There are several thousand true stories in our town. This is one of them.

A Visit With the Editor


Our town began life as a company town. Until the 1960s the company provided nearly all of the employment, built most municipal facilities, and owned most housing. Company towns tend to have a bad reputation. When a single entity controls almost everything about a community’s civic and economic life, there is great and obvious potential for abuse. In the days when company towns were common there was much of this in places. Company employees were sometimes lured to such towns with the promise of good wages. They found themselves caught instead in a cycle of debt thanks to the company’s monopoly on necessary goods. Hence Tennessee Ernie Ford’s lament in “Sixteen Tons:”

You load sixteen tons,
And what do you get?
Another day older
And deeper in debt.
St. Peter don’t call me,
‘Cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul
To the company store.

But not all companies were created alike. Some had essentially humane owners and managers who took a genuine paternal concern for their employees. They provided good-quality housing, fair wages, and reasonable working conditions. The company that founded this town, it is generally agreed, followed something more like this model.

In 1938 the company, with a combination of altruistic and pragmatic motives, started a monthly bulletin on safety. The following year this became a full-fledged magazine, glossy, illustrated, and professional-looking. It ran monthly until the company sold out in the early 1960s. It was distributed free to all company employees. Others could subscribe for a dollar a year.

So for nearly a quarter century the town had its own magazine. It largely concerned the dealings of the company, of course—its facilities, its products, its service awards and special events. There was also much about the community as well. School awards and events were covered. So were local sports. Whenever a new school or civic building was built, there would be an article on it. In later years there were articles on the early history of the town. There are plenty of pictures, of proud service award winners, of plants and machinery, of city events. Half the town probably appeared in these photos at one time or another. For a time there was a monthly amateur photography contest, with the winning photo appearing in the magazine.

Like most magazines of the time, it exudes a sense of cheer and optimism. Things were good, the articles conveyed. With planning and work they could get better. There was more to it, of course. There were some labor disputes. There were, despite the continual emphasis on safety, occasional serious accidents. And the racial attitudes of the time were apparent in the coverage of different white and “colored” events (though the latter were covered, and were supported by the company in much the same way as the former).

And yet many things did indeed improve during those decades. Public health, public services, and standards of living all made enormous progress. And if the period is now seen as one of racial tension, it is because this was the time when people actually tried to do something about long-held racist policies, and did so with much success. It is small wonder that so many people with memories of the era, male and female, black and white, remember it with such nostalgia. For those of us who have grown up with today’s pervasive anger, incivility, and cynical pessimism that nostalgia is a powerful temptation.

Our library has three bound sets of the magazine. They form an historical resource that few towns this size can boast. I sometimes direct patrons studying local history or looking for information about families to the magazine. It is a good source of information for me as well. I only moved here a few years ago, so I did not grow up knowing the local history and people.

Currently I am working on a display about the magazine for the library. I’m combing loose copies of the magazine that we have in addition to the bound sets for representative articles and images. The display will hopefully call more attention to this unique resource. While it has not been easy to find time and energy from my other responsibilities to work on it, the project has been a lot of fun. I like being a curator.

I asked a local historian who comes to the library often where I could find more background information on the magazine for our display. He suggested speaking to a friend of his. This friend happens to be the magazine’s founder and original editor. I had met him before, but had not made the connection between his name and the name on the early issues of the magazine. It seemed incredible that after seventy years they could be one and the same. They were.

Two days later the former editor came to my office. At ninety-three he still gets around. He is clearly feeble and has much shortness of breath. When you speak with him, it quickly becomes clear that his mind and memory are still quite sharp. He described how he came to town seven decades ago as a new college graduate, following a young schoolteacher who became his wife. While working as a clerk at the safety office, he was asked to put out the new safety bulletin. At his own initiative, on his own time in the evenings, he turned the little bulletin into a real magazine with professional printing and advertising. The company soon gave the venture its full support and reimbursed him for his time.

After a few years as editor he went on to other positions in the company. From there he joined the board of the biggest local bank. He served there for many years. When he was in his seventies he lost his wife and remarried. The bride was seventy and had never married before. They have been together for fifteen years so far. I’ve heard elsewhere that one seldom sees one without the other.

He is still active in the AARP and other civic organizations. He remembered seeing me at the last Chamber of Commerce meeting about two weeks ago, and even had nice things to say about some comments I had made there. Currently he is compiling the latest of several local oral history projects he has managed. Much of the work for it took place at the library. By way of thanks he will present us with a copy of record when the project is done.

After I had spoken with him, I happened to see a local newspaper reporter who comes around often. I told him about the display project and suggested that this local editor/bank trustee/historian and much else would be a great subject for an interview (which he had told me he would be glad to do). He said he would talk to the editor about the possibility. The paper has done such interviews before.

I hope the interview comes off. This man’s seventy years and counting amount to well over half of the town’s history. Anyone who has been as involved as he has, for as long as he has, with the memories that he has, is a local treasure. We owe it to ourselves and to future citizens to record everything we can from him, while we still have the opportunity.

Wow. The reporter and editor really need to get a move on. What a historical resource!