Bexley native and author Jane Wolfe pens book about former coworker's life, career

Journalist Jane Wolfe grew up in Bexley as part of the family that for years owned The Dispatch. When she finished college at Denison University in Granville in 1981, she moved to Dallas and got a job as a reporter at the Dallas Morning News, where she later worked as society editor.

The editor at the Morning News at the time was Burl Osborne, who had just started there in 1980. He had worked for the Associated Press for many years, including a stint in Columbus as head of the Ohio bureau of the AP from 1972-74. He would go on to become editor and publisher of the Morning News before retiring in 2001.

Osborne is notable not only as a journalist but also as one of the first recipients of a kidney transplant.

Wolfe's latest book, “Burl: Journalism Giant and Medical Trailblazer,” which will be released Tuesday, chronicles Osborne's life and medical journey.

Wolfe, 65, has authored two other Texas-based works of nonfiction, “The Murchisons: The Rise and Fall of a Texas Dynasty” and “Blood Rich: When Oil Billions, High Fashion, and Royal Intimacies Are Not Enough.”

After decades in Dallas, Wolfe returned to Bexley in 2019.

Q: How did you get interested in Burl as a subject for a biography?

Wolfe: I had written two other books about Texans. A (few) years after he died (in 2012), his widow, Betty called me, and said, "Would you be interested in writing a book about Burl?" I thought about it for about three seconds and said yes.

At that time, terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts” were floating around, and the press was being called the enemy of the people. I thought how nice it would be for people to read a book about someone who had a great deal of integrity and insisted that his reporters always be fair and accurate.

Then also, Burl gave me my first job. I grew up at The Dispatch. My family owned the paper. In the summertime, from the time I was about 13, I worked in the morgue (library) at The Dispatch and then at the city desk. But I didn't want to work at The Dispatch after I graduated from college, because I thought I wouldn't get the essence of what it was to be a reporter. ... When I got to Dallas, it was right at the beginning of the newspaper war between the Times Herald and the Morning News. It was a really exciting time. And I knew that would make a good story.

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Q: Do you think Burl's health struggles shaped who he was as a person?

Wolfe: Yes. At the age of 12, he learned that he had acute kidney disease, and it was only going to get worse and there was nothing to be done about it. The doctor he saw about it said you're likely to go blind at any minute, and you won't live beyond your teenage years. I think that gave him a lot of drive, and he was determined to live, and to take risks. Then when he got interested in newspapers, that drive continued. He knew that any day could be his last. To him, what was really fun to do was to go write a story or report a story.

Q: How do you think his career in journalism reflected the change in journalism over the time period that he was active in it?

Wolfe: He was always looking toward the future. I think he thought that newspapers would disappear sooner rather than later. When he was first shown what you could do with the internet, he was pretty ho-hum about it. But later, when he learned that he could post a story any time of day or night, and that you didn't have to wait until the next edition, he got very excited about it. He understood that the online edition was going to get bigger and bigger, and the print edition smaller and smaller.

(Photo: Dallas Morning News)

Q: How do you think growing up in a newspaper family helped you in telling Burl's story?

Wolfe: I loved growing up in a newspaper family. My father (William C. Wolfe, who was vice president of The Dispatch Printing Company when he died in 1973) would sometimes take me down to The Dispatch on a Saturday or Sunday if he had to pick something up. I would hear the big rolling presses, and it was loud, and there was the smell of newsprint. The reporters were still running around the newsroom in those days. I just loved it. I think Burl felt the same way.

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Q: What’s next for you as a writing project?

Wolfe: There is a book I'm working on. Growing up here, I had never heard of Jerrie Mock. (Ohioan Mock was the first woman to fly solo around the world.) I saw a statue of her at the airport and started asking around about her. There was a children's book written about her, and she wrote her own book around 1970. It was kind of a flight log. I decided that that's my next book, a biography of Jerrie Mock.

margaretquamme@hotmail.com

At a glance

Jane Wolfe will appear in conversation with journalist and author Andrew Welsh-Huggins at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Gramercy Books, 2424 E. Main St., Bexley. Tickets cost $5, which is waived for those who buy a copy of “Burl” ($37). The event includes a question-and-answer period and book signing. (614-867-5515, www.gramercybooksbexley.com)

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Author Jane Wolfe to talk about latest book at Gramercy event