The day I met Max Heller – 30-something years ago – is one I recount to almost every journalism class I teach at Furman University.
It was a defining moment in my career.
I was not long out of college, working for the now-defunct Greenville Piedmont, the gutsy afternoon paper that competed fiercely with its sister The Greenville News.
Assigned to cover Greenville city government, I trooped across Main Street for a meeting with the mayor, Max Heller. His top-floor City Hall office overlooked a dying Main Street.
Store by store, retailers chose to flee downtown in search of the promise of the 1970s mall frenzy. Few treetops were apparent. Main Street was four lanes.
The mayor told me his story of coming to America, one step ahead of the Nazis thanks to a Greenville woman who arranged for someone to sponsor him. I don’t remember the exact amount but I know he had a few dollars in his pocket. And he had a work ethic as strong and straight as Palmetto tree.
He swept floors at Piedmont Shirt Co. He didn’t say this but it was apparent in his demeanor and language. In Austria, his family was prosperous. They owned a company. He was a member of a private gym, where he was a champion wrestler. And in America, he swept floors.
He pressed on, became general manager at Piedmont, co-founded another shirt company, sold his interest then founded his own shirt company. Max always had nice shirts.
Decades passed and he sold the company to dedicate his life to public service. Elected to City Council in 1969, he ran for mayor and began his term in 1971.
He’d been in office six years when I met him. He had a vision for downtown that made me think he was Greenville’s own Walt Disney. At that point, the vision had not taken root, but I knew it would and I was grateful to be watching. I knew it would be a fun ride.
At the end of the interview – Max actually spent more time asking about me than telling his story – he walked me to the door. The words he spoke then are what I tell my Furman students.
He said, “I want you to know, everything I tell you will be true, but everything that is true I won’t tell you.”
I responded, “And, Mayor, it’s that last part I’m going to be trying to find out.”
He said, “Fair enough.”
That, in the most succinct form, describes the relationship between a journalist and a source. The “fair enough” belief, though, comes from so few people in public life these days.
But Max Heller understood the value of a free press. He also knew how to be a leader, how to inspire others.
I am sure he was not happy when I broke the news that the Hyatt Corp. was going to build a hotel on Main Street and that it would be the centerpiece of a renewed downtown. Or the other stories that followed about Main Street such as giving voice to the people who thought narrowing the street to two lanes folly.
But he never said.
It was never boring covering Max Heller.
And when he left office, I was not too far behind in asking for another beat.
Tags: greenville, Lyn Riddle, Max Heller
