the best professional practices and ethics,” he said.

When Fleming was working for The Gazette, she did not join organizations, fearing potential conflicts of interest. An exception came in 1971 when, as a charter member of the Friends of the Cedar Rapids Public Library, she helped organize the first community book sale fundraiser. After she retired, she volunteered for a number of organizations and was named to the library's board of trustees in September 2007.

Phyllis was such a gem,” said Susan Corrigan, former president of the library board.

After the June 2008 flood that devastated the library, “Phyllis spent countless hours and personal energy” in helping the library reopen in Westdale Mall and in staffing the library's booth at downtown farmers markets, Corrigan said.

“She was a model of integrity and selflessness,” Corrigan said. “She was a source of strength for me. ... She proved that optimism and hope can run congruently with wisdom and pragmatism.”

- By Mary Sharp, Special to The Gazette