THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 19, 1995 TAG: 9508180026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Just about 55 years ago, I was the new kid at the afternoon Ledger-Dispatch, which was to become The Ledger-Star and which now is about to become history.
As mail boy, then copy boy and then green reporter just before World War II broke out and pulled me away for a while, I was surrounded by old newspaper hands. I was awed by the local fame of some of them:
Spats-clad Charles Day, who wrote federal-court news and a scrap of daily verse called ``Lights O' Day;'' crusty old Jay Lewis who reviewed books and covered business news and who gave members of the staff the review copies as gifts at Christmas; feisty but soft-hearted Tom Hanes, the managing editor; Charlie Reilly, the sports editor whose ``Press Box'' column was even snappier than the clothes he wore; Charlie Hoofnagle, puckish but respected music critic; Sandy Curtis, good for a pun a day (but not in his church coverage); W.E. Debnam, a melodramatic writer who also did a daily newscast on the radio, one that always wound up: ``No matter what happens or where, you'll read it first in the Ledger-Dispatch.''
As I moved through various news and editorial jobs over the years there were lots of others - some who made the paper a colorful place without getting their names in print very much, people like unflappable City Editor Joe Shank, wiry-voiced Andy Ewing, transplanted South African Scotty Minshull, delivering gibes from another desk slot; pipe-smoking Eddie Holmes who with pastepot and scissors kept the syndicated features moving back to the typesetters in the composing room.
Others of my later years had more visible roles. Wry and courtly Joe Leslie, who had worked for the morning paper and who wrote a popular column as ``Josephus Bush,'' was the Ledger editor when I joined the editorial department in 1952. My next editorial boss was Perry Morgan who advised me: ``Never underestimate the reader's intelligence; never over-estimate his information.'' And after him, Bill Fitzpatrick, who had won a Pulitzer Prize before he came to us - a fast-thinker and gritty writer who waged all-out war on the excess of adjectives in my editorials.
Their tutelage put a lot of good stuff in my personal bank, and made for lively recollections. But something of a wide-eyed feeling colored all the later memories, too, right up and through my stint as editor - the Ledger's last, as it turned out, my retirement in 1987 coinciding with the merger of the afternoon and morning editorial pages.
I was still the new kid. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. by CNB