Tom Ferrick took his first assignment for English 116, the undergraduate screenwriting course, seriously. Well, OK, seriously enough. Seriously enough to throw a little kidding the way of the rest of the students in the class, all of whom are less than half his age.

"They all think [hip director] Quentin Tarantino is a god," said Ferrick, who, as Penn's current Richard Burke Memorial Fellow, is on leave from his regular job at The Philadelphia Inquirer. "My first screenplay was only five pages long, but it was about two guys who love movies. They go to Los Angeles on spring break and accidentally shoot Quentin Tarantino to death while he's in his favorite convenience store buying Camels and junk food."

Ferrick isn't sure if his script won the approval of his classmates. "Actually, I don't know who really appreciated it," he said with a hearty laugh.

Ferrick's laugh is omnipresent and infectious. One of the most well-liked reporters at the Inquirer, he knew he needed something to keep that jolliness going after 20 years at the paper. What he found was the Burke Fellowship.

While there are many year-long fellowships for journalists, all of them require the fellows to be at campuses away from the Philadelphia area. That was out for Ferrick, whose wife, Sharon Sexton, is the co-publisher and editor of Parents Express, a 70,000-circulation monthly parenting magazine published in Philadelphia.

Two years ago, Inquirer editors arranged with Penn, Temple and Swarthmore to offer semesters-in-residents that would allow Inquirer reporters, editors and photographers with strong ties to the Philadelphia area to come and audit classes as a break from their intense regular jobs. The fellowships were named to honor Richard Burke, an Inquirer city desk reporter who died of a heart attack while working temporarily at the Trenton Statehouse in 1993.

Ferrick, who was born in South Philadelphia and now lives there with his wife and two young children, said he wanted to take courses primarily in urban studies while at Penn this semester. He enrolled in Michael Zuckerman's history course on the American National Character and Witold Rybczynski's architecture class, "Urban Visions," which surveys the American city from the 19th century to the present--and beyond.

"It's a good combination," Ferrick said. "Zuckerman is a dynamic lecturer, and Witold is more subdued. He's like Tom Hine [the former architecture critic at the Inquirer]. People who write about architecture seem to be quiet and thoughtful, maybe because they make statements with concrete. But both courses have inspired me. I want to do more reporting on things like this."

While Ferrick is clearly stimulated by his history and architecture courses, he is being particularly "recharged" by his screenwriting class, taught by Marc Lapadula.

"I'm 12 years older than the teacher, and the oldest kid in the class besides me is 23," said Ferrick. "But I like them a lot. They are very enthusiastic. They know films up, down and backwards.

"For me, the big event as far as films was UHF, which was like the cable of the '60s," he continued. "Suddenly UHF has nothing to put on but old movies and bullfights from Mexico City. That's where I first saw things like 'Citizen Kane.' You'd think that was a great movie, and then you couldn't see it for eight months.

"The kids in this class see these movies over and over again because they have them on videotape. They know intimate things about movies from the 1950s. It's a great thing to be there. It's very different from journalism. I love getting under the hood of screenwriting, seeing new things."

Ferrick is used to seeing new things. Although he's a Philadelphia-bred reporter--a rarity at the Inquirer, he claims--he traveled quite frequently during his childhood. His father, also named Tom, was a major-league pitcher for five teams from 1941 through 1952.

"It's the reason I don't have a more-pronounced Philadelphia accent," said the younger Ferrick. "We spent the summers in places like St. Louis and Cincinnati, where my father played baseball, and I learned how to speak better."

The elder Ferrick's best year was probably 1950, when he led the American League's relief pitchers in wins, with nine. He got another relief win in the World Series, pitching for the Yankees and defeating his hometown Phillies in the third game of a four-game sweep.

When he was a youngster, Tom Jr. left the city with his family to move to Havertown and Sacred Heart School in Manoa. He wended his way back to Philadelphia to attend Temple University in the 1960s.

"That's the word you have to use--'attended'--because I never graduated," Ferrick said with another laugh. "I don't know whether the people at Penn would like to hear about someone like me in their midst. My life was at the Temple News with other guys who eventually came to the Inquirer, like Clark DeLeon and Tony Wood and Howie Shapiro. We got our education there, and I guess when you spend so much time doing something like that, something else has to suffer. For me, that was classes."

Nonetheless, Ferrick got a job at the old news service, United Press International, in Philadelphia and later in Harrisburg. In 1976, he was hired to be a Statehouse reporter in Harrisburg for the Inquirer and has had a succession of editing and writing jobs there ever since: City Hall bureau chief, poverty reporter, political writer, deputy editor and special projects writer.

"I've been very lucky; I've only had to write one résumé in my life," Ferrick said. "The Inquirer called and asked me if I would like to apply for a job. I wrote a résumé for that, and I guess I didn't even need that one. That's a very, very lucky thing in these times."

Since Ferrick realizes the valuable experience a school newspaper can offer an aspiring journalist, he has been spending most Fridays with The Daily Pennsylvanian reporting staff. He said he asked for the duty because he felt he should be giving something back to the University during the time of his fellowship.

"This seemed like the best thing," he said. "It seemed a lot more worthwhile than lecturing some class on land-use planning or something like that."

Ferrick said the sessions with The Daily Pennsylvanian are more like seminars on the basics of reporting. "Because most of the reporters tend to be freshmen and sophomores, they are less experienced in actual reporting," he explained. "I hope just by being there and talking with them, I can help them out. They are all very bright and just need a little guidance."

Ferrick is unsure of what he will do when he goes back to work at the Inquirer come May 1, but he does want to write something about urban living. He is an enthusiastic city partisan, always willing to share new finds in restaurants, stores and other nooks of living in his native city. But he said that he doesn't think anyone should start picking him for their intramural softball teams just yet.

"I had a terrible accident at birth," he said with that laugh, way ahead of the punch line. "I got my father's looks and my mother's coordination. I never did play baseball that well. My seven-year-old is a pretty good ballplayer, though. He's my retirement plan. Maybe my next screenplay."

Return to Compass Features for April 23, 1996