Leo Della Betta was an atypical curmudgeon.
A newsroom fixture at the Arizona Daily Star for 40 years, Della Betta was as well known for the cookies and muffins he baked for fellow staffers as he was for his expletive-laden outbursts when peeved by some readers' phone calls.
Della Betta's eccentric reputation elevated to legendary in the early 1970s after he was captured on film streaking through the newsroom clad in nothing more than sneakers.
As word spread through the newsroom Wednesday of Della Betta's death, Star staffers traded stories of the cantankerous old-school newsman.
Della Betta died Tuesday. He'd been in failing health for several years, surviving several strokes before he succumbing to congestive heart failure. He was 81.
Visitation will be 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday at Bring's Broadway Chapel, 6910 E. Broadway. A Mass will follow at 2 p.m. at St. Pius X Catholic Church, 1800 N. Camino Pio Decimo.
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There are no immediate survivors. Burial will be in Iowa.
Della Betta was born in the small coal-mining town of Hocking, Iowa, to Italian immigrant parents. After graduating from high school and serving a stint in the military, Della Betta moved to Tucson to attend the University of Arizona. He graduated in 1952 with a degree in journalism and he immediately took a job with the Star.
"He was one of those old-time newsmen who wouldn't fit into the newsroom today," said Star research assistant Marlene Dekker.
Della Betta came up in the print media ranks at a time when reporters used manual typewriters, chain-smoked at their desks and spit out salty language without a second thought. The phrase "politically incorrect" wouldn't enter the lexicon for decades.
"He was a crusty character. He was really mercurial," said copy editor Ron Solomon. "He could be hard to like until you got to know him."
Star Executive Editor Bobbie Jo Buel sat at a desk near Della Betta's when she arrived at the newspaper in the early 1980s. It was Della Betta, a man with a ribald tongue, who taught her about the beauty of language.
"He had a real love of the language. He was a real stickler for choosing the right word," said Buel, who would consult Della Betta if she needed help with prose. "He really cared about knowing there was one word that would be the best. As a new reporter, he helped me be a better writer and to be very, very careful about word choices."
Senior reporter Tom Beal was a copy boy ripping wire copy off the Teletype machine when he arrived at the Star in the mid-1970s. He admired the gruff newsman's way with words.
"Leo had a very graceful and precise writing style. It almost seemed old-fashioned, but was very contemporary," Beal said.
Della Betta worked his way through the ranks as a reporter, editor and finally ombudsman. The position required him to respond to reader complaints via telephone and through his weekly column.
"He was not bashful in the least about telling either co-workers or readers when he thought you were right or wrong," Buel said. "I was taken aback by the way he talked to a reader … but if he thought you'd done a good job or thought a reader had a good point, he was just as forceful in saying that, too. He wasn't a guy to dance around things."
Most of the time, he was gracious fielding readers' calls.
But, said Beal, "sometimes he'd get aggravated. Usually he shouted the expletives after the phone was hung up."
Usually, but not always. It was during those telephone conversations that all ears in the newsroom turned toward Della Betta's desk in anticipation of the vitriolic climax.
He wasn't gentle in his criticism of staffers, either, when he detected a grievous error.
"He would take his gloves off on the staff. He was tough. He'd have never lasted today," said copy editor Mark Stewart.
Della Betta supervised the newspaper's "switchover to video display terminals — the new devices on which stories were written and set into type," according to a 1979 Star article.
It was a challenge Della Betta embraced in his own idiosyncratic way.
"He was in charge of the computers," said Elaine Raines, director of news and research services for the Star. "He'd go around with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and Q-tips and clean all the keyboards."
DID YOU KNOW
One vote really can make a difference.
In 1960 journalist Leo Della Betta, a Democrat, was elected as a precinct committeeman. He got the job with just one vote! No doubt cast by Della Betta himself.
That same year, five precinct races were tied and decided by coin toss; and a candidate for the Legislature won the primary election nomination by just two votes.
