Welcome to the Alabama Newspaper
Hall of Honor


Sept. 17, 2005
Ralph B. Draughon Library
Auburn University


Photos and Web page by Ed Williams
willik5@auburn.edu
Professor
Department of Communication and Journalism
Auburn University

Inductees
Ralph W. Callahan
The Anniston Star


Neil O. Davis
The Auburn Bulletin


Alabama Press Association president Ferrin Cox, publisher of The Elba Clipper, talks about the history of the APA Alabama
Newspaper Hall of Honor.  Looking on are Dr. Dale Harrison, chair of the Auburn University Department of Communication
and Journalism; Deedie Dowdle of Auburn University; Felicia Mason, executive director of the Alabama Press Association;
and Ann Smith, chairman of the APA Hall of Honor and associate editor of The Eufaula Tribune.





Family and friends of newspapermen Ralph Callahan and Neil Davis.


His giant shadow: The late Ralph W. Callahan, a longtime Star employee, takes his place among Alabama newspaper legends

By Ed Williams
Special to The Anniston Star
10-02-2005

Two giants in Alabama journalism, Ralph W. Callahan and Neil O. Davis, were enshrined in the Alabama Newspaper Hall of Honor at Auburn University recently. They were two of the best of the best in Alabama newspaper lore.

On Sept. 17, The Anniston Star’s Ralph Callahan and The Auburn Bulletin’s Neil Davis became the 96th and 97th inductees to be posthumously honored by the Alabama Press Association.

I accepted the task some years back of updating the history of the APA, and both Callahan and Davis were important to that project. They were two of the most senior newspapermen in the state, and I picked their brains and recorded memories of their early newspaper days.

Both seemed flattered that I sought their help, and they seemed proud to have played a role in the writing of the 1997 book, “The Press of Alabama: A History of the Alabama Press Association.”

The newspaper careers of these two men were different, Callahan spending most of his career on the business side of the newspaper, and Davis on the news and editorial end. But the pair had a lot in common.

Both were newspapermen of stature in the industry, but neither strayed far from their Southern roots. Both were Alabama natives, both spent most of their careers in Alabama, and both loved their newspapers.

Both lived long lives, and both were blessed with fairly good health. And while both encountered some physical limitations in their later years, God blessed them with keen minds that never deteriorated.

Callahan, the oldest working newspaperman in Alabama at the time of his death in 2000, certainly was also one of the oldest working journalists in the United States. He never stopped working, literally. When I asked him (at age 89!) if he had any plans to ever retire, he told he would only do so when “the undertaker comes to get me.” That’s not far from the truth. Callahan was working at The Anniston Star and Consolidated Publishing until a fall hospitalized him shortly before his death.

Both were former presidents of the Alabama Press Association, Davis in 1947-48, and Callahan in 1965-66.

Both appeared on a 1996 luncheon panel that I moderated at the Alabama Press Association’s 125th anniversary convention in Montgomery. Callahan delighted the audience with a story about the famous “Monkey Trial” and William Jennings Bryan, when he was working at The Nashville Tennessean.

They seldom missed the annual Alabama Newspaper Hall of Honor ceremony each fall on the Auburn University campus. In later years, Callahan was driven to the ceremony by Phil Sanguinetti, The Star’s president.

In Newspaper Hall of Honor in Auburn University’s Ralph Brown Draughon Library, Callahan joins his friend and mentor Harry M. Ayers, Anniston Star editor and publisher who was inducted in 1969.

Both outlived their wives, Ida Bell Callahan and Henrietta Davis, and both were wed to lifelong partners whom they adored.

Both had keen wits. Both were Southern gentlemen, and both lived Christian lives. Neither was opposed to a toddy at the end of the day. Both were fun to be with.

Both got to see sweeping changes in the newspaper industry, from the Linotype to the Internet, and both got to see the dawn of the 21st century.

Both were marvelous storytellers.

Because of his senior status, Callahan liked to boast of his “license to reminisce,” and a framed copy of the “license” given to him by co-workers hung on his office wall at The Star. Callahan was fond of relating stories of his friendship with “the Colonel,” Harry M. Ayers, whom he called his “boss, mentor and friend.”

