St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 34

C8 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH METRO SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1 998 http: www.stlnet.com Eliot F. Porter retires after decades as Post writer, editor Managing Editor Evarts A. Graham got word that at a commission meeting in St. Louis, Porter had resigned.

Graham sent Porter a four-word message: "Give me a bat as a machine-gunner. In March 1953, a Chinese grenade earned Porter a Purple Heart and cost him a good deal of his hearing a loss that would later come in handy when dealing with unpleasant editors, whom he could choose to ignore. Porter got his Harvard degree in 1957 and went straight into journalism, at the Woonsocket (R.I.) Call. After a year there, he moved to the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald," covering local and state government. In 1964, he recalled, "I papered the country with resumes, and the Post-Dispatch bit.

The Post-Dispatch was a real beacon in those days, and I was proud and flattered to get a job offer." After a stint as a labor reporter, he became the first director and the first employee of the Missouri Air Conservation Commission, a post he held from 1966-69. Porter said the job had taught him a crucial lesson about government: "The biggest controlling force isn't corruption, money or sex. It's inertia. The reasons things happen is that they don't happen." One day in the fall of 1969, then- "We had lunch with somebody from the medical examiner's office who had the files," Porter said. "Claudia distracted him with dimples while I rifled through his papers." Porter's classical education and wide reading gave his own prose an erudite touch rare in newspapers.

He could write quickly and effortlessly in any number of styles, such as King James and Shakespeare. In the summer of 1983, a hapless city editor assigned Porter to cover the grand opening of the rebuilt Vandeventer Overpass. Porter, irked at the assignment, handed in a piece written entirely and flawlessly in the style of gossip columnist Jerry Berger, then of the Globe-Democrat. (Sample: "Laclede Gas topper Lee M. Liberman showed up in tastefully subdued pilot-light Among editors, Porter had a reputation as a contrarian and a difficult subordinate a reputation he reveled in.

Porter often chastened editors, using as weapons a tart wit and a limitless collection of appropriate literary and historical quo tations. After seeing Porter's cruel delight in outwitting bureaucratically minded editors, columnist McClel-lan began writing about Porter, not by name, but as "the meanest man in town." Still, as Porter reflected on the changes in journalism over the past four decades, he turned serious. "Journalism had its faults in the '50s," he said. "But the efforts to remedy them have brought about a whole new set of faults." He cited what he called a decline in seriousness of purpose. At the time his career began, he said, "newspapers like The New York Times and the Post-Dispatch took their responsibility very seriously." And now? "That has eroded.

In a desperate attempt to reclaim circulation, we're flailing about." Porter has four children and four grandchildren. He shares his house in University City with a son, two dogs and a flock of 12 uncaged parakeets. As a younger man, he enjoyed biking and canoeing; these days, his main pastime is reading from his personal library. 'Meanest man in town' laments industry's changes By Harry Levins Post-Dispatch Senior Writer Eliot F. Porter long a journalist, briefly a bureaucrat and the inspiration for Bill McClellan's "meanest man in town" columns is retiring from the Post-Dispatch.

Although Porter's official date of retirement will be April 1, his last day on the job was Friday. Porter, 67, came to the Post-Dispatch in 1964. Except for three years in a government post in Jefferson City, he stayed at the paper for the rest of his career, as a writer and editor. He was born in Boston, the son of the well-known nature photographer Eliot Porter. The young Porter entered Harvard but dropped out during the Korean War to join the Army.

The Army trained him as a parachute infantryman and shipped him to Korea, where he saw com Porter call." By day's end, Porter was reborn as a journalist. He ranged among jobs, reporting on everything from the environment to local government, editing the arts pages, writing features, serving as architecture critic and, in recent years, editing wire copy. In Porter's words, "Journalism is the only place where you can get paid, albeit not well, for being a dilettante." His favorite newspaper memory involves a team effort in the 1970s with reporter Claudia MacLachlan (now with the National Law Journal) to affix blame in the case of an abused child who slipped through all the safety nets. Porter pinned down who had erred, and why. Southwest Airlines Sets You Free With Fares $99 Or Less Review Classical Music Mahler's 6th is brought to life by guest conductor By Philip kennicott Post-Dispatch Classical Music Critic Death isn't just the scariest thing in life; it's the funniest, too.

We struggle for love and meaning, strive for perfection, and grow intimate with the world only to see it slip away loved one by loved one. And then what? The ride ends where it began, in oblivion. And yet we get up in the morning. It's a hoot, isn't it? Mahler's Symphony No. 6, performed by the St.

Louis Symphony on Friday, is a study in morbidity and its alternatives. Like so much of Mahler's music, it is woven from relentless march themes, ecstatic pastorals and grotesque parodies of social music. If it opens and closes with baleful suggestions of our ultimate fate, it detours into the three best escapes any of us has: a walk in the country, the glitter of superficial social life and, when all else fails, black humor. Franz Welser-Moest, the only guest conductor of stature to lead the Symphony this season, led a riveting performance that was long on morbidity, and somewhat short on the alternatives. Welser-Moest is a young man, however, and young men tend to be gloomier than old ones.

Welser-Moest's tempo in the opening movement was almost brisk and decidedly determined, its pounding rhythm suggesting not so much a march as an obsession closing in on one's sanity. The march motif recurs throughout the movement, and Welser-Moest wasn't hesitant to underscore it. Episodes of humor (the bizarre, tin-pan alley variation on the theme's usual cadence), and contemplation (episodes with celesta, for instance) were kept rigid, as if to suggest that time ravages, no matter what the mood or place. The collage of absurdities in the Trio of the second movement was also heavily done. The choc-a-bloc collection of frustrating ditties and strange effects was mined more for its irruptive illogic; but there is Dada here as well, which other conductors more successfully balance with the movement's darker bookends.

Unlike Mahler's other symphonies, the sixth ends tragically, without redemption. The inexorable progress to the final hammer blows begins in the third movement, which opens with the world twinkling and ends ultimately in tragic realization, as if discovering during an innocent amble through a cow pasture that a great love must always be unrequited. Welser-Moest made it heartbreaking and somehow the core of a symphony easily overwhelmed by its outer movements. The finale, a full symphony's length in itself, was equally devastating, its climaxes carefully prepared but passionately realized. Welser-Moest's Mahler offered a satisfying contrast to Mahler performances by music director Hans Vonk earlier in the year.

Welser-Moest is not so subtle with the orchestral palette; textures can be muddying and unrefined. He is also more likely to realize the extremes of a double forte or accelerando than is Vonk. But he has a spontaneity and abandon on the podium that contrasts sharply with Vonk's perfectionism. Both are valid and compelling. Nonetheless it was a pleasant change of pace to see a conductor sweat a little.

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