Font ResizeWhen asked what makes her father, Robert C. Maynard, a hero, Dori J. Maynard said, "I don't think he is a hero."
When people are called heroes, she said, it's an example of the impossible, of something that is out of reach.
Her father was an example of the possible, the achievable, of being "the best you can be."
The son of immigrants from Barbados, Maynard came to York in 1961 from his native Brooklyn to join The York Gazette and Daily as a police reporter. He had dropped out of high school at age 16 to write in Greenwich Village in the 1950s.
Maynard's family followed a strict, fundamentalist religious sect. As a teen-ager Maynard ran away from home to the Village because of its openness to debate on religion, culture and race.
While he never earned a college degree, he said, "My credentials will be my work."
In 1965, he was named as a Nieman fellow at Harvard (an honor that his daughter received in 1992) and in 1967 was wooed to The Washington Post by Ben Bradlee, who is now the vice president at large of the newspaper. There he covered civil rights and the White House and eventually became the paper's ombudsman.
He and his wife Nancy made history in 1983, when they purchased The Oakland Tribune in a leveraged buyout, making him the first black person to own a general-circulation
Not only did he rescue the paper from economic oblivion, but it also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The Oakland Tribune was sold in 1992.
Maynard was co-founder of the Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, and it was renamed in his honor after his death in 1993.
Although he covered York for only six years, Maynard never forgot the city. "As you can see," he wrote in one of his nationally syndicated columns, "the old local joke goes, give or take a few miles and York, Pa., might have been one heck of a town. Right off, I'll admit my prejudice. I happen to think it is one heck of a town without being any closer than it is to some of its famous neighbors."
What is Maynard best known for?
"He was a journalist's journalist," said Dori Maynard. "He trained himself to be the best in his field. And he showed that being self-taught can be better than a university education."
Who or what was his inspiration?
Walter Lippman, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, Langston Hughes, John Steinbeck, Dorothy Parker and Zora Neale Thurston were some of his inspirations, Dori Maynard said.
How did Maynard influence the York County community?
"I think he gave them the tools as best he could so they could govern themselves," said Dori, who spent part of her childhood with her father in York. "He gave them the best information so people could determine what's going on in their community."
What should York County residents know about Maynard?
"That he loved York," Dori said. "It had a profound effect on this guy from New York City."
It helped him gain more an appreciation of the nation, she said.
"Had he stayed in New York, he could have become provincial in a way only New Yorkers could be provincial."
How did Maynard impact his profession?
"He showed what one person can do as a journalist," Dori said. A major advocate of diversity in the newsroom, Maynard said in his last public address in May 1993, that, "This country cannot be the country we want it to be if its story is told by only one group of citizens. Our goal is to give all Americans front-door access to the truth."
What is something few people realize about Maynard?
"People thought of him as a very serious person," she said. "But he had a great sense of humor, too."
What is the best piece of advice Maynard has given?
"There's nothing to it but to do it."
Is there anyone following in his footsteps today?
One part of the Maynard Institute is to train journalists, who are now following in his footsteps. "All the people that wrote about him when he died," Dori said, "that he touched, trained, even if for just a moment."
