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Special section • Star Century: 100 years of The Indianapolis Star

Maurice Early

Inducted 1968

From the governor's mansion to hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers, Maurice Early's thoughts on politics mattered. And created change.

He attended Wabash College and graduated from Marquette University in 1914. He joined The Star two years later as a reporter covering government and became the first reporter at the paper assigned to write full time about politics.

He chronicled his observations on government in his popular "The Day in the Legislature" column that began in January 1939.

Early died Feb. 5, 1954, less than a month after his last column ran in The Star.

Benjamin R. Cole

Inducted 1989

Not many Washington Bureau chiefs bossed a U.S. senator, but Ben Cole once did. In 1935, while he was a student at Butler University, Cole landed a job as manager of carriers for the Indianapolis Times. One of the carriers was Ted Stevens, later a U.S. senator from Alaska.

Cole, known for his weekly political column, "Ripples," began his career at the Terre Haute Star in 1938. He moved to The Indianapolis Star in 1944 and became the paper's Statehouse reporter, assistant city editor and city editor. From 1949 until his retirement in 1986, he was the Washington Bureau chief for The Star.

Thomas R. Keating

Inducted 1995

Five days a week for 14 years, Keating's column often was the first thing readers of The Star turned to.

Keating was born in Indianapolis, graduated from Cathedral High School and attended both Ball State and Indiana universities. He sold real estate and managed apartment buildings before joining The Star in 1966. Former Star managing editor Lawrence "Bo" Connor said: "Tom never forgot his roots. He liked to write about policemen and firemen, athletes and coaches, politicians, judges, grocers, clerks, housewives and laborers, now and then a bank president or a businessman. No phonies allowed, though."

Keating died in 1985.

Lowell B. Nussbaum

Inducted 1975

Lowell Nussbaum wrote "The Things I Hear" in The Star from 1945 until his retirement in 1971. Nussbaum reported on the things he "heard," often to the benefit of the city and state.

In 1944 Nussbaum began writing columns about why Indianapolis needed a zoo. He created a mythical Indianapolis Zoological Society, which became reality in 1955. He led a fund drive that in 1964 led to the opening of the Indianapolis Zoo in Washington Park.

His final column, on Oct. 4, 1971, was titled, "I'm Putting Myself Out to Pasture on Nussbaum Acres." He died in 1987.

Bob Collins

Inducted 1990

An Irish wit caressed the words that Collins fit into his twice-a-week "The Lighter Side" feature column and his five-times-a-week "Sports Over Lightly" sports column. Both were reader favorites for decades.

Collins joined The Star in 1948 as a temporary reporter, intending to stay only three weeks.

In 1967, he and a group of investors founded a professional basketball team, the Indiana Pacers, that debuted that year in the American Basketball Association.

He won more than 40 first-place writing awards and was the first sports writer to win the Chris Savage Award. Collins died May 26, 1995.

John Corbin Patrick

Inducted 2000

The Indianapolis 500 has known some dramatic moments, but only for a short time did it have an actual drama critic describing it. Corbin Patrick was a member of the radio team that broadcast the first live account of the race.

Patrick joined The Star in 1925 and retired on April Fool's Day, 1988.

When he became the paper's music critic, Patrick pressed for the creation of an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He saw the birth of the ISO, the Ensemble Music Society and Clowes Hall.

Patrick was named drama critic in 1941 and saw an estimated 5,000 plays before his retirement.

He died July 8, 2002, at age 97.

Frank H. Hohenberger

Inducted 1976

Born in Ohio in 1876, orphaned at 5 and reared on his grandparents' farm near Defiance, Hohenberger, a photographer and columnist, "adopted" Brown County.

Hohenberger began writing a Sunday column about Brown County for The Star, "Down in the Hills o' Brown County," in 1923. Except for a period during the mid-1930s, the column appeared each week until 1954.

Hohenberger died in 1963, but as late as 1994 his photos of artists in the first Brown County art colony were included in an exhibit at the Eiteljorg Museum.

Lilly Library at Indiana University has his collection of 17,000 negatives taken from 1917 to 1963.

Mary Bostwick

Inducted 1993

Posing as a riding mechanic in 1922, Mary Bostwick was the first woman to ride at speed around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Bostwick was a rare female police reporter whose advice for making it in a "man's world" was, "you have to drink with them, swear with them and jump on the back of the police wagon with them" to be successful.

Bostwick joined The Star in 1914. She stayed 44 years, except for two years as a correspondent in Europe during World War I.

In 1927, she began writing the "Last Page Lyric." Using a timely topic or news event, she created a column in rhyme.

Bostwick died in 1979 at age 73.