Chuck Conconi – Legendary Journalist and Theatre Critic

Our Town with host Andy Ockershausen - Homegrown History

Chuck Conconi on how his Playgirl Magazine article about Sally Quinn landed him a gig at The Washington Post - "I wrote a piece for Playgirl Magazine and in it I basically said ... When The Washington Post proud profaned Sally Quinn died each morning on the ABC television news, it was seen in Washington . . .that God and divine retribution did indeed exist. Ironically, she liked it so I had had lunch with her and, all of a sudden, I get a call from The Post." Chuck Conconi, Legendary Our Town Journalist and Theatre Critic A Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen and this is Our Town and we're talking with and going to talk with a very, very good friend of many years and a legend in journalism in Washington, D.C., Mr. Chuck Conconi. Thank you for being with us, Chuck. Chuck Conconi: Andy, thank you. I hate for you to say many, many years. I always worry about being known as a legend because legends are great stories but not often true. A Ockershausen: So many people know the name Conconi and know you but they don't know and I did not know until we started talking here today where you were born and where you went to school and this was a surprise to me. I always thought you were a native. Chuck Conconi's Italian Immigrant Parents and Ohio Coal Mines Chuck Conconi: No, I'm not a native. I grew up in a town called New Philadelphia, Ohio. My parents were ... Mother and father only had eighth grade educations. They were an immigrant Italian kind of family and I ... They all worked in the coal mines. Every male in my family, my father, my uncles, they all worked in the coal mines because when they first brought the first immigrants over from Italy, they advertised there's jobs in America when they got here. It was the coal mines and so they spent their time in the mines. I was the first, I think, male in my family to escape the mines. A Ockershausen: The coal mines in Ohio or Pennsylvania? Chuck Conconi: Oh yes, no, no, coal mines in Ohio. Around this area around New Philadelphia, Ohio. It was sort of in Northeastern Ohio but it's big coal country. Sometimes the ceilings are low, I mean some of them, what I'm saying is the roof is only like four foot so you're working bent over all the time and they worked in the ... In the old days when they carried these carbide lamps with flames in them and you always think about, God, how awful that was because you have methane that goes in the mines and boom! My father once told me, he said, "You don't know what darkness is like until something happens and it all goes. You lose all sense of up or down or sideways." A Ockershausen: Oh my God. From Business to Journalism at Kent State University Chuck Conconi: So luckily I was the first in my family to go to college. I went to Kent State University in Ohio because ... A Ockershausen: A wonderful school. Chuck Conconi: Yeah it's a wonderful school and I had no ... A Ockershausen: Is that a state school? Chuck Conconi: It's a state school. I almost flunked out. I was just an abysmal student. I didn't know what I was doing and finally ... You're going to find this hard to believe. I thought the only thing you could be is an engineer or a businessman, believe it or not, and I knew I couldn't be an engineer because my math skills were abysmal. So I thought I'll try to be a businessman. I kept flunking economics and all those courses and finally, I mean desperation, I have been in my third quarter on academic probation, my last and out the door, and I pick up the school catalog and I'm paging through it and I stumble onto something, School of Journalism. I thought I didn't know you could major in something called journalism. Believe it or not, I didn't. So I went over and the guy took a chance on me and everything clicked, changed everything in my life and I became a Dean's List student and then I went out to Northwestern Graduate School and my first working experience was in Chicago.