Author profile: History buff sets sights on Gazette editor

While Iowa author and award-winning historian Jerry Harrington spends an awful lot of time writing about prohibition, he's no teetotaler.

'I like a beer,” he said, when asked for his drink of choice.

He also likes a good story. So when he first learned about Verne Marshall, a 1930s Gazette reporter responsible for breaking up an extensive network of illegal alcohol and gambling operations across the state, he knew he had to investigate.

But when Harrington looked up information on Marshall, he 'found nothing of substance.” So he dug through back issues of The Gazette, and traveled to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, which houses all of Marshall's private papers.

'I think I was one of the first people to look through them.”

What he discovered was something extraordinary. 'It's a fascinating story of what a reporter can do in order to impact public policy.”

'Verne Marshall was a tenacious reporter. He was an advocate.”

Harrington's book, 'Crusading Iowa Journalist Verne Marshall: Exposing Graft and the 1936 Pulitzer Prize,” tells the story of this remarkable reporter as well as a tumultuous time in Iowa's history. Marshall's dogged reporting resulted in multiple resignations across the state, nearly 50 indictments, and climaxed in the 1936 trial of Iowa's attorney general.

'The material Marshall uncovered, if you look at contemporary Iowa, is now all legal: we have legalized gambling, we have slot machines and casinos, we have alcohol available. But at the time these activities were illegal.”

'The people of Iowa had determined this was the law. To violate these laws, then, was to cast dispersions on all laws. It was, and is, the role of the media to investigate these items and call these lawbreakers out,” Harrington said.

Marshall's work resulted in The Cedar Rapids Gazette winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1936.

Harrington has long been interested in Iowa history. After years of writing articles for Iowa History Journal and History of Iowa Politics, Harrington, a 1977 Cornell College graduate who has a master's in history from the University of Iowa, was solicited by The History Press for a full length work.

'You look at history to understand who you are today - what happened in the past to bring about the present moment.”

'As Faulkner says: 'The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.” History bears down on us in the present moment.”

These lessons from the past, Harrington said, are still applicable and challenging today.

'If Verne Marshall had not moved ahead and investigated these criminal activities, nothing would have been done. It really shows the importance of a hard-nosed investigative reporter to take chances, to invest, and to uncover activities that are illegal.”

'We need an aggressive media now more than ever.”