Rod Humphries

Rod Humphries
Rod Humphries

Rodney Dennis Humphries (born 18 September 1943) is an Australian-born author, newspaper/magazine journalist and television writer. Humphries began his writing career at the age of 17 as a general reporter for an Australian wire service. He became a sports journalist covering international events for major Australian dailies and wrote his first book, Lionel Rose: Australian at age 25. Humphries was also head writer and assistant producer of the Australian television show This is Your Life. Humphries moved permanently to the United States in 1977 when a tennis book he was commissioned to write in New York was followed by an offer from oilman and sports entrepreneur Lamar Hunt to join the staff of Dallas-based World Championship Tennis (WCT). He has had three books published in the United States, the most recent in 2013, Little League to the Major Leagues.

Family origins and early life

Rod Humphries is a direct descendant of a 26-year-old convict transported from Ireland to the British penal colony at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia, in 1793, and of a 23-year-old Scottish "bounty immigrant" who arrived "free" in the colony in 1837. Patrick Humphrys,[1] (the spelling would later be changed by government recorders) was sentenced to seven years penal servitude in Australia for stealing 200 weight of sheet lead in Dublin, Ireland. He spent 173 days on the convict ship The Boddingtons, which arrived on 7 August 1793, only five years after the First Fleet of convicts to Australia established the country as a British colony. After completing his sentence, Patrick was granted permission in 1801 to join the British Army in Australia, and served for 22 years and 195 days. On 28 February 1802, Patrick married Irish immigrant, Catherine McMahon (née Mooney), the widow of one of Patrick's fellow soldiers, Terrence McMahon, a convict ship guard who drowned in Sydney Harbour on 7 September 1801. Humphries' maternal great great grandfather, Scottish carpenter and cabinet maker John David Farquhar,[2] received a bounty of 10 pounds from the government to migrate to Australia which desperately needed tradesmen for the colony. Farquhar arrived on The City of Edinburgh on 31 August 1837, leaving behind legal problems associated with a paternity suit.

Rod Humphries was born to Jack and Mavis Humphries (née Farquhar) in Paddington, Sydney, Australia, at a time the Australian government officially commemorates as the Battle for Australia (1942–43)[3][4][5] of World War II. His sister Gae Denise Butler was born in 1947. Humphries’ maternal grandfather, Norman Farquhar, 52, who enlisted as a deputy senior air raid warden in Sydney, was buried alive on 12 October 1942 when a military trench he was digging in preparation for a possible Japanese invasion caved in during heavy rain.[6] A shell from a Japanese two-man midget submarine hit outside the crowded Humphries' tenement in east Sydney on 8 June 1942,[7][8] knocking Humphries’ mother Mavis semi-conscious, breaking windows, the front door, and weakening upstairs floor boards. Humphries’ uncle, Bob Humphries, who joined the military at 17, was captured by the Japanese Army as it swept through Malaya and Singapore and spent the rest of the war in the Changi Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. His father Jack Humphries fought in the jungles of New Guinea, just 100 miles north of Australia, contracting malaria that recurred for years after the war. Jack Humphries, who also trained American soldiers in jungle warfare as part of the Pacific campaign, led the march and took the official salute for the Australian Forces at the last Anzac Day in Wewak, New Guinea, in 1973[9][10] prior to New Guinea's independence from Australia.

Shelling damage in Sydney, Australia. The Humphries family occupied the narrow strip on the left side of the building, adjacent to the corner store.

While military fortifications were installed at Sydney Harbour and coastal beaches in an effort to thwart any attempt at a land invasion, and many fled the coastal cities for the safety of nearby mountains, the Humphries family stayed in Sydney and pooled resources. Three generations of the extended Humphries/Farquhar family hunkered down in an overcrowded, narrow, two-story, two-bedroom tenement with neither indoor toilet facilities nor refrigeration attached to a general store on the corner of Small and Fletcher Streets, Woollahra, East Sydney. While his father was at war, Humphries' father figure at the war-time home was his uncle George Smith, a former professional fighter in the Great Depression who had injuries from his boxing days which precluded him from serving in the military.

