Editor’s note: Longtime award-winning area reporter and former member of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater teaching staff, and advisor to the university’s newspaper the Royal Purple, Sam Martino, died on April 20 after suffering a heart attack while mowing his lawn. His obituary is here: https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/sam-martino-obituary?pid=206810188. Following is a tribute written by an area journalist who also is one of his former students.

By James Debilzen

Legendary tales will be told of the great newspaperman Sam Martino. You can probably believe every story. He truly was larger than life.

I met Sam for the first time as a freshman journalism student at UW-Whitewater. I had wandered up to his office looking for a reporting internship not long after first semester had started. He looked at me, grinned, then laughed.

“You’ve got a lot to learn before we start talking about internships, kid.”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was about to be schooled by a true master of his craft over the next several years.

Sam embodied a period and style of journalism that’s often unrecognizable today, when print was king and the news was simply the news. In “retirement,” he taught students in the classroom as a lecturer at UW-Whitewater, but the real education happened in the newsroom of the Royal Purple, where he served as the faculty advisor.

“Show me the news!” he’d bellow at us when we resisted picking up the phone to follow up on a tip he’d received. Getting “shoe leather experience” wasn’t just a concept from a textbook; it was how he expected us to get the job done.

He pushed us to take on controversial stories, taught us how to file public records requests, helped us stand up to threats and public pressure, and connected us to politicians and the powers-that-be at the university. He sent student reporters to be among the White House Press Corps when President George W. Bush campaigned in Wisconsin. He sent us to city council and county board meetings. With his help, our student newspaper scooped the Associated Press on an investigative story they had been following for months.

He loved reporting the news and teaching others how to do it well.

Sam was also a great friend. He took personal interest in his students, their hobbies, and their families, and that continued long after his students had graduated from UW-Whitewater. He would randomly stop in to see me at the Daily Jefferson County Union, the DeForest Times-Tribune and the Milton Courier to talk shop. He called or stopped by almost weekly during my time at the Wisconsin Newspaper Association.

It didn’t matter how many times I corrected him, he always called me “Jim.” And, we were all regularly subjected to being called simply “kid.”

When my time in the newspaper industry had run its course, I was afraid to tell him about my career change. I felt like I was going to let him down.

He responded with incredible support, kindness and this bit of wisdom:

The reason he taught journalism was not so everyone could go work for newspapers. He taught journalism because it’s a platform for how you get information, how you relay information and how you pursue the truth, and that’s important in life, not just a career. Journalism is a base to advance everything else.

We all seek the truth, and Sam was never satisfied until he had overturned every stone looking for it. He wanted us all to share that same level of curiosity.

Thank you, Sam, for the gift of your leadership, your wisdom, and your friendship.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.

James Debilzen graduated in 2007 from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. He served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, the Royal Purple, and worked as a journalist for several years in the Wisconsin newspaper industry. He currently resides in Fort Atkinson with his wife and five children, and serves as the director of communications and Catholic identity for Catholic Charities Diocese of Madison.