Jim and Ann Faber to Morgans, spring 1954 -- "yours in poverty"

Soon after we left to live cheaply in Mexico for a year while Murray finished writing The Dam, KTAC radio terminated Murray and Jim Faber's news program. Murray and Jim had planned to share the job, six months on and six months off, to allow for travel and other writing opportunities. The Fabers were living in our house, and it must have been no fun at all to write the letter explaining their mutual unemployment. It salted the wound that they were replaced in their time slot by Burt McMurtrie, who had produced Bing Crosby's Woodbury Soap show in the 1930s before turning to political commentary in Tacoma. Jim and Murray considered Bing a better use of his talents. 

The firing was made less routine by suspicions that it was in retaliation for Murray and Jim's support for Tacoma's switch to a city manager form of government. That move in turn was part of the reaction against the city's infamously open town approach, with its accompanying gambling, prostitution, police payoff scandals, and unsavory stories galore. 

Then-state senator, later governor, Albert D. Rosellini chaired hearings on local corruption, held at the Tacoma Armory in the winter of 1951 and broadcast live just as widespread TV ownership was taking hold. Rosellini used the exposure to jump start his first, unsuccessful, run for governor in 1952 and his winning campaign in 1956. The hearings were a news bonanza for journalists like Jim and Murray, who enjoyed holding local officials' feet to the fire. Murray's friends also placed copies of Skid Road, published earlier that year, wherever a TV camera might be likely to linger. 

Rosa with her Rollei

Rosa also stirred things up. Dispatched to cover a press conference put on by one suspected open town enabler, she listened to him complain that he was being treated as though he had buried payoff money in his back yard. My mom was soft-spoken, pretty, and way tougher than she looked. I expect he was relieved to call on her among the sea of familiar newsroom faces: "Well where did you put the money?" she asked him. 

Sam Angeloff, another salty Tacoma reporter of the era (and father of Sam Angeloff Jr., "Young Sam" to us, who followed his dad to the Seattle P-I before becoming a foreign correspondent for Life and a founder of People Magazine) alerted a friend in the FBI about the firings, with suggestions that the FCC should hear about this. But the tempest soon died down, Murray found a spot at KMO radio when we got back to the U.S., and Jim had a varied career in journalism and public relations.

Ann Faber to Morgans -- 1954

Dear jobless Morgans:

Ann Faber

This is just to second everything my friend, former boy newscaster Jim Faber had to say.

aside from our stomachs, things seem to be settling down after last Wednesday's execution....i think you would have been proud of the tastefully done farewell song of faber and morgan....and interested to know that in jim's modest statement of the sterling virtues of the show, morgan received star billing.

the only halfway good news we've heard recently is that mcmurtrie has diabetes....which will make it extremely difficult for the medical profession to determine when he is in an insulin coma....

...

ann

(The sympathy sent
to Rosa was due to a recent miscarriage.)