Looking Back

January 1969

(Editor’s Note: This column looking back at St. Francis County’s history is featured each Friday on this Lifestyles page along with the week’s History Photo. The items included in this column were printed in previous editions of the Times-Herald.)

Lawman Killed - Four men have been charged with murder and armed robbery in connection with the slaying of a night marshall who was investigating the robbery of a small store near Hughes, said County Sheriff Clarence Montgomery. Killed was C.G. Morgan, 69, a deputy county sheriff, who was filling in for Hughes Marshall Mack Hill who was sick. The four arrested at the scene by two state troopers were identified as Franklin Bosnick, 40; his son, Franklin Jr., 17, both of Moro in Lee County, and Dewey Ray Murray, 24, and Danny Wayne McKay, 17, both of Pineville, La. Montgomery said two troopers, Bobby Self of Marianna and AJ Hadaway of Hughes, were on routine patrol near the scene of the shooting and arrived moments after Morgan was killed. The four men were arrested without a struggle, said Montgomery. Morgan had been called to investigate after Jimmy Vance, an employee of J.E. Shannon farm near Hughes, drove up to the store and saw three men holding guns on the operators of the store, Mr. and Mrs. James V. Gatteys. Vance and J.W. Helms, general manager of the farm, were at the store when Morgan arrived. They told him that the three had taken the Gatteys into the living quarters of the store. Morgan went to the porch and asked Mrs. Gatteys if everything was alright. At this point, the men opened the door and fired. Marshall Hill said Morgan was struck by at least seven bullets and may have been hit by 12 or 15. One bullet had been fired from Morgan’s pistol. The two troopers arrived shortly after the shooting and blocked the driveway before arresting the men.

T-H Publisher Named to board Bonner McCollum, editor and publisher of the Daily TimesHerald, was named to a four-year term on the board of directors of the Arkansas Press Association at the organization's annual winter meeting in Hot Springs. The board supervises and establishes general polices for 161 Arkansas daily and weekly newspapers affiliated with the APA. McCollum was selected for the board by an APA nominating committee and approved by the general membership.

Change At Times Herald - Times are changing…and so is the

Times-Herald. Its new building is nearing the time of occupancy, the new machinery is being tried and tested and the big switch from letterpress to offset is in the making. The change in the printing process will mark a big change on one employee's daily working life. Jim Jones, who has been with the Times-Herald since 1926, will find that his brawn and muscles will have much easier time in the years to come. Jim just missed his first days of work in 20 years when the Hong Kong flu knocked him out. One TimesHerald customer who comes into the office regularly and checks with Jim about his ads remarked that it was the first time he could ever remember Jim not being hard at work in the shop. Jim came to work for the TimesHerald when it was owned and published by John T. Durst. At that time the newspaper office was located at the corner of Front and Izard streets and was published only once a week. Three people were employed in the back shop at that time. Earl Roberts operated the one linotype, Herbert Vogel was the foreman and Jim made up the pages and ran the drum cylinder, sheet fed press. Jim says they printed about 1,500 or 1,600 papers each week and that he had to stand at the press and insert each page into the press one by one. "We'd put in a sheet and print it, then we'd turn it over and let it print on the other side," said Jim. "It took about three hours of standing there to make a complete run." In those days, they never ran pictures because they had no facilities for doing it and with just one linotype even though they had all week to prepare it, they never had enough copy to fill up the paper, so they used a news filler called "boderplate" supplied by Western Newspaper Union to round out the pages. When asked about the "boderplate,” Jim shrugged and laughed, "Oh, that

old junk!" In 1931, the TimesHerald became a daily paper, and in 1942, it was purchased from Mr. Durst by Fred N. McCollum Sr. In about 1948, the newspaper offices were moved to the location on Garland Street and from a sheet fed press, it progressed to a Duplex flatbed press and then to the Cox-O-Type flatbed press which is now in use. Both these later presses print about 3,000 papers in an hour. In order for the Times-Herald readers to be able to enjoy their evening reading of the local paper, much preparation is needed daily. New stories and new copy are put back daily, new ads are made up and linotype operators work steadily to produce on metal type, the new daily paper. After everything (copy, ads, pictures) is cast in metal, Jim helps prepare and make up the forms which he later carries to the press and inserts into place. This may sound like a simple procedure, but it isn't. For each form, after it is completed weighs about 100 pounds. Jim picks up each form, carries it to the press and goes down into the pit under the press and sets it up. Considering the fact that Jim has to do all this for each page that is printed, it means that he could carry anywhere from 600 to 1,600 pounds or more of metal a day.

