Ed Lewis: ‘A true newspaper man’
♦ Former Calhoun Times General Manager dies at 90
A longtime local newspaper veteran and former elected official passed away over the weekend, but the legacy he left is remembered by many.
According to his family, James Edward “Ed” Lewis, 90, died peacefully at his home Sunday surrounded by family.
Lewis was born June 4, 1932, in Gordon County, the son of the now late John A. Lewis Sr. and Gladys Owens Lewis. He graduated from Calhoun High School, was an Air Force veteran, served as a Calhoun City Council member for a dozen years, was an active member at Calhoun First United Methodist
Church, and — with 65 years — Lewis was the most tenured Calhoun Elks Lodge member.
Lewis retired as Calhoun Times General Manger in the late 90s after a newspaper career spanning more than four decades beginning in the 1950s.
“Ed was a true newspaper man,” Calhoun Times Regional Sales Manager Billy Steele said. “He wanted things done right.”
Steele recalls one time when something wasn’t done right, and how Lewis responded.
“One day the [printing press] plates were duplicated and the same two pages ran twice while two other pages were not in the paper,” Steele said. “The paper was already out in racks. When I called Ed, who was at lunch, thinking we would just give credit to the advertisers who were left out, he came tearing back to the office, made the delivery guys go pick up every paper in the racks and at stores, made us take every insert out, reprint the paper and re-stuff the inserts into them. He did not have to do that but that was the standard that Ed had for the paper.”
Former longtime Calhoun Times Editor Mitch Talley, who eventually worked for Lewis, recalls when their professional relationship began while he was at the CHS school newspaper in ninth grade.
“I was a staff member of the high school newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, and worked closely with Ed for the next four years since he was in charge of printing our paper there,” Talley said.
Talley said he worked for Lewis for about 20 years at the Times after high school, and watched the old dog learn new tricks — especially dealing with typesetting, and layout technology — and did it without complaint.
“Unlike some folks in the industry [Ed] was able to change with the times and worked for many more years, seeing even more changes along the way as we changed over to computers,” Talley said.
It wasn’t even Lewis’ long newspaper career that made the deepest impression on Talley, however, but his service to his community.
“What I admired most about Ed was his service to the city as a councilman for many, many years,” Talley said. “I never really asked him about why he was willing to devote so many hours to that, but