Five years ago, I took this photograph. This is Ernie Pyle’s statue, just outside of our building on the IU campus.
These days, the celebrated reporter’s desk is one floor above my office at The Media School. He’s the patron saint of journalism around here. Today is now recognized Ernie Pyle Day, and this is the fourth one. (Today is his birthday.)
Today, to the literal minute, I took this photograph of the Ernie Pyle statue. Not much has changed. In some respects, a lot of things have changed.
But things are changing still. That’s the way of it.
Eight years ago this very week we visited The Newseum, it was still in D.C., and we saw Pyle’s old Corona typewriter. He carried it into Europe and the Pacific islands and typed his World War II stories right there.
Now this typewriter, Pyle’s Underwood, is on display here in Franklin Hall. That and more of his effects, his field jacket, his entrenching tool, a pipe and other items, are on display just around the corner.
Happy Ernie Pyle day.