Man Awarded $1,135 - Sgt. Robert Westbrock, son of Mr. and Mrs. Tom Westbrock of Palestine, recently received a $1,135 award from the U.S. Air Force for a suggestion he made that will enable the Air Force to save more than $26,000 a year. The award was made at Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, where he is stationed. It was presented by Lt. Col. Earl Furnace, commander of the 3rd Munitions Maintenance Squadron to which Westbrock is assigned. Sergeant Westbrock's suggestion concerned the use of an impact wrench to remove shipping bolts and install boosters on bombs. He is a team chief in charge of 14 persons. According to the Guam Daily

News, shipping bolts on bombs previously were removed by speed wrenches and the boosters installed by hand. Now the ring bolts are removed by impact guns and a special adaptor for the gun allows installation of the boosters. The new method will save many man hours and increase the number of bombs readied daily, the Air Force said. The award is the fourth largest made at Guam. A graduate of Palestine High School and a veteran of eight years in the Air Force. Westbrock returned to the maintenance field a year ago. He has been stationed at Anderson since October, 1967 and will return to the United States next October. Westbrock's twin brother Raymond Westbrock, also is an Air Force staff sergeant at Lubbock, Texas.

City Police Officer Suspended Police Chief Marvin Gunn said the police department suspended a patrolman for contact unbecoming an officer. He said officer Bill Callahan has been suspended for two weeks and will forfeit all pay and privileges from the department as a result of striking a teenager while the boy was being questioned about a missing gun. The suspension followed a meeting of the police chief and the city police commission. The officer will also serve a probationary period when he returns to the force, said Gunn. In commenting on suspension, Chief Gunn said, "We have tried our best to upgrade the police department and some of our community, as we are police servants. We are also constantly doing everything we can to discourage mistreatment. Our duties are to assist the citizens of the community in any way we can and to protect them through the enforcement of the laws of our city, state and country. Any punishment administered is to be done by the courts, not the officers.

Moving A Newspaper - The past two weeks have been real busy for the Times-Herald staff, but the worst seems to be over and the major hurdles cleared. Operations should become smoother now as procedures are established and become habits, and you, our customers, should be getting your copies nearer the proper time as these rough spots are eliminated. Moving a newspaper isn't as easy as one might presume, for it can't just close up shop for several days to make the change. A newspaper has commitments both to its subscribers and its advertisers and those commitments must be honored. It is not possible to describe all that went on during

the 10-day moving process, nor would you be interested in the trivialities. The story, though of how a paper moves from one building to another, changes its entire method of printing and still manages not to miss an issue (all right we are a little late sometimes) is interesting, for there were literally hundreds of things to be considered. For instance, how do you disconnect a 6,000-pound linotype on Saturday morning, move it a block, set it up in a new building and have it operating at 8 a.m. Monday? You do it with planning, sweet, muscle and lots of overtime man hours. The linotype, for example, that does many of the one column heads, hundreds of molds that form the individual letters. All extra delicate parts taken off the machine and gas and electric lines disconnected. Then the linotype is jacked up, set on and bolted to four by fours, which then must be jacked up more. In moves a fork lift truck which picks the machine up, transports it to the new location and sets it onto position in the new building. But wait! Proceeding all of that, the plate glass window and the lower portion of the front wall at the old building had to be removed so the forklift could even get to the linotype and that operation alone required about 20 man hours. Now, however, you have the linotype in position in its new home. In move the plumbers, the electricians, the linotype technicians…all working over, around and through each other to replace those eight magazines, reconnect gas and electric lines and check out the machine to see that everything is working correctly. Miraculously, it is and the machine will be ready for use Monday morning. Simple? No, and the move was compounded by the necessity to do the same with about 10 other similar machines. Add to that the desks, typewriters, files, type cabinets, makeup counters, trays of handset type, job presses, advertising art, cameras and darkroom equipment, job-printing stock, casting boxes, standing forms, thousands of pounds of metal (and assorted other materials, particularity the coffee pot!). The major portion of the move was made the first weekend, but the

Times-Herald was printed Monday, Jan. 20, on its old press at 505 E. Garland. That night, the 17-member staff switched to the new building at 222 N. Izard and began preparing for Thursday. Utter confusional habits, procedures and thinking patterns used just the day before then were obsolete, for no longer was the paper to be printed from metal type and molds of advertising illustrations. Beginning Tuesday, Jan. 21, the

Times-Herald was officially converted to the offset method of printing. Then, the method changed to printing from slips of paper containing stuck-on words from machines resembling electric typewriters and from paper illustrations instead of from metal casts, by photography. It was 7:30 Tuesday night before the paper began coming off the press but that was not the end of hay day. Coming up next was Wednesday – grocery advertising day and traditionally the largest paper of the week – and the staff members worked on to 11:30 Tuesday night preparing for that. Wednesday's paper was put on the press at 6:30, Thursday it was being printed at 5:30, then Friday struck. Each day the paper had been going to press earlier as new work flows were being adopted and ideas accepted. But Friday was a different matter. That day, both of the headlineproducing machines decided to act up and only a concentrated effort by the entire crew got the paper off the press at 5:30 again. Those things happen, but happily they can be resolved. This week, the Monday edition was out earlier and Tuesday the press run was finished at 4:15. It has been a mess…and fun…and frustrating…and wearisome (certainly never boring)…but rewarding. When all the new methods are mastered by the staff, Forrest City will have the most modern small-city newspaper plant in the Southwest and the Times-Herald, hopefully, will be the Southwest's most progressive small city newspaper. Through it all, you, our readers and customers, have been wonderful in your understanding of our problems. We apologize for the inconveniences we may have caused during this transition and promise you we are striving to get better…earlier.

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