For all of the reporting that shook NIU to its very foundations, some of Jerry Huston’s best memories of his Northern Star days involve Harry Caray and Tom & Jerry.

As editor, Jerry and then-newsroom supervisor Phil Luciano would go to Twin Taverns for lunch and beers. In the springtime, that usually meant staying until mid-afternoon to watch a few innings of that day’s Cubs game before coming back to the Star for the daily news-budget meeting.

“You’d just get into that habit,” Jerry said. “No matter how stressful it got at the Star, you would have that decompression time.”

There certainly was stress. As editor in chief in 1986, Jerry oversaw an investigation into the spending habits of new NIU president Clyde Wingfield that resulted first in the firing of adviser Jerry Thompson, and ultimately in Thompson’s reinstatement and the firing of Wingfield.

“I can’t even remember going to class during that period of my life,” Jerry said. “It’s on my transcript, so I must have. But everything was arranged around my schedule at the Star. That was the most fun I ever had as a reporter, because I was around a bunch of people who were really into it. It didn’t matter that we were making what amounted to about 85 cents an hour.”

Luciano – now a columnist for the Peoria Journal Star – recalls being the Star’s version of Oscar Madison to Jerry’s Felix Unger. Jerry always wore button-down shirts, nice trousers (never jeans) and had a “60ish comb-over,” Phil remembers. The first time the two went out for drinks after work, Phil ordered an Old Style. To Phil’s horror, Jerry ordered a banana daiquiri.

“I didn’t think newspapermen, even college newspapermen, drank fruity drinks,” Phil said. “I said something like, ‘What the hell are you doing? Bartender, get him a beer.'”

Jerry got his daiquiri, and also the beer. He’d eventually give up the former for the latter.

“Somehow, ” Phil said, “I like to think I made Huston’s life better – or, at least, a little less dorky.”

Jerry admits that was no small task. He remembers himself and reporter Chris Rosche (now press secretary for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch) being quintessential “journalism geeks,” eating Tom & Jerry’s gyros late at night while listening to the newsroom police scanner.

After NIU and a stint as a Chicago Tribune intern while in the University of Illinois-Springfield master’s program, Jerry worked as a reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, covering the Arkansas statehouse and Gov. Bill Clinton.

In 1994, Jerry returned to NIU as a law student. By 1997, he’d graduated Magna Cum Laude and joined the Chicago firm of Lord, Bissell & Brook. He continues to help the Star with occasional legal counsel.