About the Author

LOUIS BENSON SELTZER was born September 19, 1897, in a single-story cottage back of a fire station on Cleveland’s near West Side—on the other side of the river and the other side of the tracks. The oldest of five children in a household always short of cash, he was hardly in knee britches before he was handling a paper route to help out the kitchen bank. His father was Charles Alden Seltzer, who was to write 49 books, many of which were later made into motion pictures. But when Louis Seltzer was seven years old his father had not yet sold his first story, and when he was thirteen he left school without finishing seventh grade in order to take a job as an office boy and cub reporter on The Leader. A year later he moved over to The Cleveland News, only to come back to The Leader where, in addition to his other duties, he wrote a column under the by-line of “Luee, The Offis Boy.” Once more he shifted to The Cleveland News, and after a short time there he was fired—and told he’d never make a newspaperman.

Louis Seltzer then spent a little over a year writing copy for an advertising agency—a job he hated, for he was determined to be a newspaperman. Quitting his job in disgust he talked himself into another job—on The Cleveland Press, where he has been ever since.

This was early in 1915 and Louis B. Seltzer was not quite eighteen. He was already married to Marion Elizabeth Champlin, and his first child, Chester Ellsworth, was soon to be born. A daughter, Shirley Marion, was born in 1919. Within a year of joining The Press he was made City Editor, only to fire himself from that particular assignment in six months
because he didn’t like the desk work. He chose to become a reporter again, specializing in the political beat.

In 1921 he again became City Editor of The Press. In 1924 he was named Political Editor. In March he was made Chief Editorial Writer. In March of 1928 he became Associate Editor. And on July 9, in the same year, he was elevated to the post of Editor of The Cleveland Press, a position he has filled ever since. In addition he has been since 1937 Editor-in-Chief of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers of Ohio.