Listen to this story that Callahan told me of the day in 1932 when he drove Col. Ayers to Georgia to meet Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was preparing to run for president of the United States:

“(Mr. Roosevelt) was over there at his Warm Springs (Ga.) place. So I said, ‘All right sir, I’ll drive you over.’ We drove over and at the door Lucy met us. Lucy was [FDR’s] girlfriend.

“Anyhow, Lucy Mercer, she carried us through the house to a back porch which was screened. Mr. Roosevelt was sitting there in a wheelchair with a robe on, having some late coffee. And after some preliminary things, the Colonel told him, ‘Mr. Roosevelt, I like what you say and what you are doing and I want to be the first newspaper in the South to endorse you for president.’ Well, Mr. Roosevelt thought that was pretty nice, I guess.

“Anyway, things went on for a while and we thanked him for being available to talk to us and we left. And The Star was the first newspaper in the South to endorse Mr. Roosevelt for president. That was in ’32. On March 4, 1933, I was in the Willard Hotel sticking my head out the window to watch President Roosevelt ride down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Wonderful, rich stories these men told.

I’m glad that Ralph Callahan and Neil Davis shared some of their stories with me.

Ed Williams is a professor in Auburn University’s Department of Communication
and Journalism.
 He wr
ote "The Press of Alabama:  A History of The Alabama Press Association, in 1996.  He conducted personal interviews with Ralph Callahan and Neil Davis for that book)


Ralph Callahan Jr. of Greenville, S.C., talks about his late father.   Ralph Callahan Sr., longtime executive with The Anniston Star,
lived a colorful life and was an icon in the press of Alabama for many years.


Ralph Callahan Jr. (holding  plaque),  his brother-in-law, Louis Amis, and Ralph Callahan's grandsons,
Wade and Wells Amis of Huntsville.  Wade and Wells Amis hold the distinction of having
two grandfathers in the Hall of Honor.  Their other grandfather, Reese Amis of The Huntsville Times,
was inducted in the Hall of Honor in 1971.

                                                                                (Photo by Trice Megginson, AU Photographic Services)



Neil Davis' grandson, attorney Warren Savage of Raleigh, N.C., recalls memories of his grandfather.  Seated
on front row is Neil Davis' daughter, Katherine Davis Savage, and Warren Savage's son, 10-year-old
Neil Savage, named for his great grandfather, Neil Owen Davis.

Speech for Induction of Neil O. Davis
To the APA Hall of Honor
September 17, 2005

Warren Savage
Grandson of Neil O. Davis

Our grandfather would be proud to be inducted into this Hall of Honor.  He thought it was important. We know this because he helped nominate some of the people closest to him who are now inductees themselves -- his wife, Henrietta, who also was his partner in publishing the Lee County, and later Auburn, Bulletin; Graham McTeer, the longtime Bulletin managing editor; Carroll Kilpatrick, who covered the White House for the Washington Post; and Charlie Dobbins, who worked for newspapers in Alabama before going off to Washington. All these people were dear to him and our family, and now he joins them in the Hall of Honor. We thank the Alabama Press Association for making this possible.

Neil Davis also would appreciate where this is taking place - - Auburn, his hometown for more than 60 years, and at Auburn University, where he went to school and remained loyal to until his death five years ago. Our grandfather loved Auburn and the university. He thought this was the greatest place in the world to live, a town where people were warm and genuine.  Newspaper editors sometimes aren’t the most popular people in a community, but our grandfather didn’t let differences of opinion dampen his spirit and sense of generosity. He spoke to everyone he met on the street. He was friendly to people who openly opposed his editorial stands.

His son, my uncle Owen, remembers a time George Wallace came to town to give a campaign speech for his wife, Lurleen, in 1966. Our grandfather and Wallace were poles apart, and Governor Wallace had done things to try to hurt our grandfather’s business. But after the speech, our grandfather spotted an elderly Auburn man who had throat cancer and had trouble talking. The gentleman wanted to shake Wallace’s hand.  Neil Davis tried to make his way through the crowd so the politician he probably criticized the most could meet a man who admired him.

Everybody who read the Auburn Bulletin knew where Neil Davis stood on various issues, and for his time, he was liberal in a conservative state. But he didn’t let his editorial positions influence the newspaper’s coverage. The Bulletin played it straight. It told readers what was going on in government, schools and the university -- without bias. Our grandfather believed this: The survival of the newspaper depended on its credibility. Without that, it had nothing.

