Gordon Cobbledick possessed two qualities necessary for a good columnist, a great sense of justice and a feeling for good writing. Cobbledick covered a Clarence Darrow lecture shortly after the famous lawyer made headlines at the unforgettable Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925. After Darrow gave a poorly organized speech, Cobbledick (affectionately called "Cobby") virtually rewrote the lecture. As he recalled in his final column in the 16 August 1964 Cleveland Plain Dealer, the paper for which he first wrote forty years before, he later received a letter from the grateful Darrow, thanking Cobbledick "for putting my rambling remarks into intelligible English." Early in Cobbledick's career as copy editor for the sports department of the Plain Dealer, he possessed a knack for substituting a superior word or phrase in the articles of his staff. Later the executive editor of the Plain Dealer, Philip Porter, told Cobbledick he was one of three journalists...