Doctor, My Eyes

A conversation with Art Cullen, the Pulitzer Prize winning Iowa journalist who has done all that he could to see the evil and the good.

Art Cullen of The Storm Lake Times (right) accepts the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing from Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger.

By Michael Judge

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise
To leave them open for so long?

— Jackson Browne

IOWA CITY, Iowa — I first met Art Cullen, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of Art Cullen’s Notebook, at a funeral for a friend’s father back in 2017. The father, Jim Benson—just like his son Lucas—was a kind man from Marathon, Iowa. Jim was a farmer, savvy businessman, and, in Art’s words “the smartest man I ever met.” Art gave the eulogy. Iris DeMent sang “Amazing Grace.” You couldn’t ask for a better sendoff. That Catholic church in Waukee, Iowa, was full of love and loss and, most of all, understanding.

I mention this now because Jim’s funeral, it seems to me, represents the best of what life (and death) here in Iowa has to offer—a community that may not always agree with you, but damn sure will hear you…