For most of the time he owned the paper, it came out once a week, later going to twice weekly. The Auburn Bulletin was a community newspaper in the true sense. The lead photo on the front page often was of somebody’s kid. Maybe with a dog. If a resident took a nice trip or held a party or was receiving out-of-town guests, it often appeared in the column called “About People You Know.” And there were stories about Little League baseball, the Halloween carnival, the sailor on the aircraft carrier that picked up the first astronauts to fly to the moon, and the list of honor roll students at Auburn High School.

And then our grandfather might remind readers in an editorial: Alabama will be a better state only if it helps lift those people at the bottom and give them and their children a decent education. Our grandfather thought a newspaper was more than a business. He thought it could help make the world better by giving readers an accurate account of the news, and appeal to their better instincts in its editorials.

Neil Davis won three national awards for his editorial writing and numerous state awards. The Auburn Bulletin also often won awards for general excellence, news coverage, typography and the like. But it was hardly a one-man show. Our grandmother, Henrietta Davis, was at our father’s side from the start. She was hired as his first reporter. Graham McTeer was the chief reporter for more than 20 years. Alma Shaffer covered society news for more than 30. J.C. Woodall worked with our grandfather on the production end for more than 20 years and helped the newspaper look clean and readable. And there were plenty of others who contributed.

Our grandmother said our grandfather was the most optimistic man she knew. He was such an optimist that despite the distressing times of the Great Depression, he started the Auburn Bulletin in 1937 at the age of 22, in a small college town with little advertising base.   He had been the editor at the Auburn University student newspaper, the Plainsman, where he met our grandmother.  After graduating and working at other newspapers for a year and a half, he came back to Auburn with our grandmother to start the Bulletin.  He never moved again except for a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University followed by his service during World War II.

Neil Davis first made money from newspapers as a youngster in Hartford, Ala., where he sold the Sunday St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He was something of an entrepreneur growing up. He and a friend bought raw peanuts from a local farmer, boiled them and sold them in bags on the street. He also cut lawns. When he went to college during the Depression, he worked part-time as a printer’s devil at the Auburn Printing Co. and waited tables at the Lambda Chi Alpha house. Even though his father was a dentist, money was tight. He remembered wearing his ROTC uniform to class for most of one school quarter to cut down on his laundry bill. After he started the Bulletin, and up into his 60s, he did just about anything required to put out the paper. He sold advertising, pasted up pages in the back shop and tweaked the ink flow on the press.  Once a week he worked into the wee hours of the morning to get the paper printed. Our grandmother frequently slept in an easy chair in his office.

This Hall of Honor has a lot of people in it who worked long hours. They felt they had a mission: Keep readers informed with the truth, as best they knew it, and try to make their communities a better place to live. We think our grandfather, Neil Davis, fulfilled that mission. We’re proud to be here today to honor his memory.


Family of the late Neil O. Davis, founder of The Lee County Bulletin.
  Davis' great grandson, 10-year-old Neil Savage, holds the plaque  commemorating
 Davis' induction to the Alabama Newspaper Hall of Honor.  Neil Davis joins his wife,
the late Henrietta Worsley Davis, in the Hall of outstanding Alabama
 newspaper men and women.  Mrs. Davis, who worked as a reporter and editor
at The Lee County Bulletin, was inducted in 1997.  (Photo by Trice Megginson, AU Photographic Services)

IF ONLY ALABAMA HAD LISTENED TO NEIL DAVIS
Joe Distelheim
Editor, The Huntsville Times
June 11, 2000


It's a small world, the cliche says. It's a good thing,
because were it not so, I probably never would have
had a conversation with Neil Davis, a great Alabamian.

I have a relatively easy job as editor of an Alabama
newspaper in 2000.

My newspaper is more or less middle of the road in a
more or less middle of the road community. We write
about issues that seem today to be controversial, and
one editorial stand or another may drive a hot
letter-to-the-editor, but when the Auburn-Alabama
rivalry is near the top of the heated-rhetoric list, you
know that the passions of the day aren't too serious.

I'm thinking about serious issues and Neil Davis, who
died this past week at 85. He had a hard job.

Mr. Davis became an Alabama newspaper editor when
he founded the Lee County (now Auburn) Bulletin, a
weekly. The decade was the 1930s; he was 22 years
old and he had some pretty far-out ideas.