During the difficult wartime and post-war conditions, the Humphries family struggled to make ends meet and after the war supplemented its income by operating an illegal bookmaking business, providing horse race gambling for local communities in east Sydney. Police made several raids on the Humphries' home and in a Doberman Quarterly magazine interview in 1997[11] Humphries recalled police arresting his father: “I can still vividly recall all those Gambling Squad guys looking like Elliot Ness hitting our doors, windows, and coming over the back fence in a raid. My grandmother would shove betting slips down her bra and I would stuff them in my pants and run.” Beginning in his mid-teens, Humphries worked part-time brush painting hand tools at a neighbourhood ironworks factory, and later worked assembling eyeglasses at another company. The sport of tennis boomed as a low-cost recreation in Australia after the War, and Humphries’s mother, a league player, introduced him to the sport. Beginning at 12, Humphries made a few shillings attending to clay courts at several facilities and helping the professional coaches by working on basic instruction with very young beginners. The money also went toward his tennis lessons. Over time, tennis dramatically changed the course of his life and led to his permanent move to the United States in 1977.

Career in Australia

Humphries was first published at 13 years of age in 1956 in the Randwick Boys' High School yearbook after a poem he wrote about the Olympic Games in Melbourne that year won a school-wide competition. Four years later he landed a job as a copyboy at a small national wire service, Australian United Press (AUP). He quickly became a fully-fledged journalist at AUP, covering national and local politics, law courts, police rounds, the stock exchange, the trade union movement, features and sports for newspapers and radio stations. After four years as a general reporter, Humphries specialised in sports, and from 1964 through 1977 he was a full-time sports journalist/columnist, covering events at home and overseas, including in America, Asia and Europe, for Australia's oldest newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald and its sister Sunday paper, The Sun-Herald. He wrote columns entitled "Inside Sport," “Days of Glory," “Rod Humphries Looks at League", and a whimsical column in the tabloid Sunday paper, "Rod Humphries Writes…”

Rod Humphries with Lionel Rose

At age 25, Humphries teamed with Lionel Rose, an Australian Aborigine then 19 years of age, to write Rose's life story in the book Lionel Rose: Australian, which told how Rose, who came from tough beginnings in the Australian outback, won the world bantamweight boxing title from the seemingly unbeatable hometown champion, Masahiko “Fighting” Harada, in Tokyo, Japan, on 27 February 1968. Humphries was also head writer and assistant producer of the Australian national television show This Is Your Life,[12] (a franchise of Ralph Edwards' iconic American show ), for the first 100 shows from its beginning in 1975 through 1977, when he moved to the United States. He was offered a writing job on the show after he helped the producers to prepare for the first show to air, the life of Lionel Rose, on 14 September 1975. Humphries was introduced on the show.

In March 1976, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation chose Humphries to represent Australia's print sports journalists in a national television documentary on its popular Sportsnight series, titled Action Replay, which chronicled the planning, interviewing, writing and editorial production of a story in his day as a sports journalist. Humphries was also involved in the planning of another Sportsnight documentary, King of the Channel, which won the Best Sporting Documentary at the 1977 Australian Logie Awards.[13] Hall of Fame long distance swimmer, Des Renford, asked Humphries to script, in advance, probable interaction and conversations between Renford and his attendant boat crew for the filming of his 10th English Channel crossing. In his autobiography, Nothing Great Is Easy Renford praised Humphries as "an outstanding sportswriter and a bloke who helped me a lot…"[14]

