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Time Machine: Sully & Coe do Europe
Ken Sullivan accompanies college musicians on trip
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Longtime Gazette political writer Ken Sullivan, who died July 31, was The Gazette’s chief political writer from 1980 to 2000, when he retired. But he joined the paper as a reporter in September 1963, advancing up the editing ranks, with one monthlong detour to Europe before he started covering politics.
The detour began June 15, 1970, when Sullivan was assistant city editor and was assigned to accompany the Coe College Concert Band and Choir on a concert-study tour of six European countries. The tour began with a bus ride to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for a DC-8 charter flight to Frankfurt, Germany.
The tour had an inauspicious start, with a four-hour delay getting off the ground. After landing in Frankfurt, the Coe band and choir – and Sullivan – boarded two buses to Wiesbaden, 18 miles away. An additional bus carried their equipment. And another bus collected the 44 Coe alumni who’d flown with the students but who were taking their own tour of Europe.
“As the buses rolled along the autobahn toward Wiesbaden, the heavy stream of traffic, both going in the same direction as the buses and coming toward it in twin parallel lanes, could have been lifted from a section of Interstate 380,” Sullivan reported.
He said the countryside was similar to Iowa’s, with one big difference. Instead of corn, the fields were filled with grape vines, “which will go into the widely known Rhine wines.”
Tour begins
The first Coe performance was Tuesday night, June 16, in Nassau, a town of about 6,000 about 30 miles from Wiesbaden. After a reception and dinner, the musicians performed before an enthusiastic audience of about 330.
The Coe groups stayed in Nuremberg through June 18, which was a free day. They decided to tour the city’s Altstadt (old walled city), a short walk from the Hotel Merkur where the 110-member group lodged for two nights. Some visited an imperial castle, while others toured St. James church and a German national museum.
They were in Salzburg on June 19.
“A disappointingly small audience appeared for the joint band-choir concert in the Mozarteum (Salzburg’s magnificently appointed music hall) Friday night, June 19. Less than two dozen persons appeared,” Sullivan reported. The lack of audience was blamed on a lack of publicity. Nevertheless, the concert was not abbreviated in any way. In fact, the group’s 17-member jazz group performed after the choir and band had completed their performances.
They were off to Vienna for the weekend, June 20 and 21.
Behind the Iron Curtain
On June 22, the musicians’ second week in Europe began behind the Iron Curtain, with a picnic lunch alongside a field of sunflowers. The student musicians arrived at the Grand Royal Hotel in the heart of Budapest by afternoon.
Sullivan wrote that he would be mailing stories and film to The Gazette while he was in Budapest. Looking for a cab after accomplishing his mission, he was directed to walk a few blocks and board a bus. The language barrier threatened his success at getting back to his group, but the little German he had picked up the previous week helped get him back to his party.
The Coe travelers headed for Zagreb, Yugoslavia, on June 28, performing for two hours in a 600-seat auditorium a few blocks from the city’s open-air market.
On Tuesday, June 30, the Coe party left Zagreb for a daylong bus ride to Venice, Italy. “Shortly after the day’s ride began, some excitement was noted among passengers when small patches of snow were noted alongside the roadside … on the last day of June,” Sullivan reported.
The touring musicians were delighted by Venice’s shops, including an A&W hamburger stand. The Venice Hotel Plaza also provided a place for the students to reunite with the 44 Coe alumni who’d flown to Europe with them.
Traveling from Cortina, Italy, to Innsbruck, Austria, on July 2, the lead bus had a close encounter with a speeding motor scooter on a curvy mountain road. No one was injured, but the American passengers were treated to an unintelligible tirade in German.
The final concert of the tour was July 10 in Karlsruhe, West Germany.
The performers boarded a return flight to Chicago O’Hare on July 13.
Tour mechanics
“It’s no easy matter to move a group of musicians across a continent 4,000 miles from home, in and out of hotels, restaurants, concert halls and tourist attractions,” Sullivan reported. “Someone has to be in charge of the personnel and ordinance aspects of the operation.
“Coe’s band director, Thomas Slattery, and choir director, Allan Kellar, are responsible for direction of musical productions, and Coe Vice President Jack Laugen is kept busy seeing to the smooth function of the tour mechanics.”
Sullivan’s tour of duty
Four years after his European excursion, Sullivan was named The Gazette’s state editor in 1974. He became editor of the Lifestyle section in 1977 and, a year later, he was named to the newly-created post of political reporter. He was promoted to senior editor in July 1988.
Sullivan wasn’t done with world travel. Among other trips, he spent time on the Ocean Endeavor, a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, in 1988. He spent eight days in Mongolia in August 1992 in a journalism exchange program. He took his readers with him and his wife, Aggie, on a vacation in France in February 1999, before he headed to Kazakhstan in July.
He retired in 2000, but like a lot of journalists, he kept writing as a freelancer, contributing to such projects as the 2001 “Home Front: World War II in Iowa” series that commemorated the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He also provided readers with his own memories of Gerald Ford when the 38th president of the United States died in 2006.
As Sullivan said in his farewell column, “What a way to earn a living.”
He will be missed.
Comments: D.fannonlangton@gmail.com
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