He thought Alabama ought to spend more money on
education. He stood up for poor people. He wrote that
the state should do away with the poll tax, which kept
many of the poor - black and white - from voting.

In succeeding decades, tensions rose in this state. It's
not hard to figure out now what newspapers, as opinion
leaders, should have said then. They should have said
racial violence would hurt the state's image and
economy, leaving it behind not only the rest of the
nation, but much of the rest of the South. They should
have said desegregation was inevitable, and the state's
leaders should prepare citizens for it rather than incite
opposition that would lead to violence. They should
simply have said that Alabama needed to obey the law.

Many of them didn't. Mr. Davis did. For his work in
Auburn, and later Tuskegee, he won prizes, he won
exposure for his editorials in papers as far away as The
New York Times, he won . . . the enmity of some of the
less far-sighted Alabama press.

Ed Williams, a journalism professor at Auburn,
interviewed Mr. Davis a few years ago for a history of
the Alabama Press Association. I kept a photocopy of
that chapter in a file where I put stuff that's too good to
throw away.

The best part was the story about his trip to Washington
in 1963.

President John F. Kennedy, worried about the racial
climate in the South, was inviting groups of newspaper
editors and publishers to meet with him. Mr. Davis'
Bulletin had been the only weekly newspaper in the state
to endorse Kennedy, but when it came Alabama's turn
to go to the White House, he wasn't on the guest list.

Through a contact in Washington, he wangled an
invitation, and showed up for the meeting. ''What I
enjoyed most,'' he told Williams, ''was the expression on
the faces of my fellow Alabama newspaper editors and
publishers, most of whom had a hand in putting together
the guest list. For some reason, they didn't think I should
be included.''

After the meeting with the president, a man tapped him
on the shoulder and asked Mr. Davis to follow him. The
attorney general, Robert Kennedy, had asked to see
him.

''Well, what he wanted to talk about was developing a
strategy for dealing with the situation in Birmingham,''
Mr. Davis recalled. ''He wanted me to give him some
names of persons that he could contact and plead with
them to bring some sense out of a terrible situation. . . .

''I was more impressed by him than I was the president.
He was all heart and into this thing so deeply, and he got
so excited in talking about it. He came around from the
back of his desk and he got up on it and crossed his legs
like a child would do, sitting on that big desk and talking
about the prospects. . . .''

Borrowing again from Williams' interview:

''I founded the Lee County Bulletin in 1937. I found out
that in a small community it was best to write about the
Chamber of Commerce projects, Rotary Club meetings,
that sort of thing.

''But when you got into writing about such things as
trying to point out that we were all captives of some
myths about our own history, if I suggested that we need
to do something about hookworm or pellagra, that was
throwing off on the South. You didn't do that. You are
supposed to write, 'We have a great community.' You
don't write about such things.

''Then, when I moved cautiously from that to suggesting
that we need to do something about the poll tax,
abolishing it. . . .'' And he went on to describe how it
worked: Poor people would show up to register and be
told they had to pay not only the current levy, but for the
years they hadn't voted.

''They owed $10, $12, $15. That's a lot of money. They
didn't have it, so they couldn't pay it. They couldn't
vote.''

Someone pointed out Mr. Davis at a luncheon I was
attending in Auburn several years ago. I went over and
introduced myself, and we chatted for some time. He
didn't get up - he said apologetically that his legs were
giving him trouble - but the word that sticks in my mind
is ''gracious.''

I told him I was an admirer, and that I was the one
responsible for luring his son, daughter-in-law and
grandchildren out of their native South and far from
home. I'd recruited Owen Davis to a newspaper in the
North many years before. He liked it and stayed. I didn't
and moved to Alabama.

Small world.

Joe Distelheim
  was editor of The
Huntsville
Times from1994 until his retirement in 2002.
 He now lives in Hilton Head, S.C.


Interviews with Alabama’s senior
newspaper men and women
Conducted by Ed Williams at Saturday luncheon
APA 125th Anniversary Convention in Montgomery
Feb. 24, 1996

From "The Press of Alabama:  A History of the Alabama Press Association

By King E. (Ed) Williams Jr.

Chapter 12


Ralph W. Callahan, age 89
(Actively involved in Consolidated Publishing Co., Anniston, in 1996)
Born April 18, 1906
Consolidated Publishing Co.