Humphries was an accomplished representative junior tournament tennis player in Australia and later a part-time professional tennis coach in Australia and the United States.[15][16] His knowledge of the sport helped him become a high profile tennis writer who was nominated as International Tennis Writer of the year in 1975 by the worldwide players’ union, the Association of Tennis Professionals. He covered the beginning of Open tennis in 1968[17] and all the machinations leading to the Grand Slam tournaments and other strictly amateur events being thrown open to professionals in a historic moment in the sport. World Championship Tennis (WCT) was a catalyst to forcing Open tennis and Humphries covered the first ever WCT event, a made-for-television tournament on a hastily erected court in the parking lot of ATN Channel 7 television studios in Epping, Sydney, Australia, in January 1968.[18] In 1978, Humphries detailed the success of Australians, including two-time full Grand Slam winner Rod Laver, in the first 10 years of Open Tennis, in a contributing chapter of a book titled The Best of the Last Ten Years in Australian Sport.[19] Based on his nomination as International Tennis Writer of the Year, in 1975 WCT invited Humphries to witness its championship events in Mexico City and Dallas, which led to his permanent move to the United States.

Career in the United States

The English tennis enthusiast, fashion designer, and spy Cuthbert Collingwood "Ted" Tinling commissioned Humphries to write his memoir, Love and Faults, during a visit to Sydney in 1976. A year later Humphries travelled to Tinling's then home city of Philadelphia to finish the book, and at that time WCT of Dallas, owned by oilman and sports entrepreneur Lamar Hunt[20][21][22] approached Humphries to join the company. Humphries accepted the offer, turning down a new contract with This Is Your Life in Australia, and permanently moved to the United States.

Rod Humphries with Ted Tinling

For five years from 1979 through 1983, he held the positions of Director of Public Relations,[23] Director of Tournaments, chief operating officer and Deputy Executive Director, and was Tournament Director of the WCT Finals in Dallas in 1981—labeled at the time as the "Fifth Grand Slam"—which was won by John McEnroe. During Humphries' tenure, the WCT tour had 22 events a year in 12 countries, featuring all the world's leading players including McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Björn Borg and Ivan Lendl. Humphries also conceived and organised an annual WCT Reunion Stars event for Hall-of-Famers, the first being in 1980 for Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, John Newcombe and Roy Emerson. Humphries organised worldwide tournaments, recruited players, wrote and published 250-plus page WCT Media Guides, played a role in the New York based WCT Television Network and the company's player management arm WCT Pro Management, and was a key player in developing an alternative world ranking system to that of the Association of Tennis Professionals, the Nixdorf Computer Rankings.[24][25][26] WCT, which conducted the first "Million Dollar Tour," was the first to introduce coloured clothing[27] and the tiebreaker, and was the first entity anywhere in the world of professional or amateur sports to produce in-house television coverage of its events. Started in 1977, WCT-TV had, by Humphries' first year with the company in 1979, sold 38 weeks of its packaged events to more than 70 per cent of the United States and many overseas countries. WCT events were also televised live by ABC in America and the BBC in Britain and in 1980 WCT had the first professional sports events ever televised live by a newly formed cable network, Entertainment and Sports Programing Network (later simply ESPN).[28] Humphries wrote the scripts for commentator Jim Simpson for documentary specials in 1980 and 1981 about the WCT tour titled “The Road to Dallas,” the first ever in-house ESPN documentaries. Humphries left WCT in 1983 when the tour was cut to a mere five events for 1984 following an anti-trust lawsuit filed against the Men’s International Professional Tennis Council that administered the establishment Grand Prix and its powerful Grand Slam events. WCT quietly dissolved in 1990.[29] Humphries became Media Director for the Lipton International Players Championship (now the Sony Open) in Delray Beach and Key Biscayne, Florida, from 1986–88.

