News Summary

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — When her mother, Dorothy, called her in April 1982 saying someone from a magazine was coming over to talk with her about her NAACP work, Edna Bacon was suspicious.

"You know how people rip off old folks," she said.

So Edna, now 60, was sitting with her arms folded on her parents' front porch when Vern Smith arrived.

"He flipped out his card that said Newsweek, and I was dumbfounded," Bacon said.

"They came every week from April through Christmas," she recalled.

"Wally (McNamee), the photographer, actually spent Christmas Day with us over in Columbus. He had gifts for everybody."

"It was an interesting venture."

Bacon's parents have since passed away, her mother in 1984; her father, Jerry, in 1992.

But their lives are well documented in the Newsweek account.

After the edition came out, Bacon spoke about it with interviewer Larry King, who had one of the Newsweek staff on his show. She appeared on the show because her mother didn't want to.

"Here I wanted to write our family history," Bacon told King, "and someone has done it for me."

And she was there for the creation of the story.

"I'd sit and listen to the interviews," she said, "and I'd learn things I never heard before."

Bacon, who worked in the Springfield City Schools, also celebrated the publishing at the gala party held at what was then Clark State Technical College.

Although the invitations said children were not welcome, she dressed up her three boys in tuxedos and took them anyway.

"They were the only ones in tuxedos," she said.

When then 3-year-old Myles did a sweeping bow before Katherine Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Co., which owned Newsweek, she was charmed.

"She got down on her knees to talk to him," Bacon said.

The Associated Press got photos of it. Graham also sent a donation in Dorothy Bacon's name upon her death.

Always a political being, Edna Bacon said her mother would have been proud that Edna's brother, James, served as president of the board of education of the Springfield City Schools and "would have loved Barack Obama." Bacon sees Obama as a breath of fresh air after a generation of national black leadership she sees as having been a disappointment.

"That's why so many people are so complacent," she said.

In earlier days, "even though we had segregation and everything, we had a strong community in Springfield. We looked out for each other and we genuinely loved each other."