    At age 89, you are the most senior active newspaper executive in the state of Alabama. You have been involved in the newspaper business ever since you were a paper boy on the staff of The Anniston Star when you were 12 years old. To what do you attribute your health and longevity?
    “The reason I’m here, really, is four four partial reasons. I have to thank my God, my wife, my golf, and turnip greens.”

    Your first full-time job was on the staff of The Nashville Tennessean.
    In 1925, one of history’s most famous court cases was heard, the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn. John Scopes was charged with teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee public school, and the chief defense attorney was Clarence Darrow. One of the prosecutors was William Jennings Bryan. You were working in the newsroom one Sunday afternoon when the telephone rang. Do you remember what the caller said that day in 1925?
    “I surely do. I understand Kathryn Tucker Windham is going to talk about ghost stories tonight, so I’ll tell you a ghost story. I was really too young to be at The Tennessean. I’d just gotten out of high school, but they were short on help and they gave me a job and it took them about nine months to fire me.
    “I had been there a couple of weeks and of course, I didn’t know anything about Nashville, and had no money really. So Sunday afternoon I’d go down to the office and went in that day and Paul Conway, who had at one time worked at The Star, was in the slot that afternoon and talking to a guy named Pennypacker who was our telegraph operator.
    “Back in those days every newspaper had to have a person to man the telephone switchboard. To connect to a telephone the operator would pick up a ring on an incoming call and stick the cord in the right phone hole. Naturally you didn’t have but one telephone. You had to have a switchboard, and they would pick up a cord and stick it in the right phone. I was there, and Paul was wondering what on earth he was going to have for Monday morning’s paper. This was Sunday and the trial wasn’t going on. In a few minutes the phone rang. Paul says, ‘What, oh, he ain’t dead.’
    “Paul told me, ‘Some person just called and asked what time William Jennings Bryan died.’ Paul says, ‘I told him that Bryan wasn’t dead.’
    “Anyways, we kept talking. ‘What are you going to have on Monday morning?’I asked Paul.
    “In a few moments the phone rang again. Paul says,‘What? I told you Bryan ain’t dead.’ He hung up.
    “Paul says, ‘We might have to run a story like Mark Twain’s I Ain’t Dead Story.’
    “But we kept talking, and in a few minutes the phone rang for the third time. Before he picked it up Paul says, ‘Ralph, run downstairs to the switchboard and trace this call and I’d like to get some comment on why they made this call.’
    “While he was talking, I ran downstairs to the switchboard and said, ‘Mary, let me in on this call that Paul Conway’s got up there so I can trace it.’
    “She said, ‘What call?’ I said, ‘Paul’s talking to somebody up there.’
    “‘Oh no he isn’t. I have not rung a telephone in the newsroom for over an hour,’ Mary told me.
    “Well, I ran back upstairs to see Paul and told him, ‘They say you are not connected.’
    “Well, Paul said, ‘Let’s go back to the Mark Twain story.’ He told me to call Joe Hatcher. The reason I had a job up there was that Joe Hatcher was one of the reporters who was down at Dayton covering the Scopes trial. So I called Joe Hatcher to get him to see Mr. Bryan and deny this thing. I called Joe and told him what was going on and wanted him to go see Mr. Bryan and get him to deny that he was dead. Bryan was staying in an old house that had a boarding house table for Sunday dinner.
    “Joe says, ‘Bryan’s gone upstairs to take a nap. He says, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Jim, his (Bryan’s) chauffeur is here. I’ll send Jim upstairs. Jim goes upstairs at Joe’s request and about two minutes later he comes running down the stairs, ‘Mr. Joe, Mr. Joe, Mr. Bryan -- he dead.’
    “The newsroom got awfully quiet. The mystery was never solved.
    “I swear.”