In America, Humphries continued to cover major events such as a Muhammad Ali world title fight,[30][31] Wimbledon,[32] and the US Open tennis championships.[33][34] For 20 years after moving to the United States, Humphries wrote articles for publication in America and regular freelance sports articles and columns for Australian and New Zealand newspapers. His newspaper columns included "Rod Humphries Writes," "Inside Sport," "This Is America" and a news page column titled "The Dallas File with Rod Humphries" in The Sun-Herald and The Sydney Morning Herald, and "Stateside" in the national newspaper, The Australian, and The Dominion, in Wellington, New Zealand. Humphries also did live weekly radio interviews on American sport with 4BC in Brisbane and occasionally for 2SM in Sydney and 3UZ in Melbourne. In the days before international television coverage and the internet, his columns and radio reports played a part in popularising American football for Australian sports fans, and when the Super Bowl was first televised live in Australia in the late 1970s, he was asked to write comprehensive newspaper articles with rules and charts on how the game was played.[35]

Humphries has had three books published in America: the Tinling story, Love and Faults; The Doberman Pinscher, and Little League to the Major Leagues, an insider guide to baseball’s assembly line from youth leagues to the pros. The baseball book was written after Humphries—who was an All Star Little League coach—helped guide his son, Justin, from Little League to the pros where he was drafted out of high school by the Houston Astros in 2001.

Canine authority

Humphries is also an authority and prolific writer on canines.[36][37][38] He authored The Doberman Pinscher, has lectured at a national seminar on the practical use of canine genetics, and was nominated for an award at the Dog Writers Association of America for an article in the 2007 September/October issue of The Doberman Ring titled, “Inbreeding: Challenging the Myths in Animals and (Gasp)…Humans.”[39] Beginning in 1966, Humphries has bred many champion Doberman Pinschers under the “Bikila” prefix (named after the great Ethiopian marathon runner, Abebe Bikila) in Australia and the United States. He began writing regular articles in a column titled "Dogs on Parade" for The Sun-Herald in Australia in the early 1970s, and for 40 years has written articles in American magazines including the Doberman Quarterly, the Doberman World, the Doberman Ring, and the Doberman Pinscher Magazine, on the genesis[40] and history[41] of the Doberman breed; genetics, science and diseases;[42][43][44][45] breeding in general; and humorous observations of the dog show world.[46]

Family life

On 24 April 1976, Humphries married Lynne Blumentritt, an American sports and television writer he met on his WCT invitation tour to Dallas in 1975. His wife was also a writer/researcher on the Australian version of This Is Your Life. She later became an attorney and is a founding partner of the Houston law firm, Allen Boone Humphries Robinson LLP. Lynne Humphries was recognised as International Little League Volunteer of the Year in 1995,[47] which earned her recognition in the Little League Hall of Fame in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. They are both long-time cancer survivors and live in Richmond, a historical small town on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, and at Stone Canyon in the Tortolita Mountains outside of Tucson, Arizona. They have three sons: Scott, a Harvard Law School honours graduate who is one of America’s high profile securities attorneys; Mark, who has his PhD in French Literature from the University of Connecticut and has been a college professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut; and Justin, who graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in New York and gained his MBA at George Washington University, both achieved after he completed a nine-year professional baseball career.

