Journalist Waits 77 Years for His Diploma

William Madden has been many things in his lifetime: writer, reporter, columnist. But until recently, there was one thing he wasn’t--a high school graduate.

That changed recently when the Manahawkin resident got his diploma from Leonia High School, 77 years after he dropped out to become a newspaper sports editor.

“It was a very decent gesture on their part,” said the 94-year-old Madden, who still writes a weekly column for the Beach Haven Times-Beacon on the Jersey Shore.

The idea came about when a staffer saw one of Madden’s columns in the paper last fall where he mentioned that he didn’t have a diploma, said Christine Cummings, assistant superintendent of schools for the Leonia school district.

“I proposed to the Board of Education that he get one,” Cummings said. “After 77 years of continuous journalism work, he certainly demonstrated that he satisfied the requirements for his diploma.”

He had been invited to take part in the graduation ceremonies for this year’s senior class, but district officials decided to wait until the Board of Education meeting June 9 to present the diploma so that the spotlight would be focused on Madden, Cummings said.

Madden was just two weeks shy of graduating from Leonia High School in 1921. A pitcher for his baseball team, he was also a correspondent covering his high school’s sports for The Record of Hackensack.

When the sports editor of the paper took over as managing editor, The Record had a vacancy to fill and offered Madden the job.

For Madden, there was never any question of not taking the $15-a-week job.

“I needed to take one more class. It was Latin. I don’t know if I would have passed,” he joked. Besides, “a diploma didn’t mean anything at that stage.”

And in those days, what he called “The Golden Age of Sports,” he couldn’t dream of a better job.

“To be a sports editor was it,” Madden said. “The best thing you could usually hope for was to be a clerk and work your way up.”

Since then, Madden has been hired and fired from a number of newspapers, including some that no longer exist, such as the Hudson Dispatch, the Hoboken Observer, the Hackensack Star-Telegraph and the Paterson Morning Call. He’s also worked for The Jersey Journal and The Star-Ledger of Newark.

He takes pride in knowing that he’s never left journalism, even after nearly eight decades.

“I’ve worked every day,” he said. “Every day of my life, someone’s paid me to write.”

The biggest change between those days and now, Madden said, are the readers--or lack of them.

“Eighty years ago, you knew that a lot of people were reading the paper,” he said. “Today, I wonder if anyone is reading. People look at headlines, they don’t get past page 3.”

His secret for such a long journalism career? Good whiskey.

“In the era I grew up in,” he said, “if you didn’t smoke or drink, you weren’t a newspaperman.”