    You worked very closely with the late editor and publisher of The Anniston Star, Col. Harry Mell Ayers. Do you remember a visit the two of you made in 1932 to see Franklin Roosevelt?
    “Well, I sure do. Col. Ayers was my boss, my mentor, my friend. One morning he says, ‘Ralph, I want to go talk to Mr. Roosevelt. He’s fixing to run for president.’
    “He was over there at his Warm Springs (Ga.) place. So I said, ‘All right sir, I’ll drive you over.’ We drove over and at the door Lucy met us. They don’t print it now, but Lucy was his girlfriend. Anyway, Lucy Mercer, she carried us through the house to a back porch which was screened. Mr. Roosevelt was sitting there in a wheelchair with a robe on, having some late coffee. And after some preliminary things, the colonel told him, ‘Mr. Roosevelt, I like what you say and what you are doing and I want to be the first newspaper in the South to endorse you for president.’ Well, Mr. Roosevelt thought that was pretty nice, I guess.
    “Anyway, things went on for a little while and we thanked him for being available to talk to us and left. And The Star was the first newspaper in the  South to endorse Roosevelt for president. That was in ‘32. On March 4, 1933, I was in the Willard Hotel sticking my head out the window to watch President Roosevelt ride down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

    You were APA president in 1965. How were officers elected prior to your presidency?
    “I’m proud of the fact that during that administration we changed the way that you nominated officers for the press association. Before, it just had been an open meeting and anybody who wanted to nominate somebody would say, ‘Yeah, I nominate Joe’.
    “Well, I called Jack Venable’s predecessor down at The Tallassee Tribune, Herve Charest, and I said, ‘Herve, I would like for you to be head of a nominating committee provided one thing. If you will agree to nominate Bill Metz up at the Birmingham Post-Herald  to head the list of officers.’
    “Herve said, ‘Sure, I’ll do that.’
    “So that’s when the nominating committee started to being appointed to bring in a list of folks capable of running the press association. There was a time when the ex-presidents met and sat around a table and made nominations. Since 1965, we have had an organized nominating committee operating under Roberts Rules of Order, and I think it has worked very well.”

    When did the Alabama Press Association lose its weekly image and become a press association representing all the newspapers of Alabama?
    “I think it was when the daily newspapers came into the fold and began to contribute money for operations that the press association began to grow. By the same token, there was an understanding, if not expressed, condition by which the presidency of the press association would alternate from weekly to daily every other year.”

    The year that you were president, you insisted that there be more formality at the convention banquet that year, and that the men wear tuxedos. What did the late Porter Harvey, publisher of The Advertiser-Gleam in Guntersville, tell you?
    “He says, ‘I’ve never worn a tuxedo, and I ain’t gonna.’
    “I said, ‘Well, we’d like to change the image a good bit of this institution’ and I said, ‘Here’s the name of a rental place in Birmingham.’
    “Porter showed up in a black tie and did a great job. Porter was not only a good newspaper man, he was a good friend and I regret that he’s gone. He could join this crowd real good.”

Neil O. Davis, age 81
(Retired)
Born Aug. 15, 1914
Co-founder of The Lee County Bulletin, Auburn, in 1937
Editor and Publisher, The Lee County Bulletin, The Auburn Bulletin, 1937-1975

    You graduated from Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1935  and,with journalism professor Joseph Roop, founded The Lee County Bulletin in 1937. You said you attended your first Alabama Press Association Convention in 1938. Would you compare your first convention with the APA conventions of the 1990s?
    “Well, I’m not happy to say that at the press convention in 1938, most of the program was given on how they were going to sell more advertising and how to get more job printing. I was dismayed at how little attention was given to the things I was most interested in. So many of the community newspapers were at the time sort of run as adjunct printing more than the vice versa. There wasn’t much said about news and editorial content. That didn’t really happen until Doyle Buckles came on board (in 1939) as the field manager of APA.”

    You were on the APA committee that resulted in the hiring of Doyle Buckles as field manager in 1939, and placing APA headquarters on the University of Alabama campus. What do you recall about Buckles?
    “Doyle Buckles had the mind of a typical Midwesterner and I wondered at first, when he got here, how he was going to get along with this bunch of native Alabama editors and publishers. But after a few weeks, actually a few months, I was convinced he was just what the doctor ordered. Buckles brought some fresh perspectives; he was a combination, really, of a hard-headed newsman, and a good one, and a good businessman. Most of the publishers wanted somebody to tell them how to make a lot of money, how to sell more advertising and increase circulation, and he did a good bit of that. But Buckles kept trying to center the interest of the editors and publishers on a quality product.
    “Buckles very subtly...he didn’t say, ‘This is something you need to do,’ he just worked with the incoming officers to try to get programs dealing with newswriting coverage, the editorial product. Too few of the community papers had editorial pages. To tell you the truth, newspapers were, up until the late 1940s and 1950s, owned and operated by men who operated their papers as an adjunct to the print shop. They made their money on job printing and gave little attention to the newspaper.
    “Several of the editors got into the profession through the back door of being printers. Most were interested in finding out how to sell ads and how to sell subscriptions. There was not much attention given to the news and editorial side of the papers, and I give Buckles credit for the fact that he, really, he didn’t say, ‘You’ve got your sights set in the wrong place,’ or ‘You need to do this or that,’ he just gradually suggested, ‘This is what you need to do for the next meeting.’ And he organized district meetings around the state.
    “Buckles brought a fresh perspective, a fresh point of view.”