Published works

Books

Selected articles

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Hall, Barbara. Of Infamous Character: The Convicts of the Boddingtons, Ireland to Botany Bay 1793. Irish Wattle, Sydney 2004. PP97-99
  2. ↑ Tamsitt, Mignon. The Farquhar Folio: The Story of John David Farquhar and Descendants. Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia, 2003
  3. ↑ The Battle For Australia 1942–43 http://www.battleforaustralia.org.au/2897/Home/
  4. ↑ Battle for Australia –http://www.anzacday.org.au/history/ww2/bfa/overview.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Australia
  5. ↑ Battle for Australia http://www.pacificwar.org.au/Introduction_NatCouncil.html
  6. ↑ Death of Norman Farquhar (Bondi Daily Newspaper, Sydney, Australia, 17 October 1942, page 2).
  7. ↑ Japanese midget submarine attacks on Sydney, 1942. National Archives of Australia: http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=318205
  8. ↑ "Shell Tore Through Wall Above Bed". Sydney Morning Herald, 1942: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/1094045?zoomLevel=1&searchTerm=shell+that+exploded+Bellevue+Hill
  9. ↑ "Our Last Anzac Day". Papua-New Guinea Post Courier, 26 April 1973, front page.
  10. ↑ The Last Anzac Day in Wewak, New Guinea, 1973 (Jack Humphries, White Over Green Newsletter, 2/4th Battalion Australian Army, Sydney, 1973)
  11. ↑ Dixon, Anita. "Interview with Rod Humphries". Doberman Quarterly, Dodd Publishing, Woodland, California, Volume 30, No 4, Winter 1997, pages 133–150
  12. ↑ Mitchell, David, ed. This Is Your Life – True Stories of Great Australians. Prentice Hall, Sydney, 1998. Rod Humphries Referenced on Pages: 213, 214, 243 and 261
  13. ↑ 1977 Logie Awards: http://alldownunder.com/australian-logie/1977-tv-logie-awards.htm
  14. ↑ Renford, Des. Nothing Great is Easy: The Des Renford Story. Ironbark Press, Sydney, 1992.
  15. ↑ "A 'Search for Talent'; Tennis Camp Offered Here by Rod Humphries. Herald-Coaster, Rosenberg-Richmond, Texas, May 30, 1984, page 7
  16. ↑ "Humphries Begins Summer (Youth) Tennis Challenge". Fort Bend Herald-Coaster, Rosenberg-Richmond, Texas, 22 May 1985, page 7)
  17. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "20 Years of Open Tennis Spawns Monster". The Australian, Sydney, 28 March 1988, page 27.
  18. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "Newcombe Picks Up $1,040 in TV Match". The Sun-Herald, 21 January 1968, page 53.
  19. ↑ Lord, David, ed. The Best of the Last Ten Years in Australian Sport. K. Frost Holdings, South Australia, 1978. Rod Humphries chapter on Tennis, pages 29–36.
  20. ↑ Sweet, David. Lamar Hunt: The Gentle Giant Who Revolutionized Professional Sports. Triumph Books, Chicago, 2010. Rod Humphries referenced on pages 86, 142, 145, 156, 157–58, 160, 166, 184–85, 198 and 206.
  21. ↑ MacCambridge, Michael. Lamar Hunt, A Life in Sports- How One Man’s Journey Changed Sports in America. Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City Missouri. Rod Humphries referenced on pages 261, 264.
  22. ↑ Games: Lamar Hunt and the Landscape of American Sports (Documentary, NFL Films, 2007). (Rod Humphries interviewed)
  23. ↑ "Rod Humphries is WCT's Man-in-Motion". Tennis USA, New York, 5 May 1980, page 16
  24. ↑ Koch, Tom and Thom Meredith. "Nixdorf, WCT Announce New Ranking System". ProTennis, Dallas, 18 March 1982, front page.
  25. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "The Pathway to Two Tours, Two Rankings". ProTennis, Dallas, 24 June 1982, pages 21–22.
  26. ↑ Flink, Steve. "World Tennis Gives Nixdorf the Edge". World Tennis Magazine, October 1982. Article reprinted in ProTennis, Dallas, 14 October 1982, page 11.
  27. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "What the Best Dressed Pro Player Wears. Introduction of colored clothing in tennis". The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, 23 January 1968, page 14.
  28. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "A TV Station Just for the Sports Junkies: Rod Humphries on the launching of ESPN". Rod Humphries Writes column, The Sun-Herald, Sydney, 7 October 1979, page 84.
  29. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "Hunt Concedes, it’s Game, Set and Match to the Grand Prix". The Australian, Sydney, 22 April 1985.
  30. ↑ "Dancing Ali Makes the World Wait". Beats Leon Spinks and Wins World Heavyweight Title for Third Time (Rod Humphries from the New Orleans Superdome, The Sun-Herald, Sydney, 17 September 1978, page 82).
  31. ↑ "Maybe I'll Fight, Maybe I Won't." Muhammad Ali after beating Leon Spinks (Rod Humphries in New Orleans, The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 18 September 1978, page 33).
  32. ↑ "And lo, Jimbo is Back! Connors a Yankee Doodle Dandy on the Fourth of July". Jimmy Connors wins Wimbledon (Rod Humphries in London, ProTennis, Dallas, 8 July 1982, front page).
  33. ↑ "US Open Singles to Austin and McEnroe" (Rod Humphries in New York, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, 11 September 1979, page 38).
  34. ↑ "Superbrat and Tracy New Giants of Tennis" (Rod Humphries in New York, The Sun-Herald, Sydney, 16 September 1979, Page 21).
  35. ↑ Super Bowl Glamour…Battle of the Giants (Rod Humphries Writes, The Sun-Herald, 28 January 1979, page 72).
  36. ↑ Chipp-Matthews, Marguerite. "Doberman World Talks to Rod Humphries Part I". Doberman World, Hofflin Publishing, Wheat Ridge, Colorado, Volume 19, No 4, Winter 1997–98, pages 24–34.
  37. ↑ Chipp-Matthews, Marguerite. "Doberman World Talks to Rod Humphries Part II". Doberman World, Hofflin Publishing, Wheat Ridge, Colorado, Volume 20, No 1, Spring 1998, pages 24–36.
  38. ↑ Dixon, Anita. "Interview with Rod Humphries". Doberman Quarterly, Dodd Publishing, Woodland, California, Volume 30, No 4, Winter 1997, pages 133–150.
  39. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "Inbreeding: Challenging the Myths in Animals and (Gasp) … Humans!" The Doberman Ring, Maguire Publishing, Edwardsville, Illinois, Volume 1, No 3 September/October 2007, pages 30–43.
  40. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "The French Connection: The Case for the Beauceron (as the Major Player in the Development of the Doberman Pinscher)". Rod Humphries Writes, The Doberman Ring, McGuire Publishing, Edwardsville, Illinois, Volume 1, Issue 1, May/June 2007, pages 24–31
  41. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "The Evolution of the Doberman. All Historical Breed Standards". Rod Humphries Writes column, The Doberman Quarterly, Lanier Publishing, Volume 24, No 3, Fall, 1991, pages 380–388.
  42. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "The Cardiomyopathy Chronicles 1: The Science News and Genetics". The Doberman Pinscher Magazine, McGuire Publishing, Milton, Wisconsin, Volume 1, Issue 5, February 2008, pages 20–29). The Cardiomyopathy Chronicles 2: A Personal Story and a Challenge (Rod Humphries Writes, The Doberman Pinscher Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 5, February 2008, pages 31–39.
  43. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "Cardiomyopathy Chronicles Update: Answering the Study Skeptics". Rod Humphries Writes column, The Doberman Pinscher Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 2, July/August 2008, pages 82–88)
  44. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "Von Willebrands Factor is a Non-Factor… (No Pun Intended)". Rod Humphries Writes column, The Doberman Quarterly, Dodd Publishing, Woodland, California, Volume 30, No 4, Winter, 1997, pages 229–236.
  45. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "European Team Claims second Dilated Cardio Myopathy Mutation is Imminent". The Doberman Pinscher Magazine, McGuire Publishing, Milton, Wisconsin, Volume 4, Issue 4, November–December 2010, pages 19–27.
  46. ↑ Humphries, Rod. "The Meaning of Dog Shows…with Apologies to Monty Python". (Rod Humphries Writes column, The Doberman Ring, McGuire Publishing, Edwardsville, Illinois, Volume 1, Issue 2, July/August 2007, pages 34–38.
  47. ↑ Young, Tara S. "Little League’s Finest: Texas Woman Gets Volunteer of Year Award" Williamsport Sun-Gazette, Pennsylvania, 24 August 1995. Front Page.

External links