    What was the reaction of the APA membership in 1930 to placing the press association’s headquarters on the University of Alabama campus?
    “It was widely popular and accepted, mainly because the press association didn’t have any money, and the University of Alabama was going to pick up most of the cost. The APA at the time was charging dues of $12 a year, and I think it was very smart on the University’s part to establish a relationship with the press of the state. I was for it. I thought it was a good deal for the Alabama Press Association, and certainly couldn’t hurt the University of Alabama.”

    Racial outbreaks were occurring in Birmingham in 1963, and they dominated discussion when President John F. Kennedy invited all Alabama daily newspapers, six weekly publishers and APA officers to attend a luncheon at the White House. It was one of a series of luncheons that President Kennedy called with press associations of several  Southern states. You attended that luncheon in 1963, but you weren’t originally invited, were you?
    “No, I wasn’t. Mine was the only weekly newspaper in the state that had endorsed John F. Kennedy. We endorsed him before he was nominated. But we were not invited to the White House luncheon, although we were the only weekly newspaper in the state that had endorsed Kennedy. So, I wasn’t very happy about that. I called a friend of mine in Washington who was the White House correspondent for The Washington Post. His name was Carroll Kilpatrick. For 20 some odd years he covered the White House for The Post, and our friendship dated back to college days.
    “His senior year and my senior year was 1934-1935, his at the University of Alabama and mine at Auburn, and we formed a very warm and lasting friendship in those days. So I called him and told him what happened. I said, ‘Carroll, can you do anything about it?’ He said, ‘I think so.’ The result was in a few hours I had a telegram signed by John F. Kennedy inviting me to come. Brandy Ayers was there. His father (Col. Harry M. Ayers) was there. Brandy, I believe, was correspondent for The Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer at the time.
    “But anyway, Carroll had told people at the White House about my affinity for President Kennedy and had elaborated much too much, I’m sure, about what a great guy I was, what a great press supporter and so on. And what I enjoyed the most was the expression on the faces of my fellow Alabama newspaper editors and publishers, most of whom had a hand in putting together the guest list. For some reason they didn’t think I ought to be included.
    “There were three newspapers, that I recall, that had endorsed the Kennedy presidency, Mr. (Harry M.) Ayers at The Anniston Star, Mr. (Barrett) Shelton at The Decatur Daily, and Buford Boone at The Tuscaloosa News. The Lee County Bulletin was the fourth newspaper that supported Kennedy. I, for the life of me, don’t know why they had it in for me so much that I should be the only one not invited of that group.
    “After the meeting (with President Kennedy), as I was walking out of the White House, one of the aides tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Would you come with me?’
    “The brunt of what he said was that the attorney general, Robert Kennedy, would like to see me. His office was at the Justice Department building. I told him that I would like to go, but I was afraid that I would miss my flight back to Atlanta. He asked me what the schedule was and I told him. He said, ‘Well, that won’t be any problem. We’ll have the attorney general’s automobile out here and I’ll drive you to the Justice Department building and by my calculation you ought to have about 30 minutes and then we’ll take you to the Washington National Airport.’
    “So I went. But anyway, I went into the attorney general’s office and he was behind this huge desk. You will recall he was about 5-feet-5 1/2 to 6 inches tall and he looked like he was lost behind that thing.
    “Well, what he wanted to talk about was developing a strategy for dealing with the situation at Birmingham. He wanted me to give him some names of persons that he could contact and plead with them to join with the administration in trying to bring some sense out of a terrible situation. So, I suggested such as the president of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, the president of the First National Bank of Birmingham, and Mr. Martin, president of Alabama Power Company.
    “But anyway, I was more impressed by him (Robert Kennedy) than I was the president. He was all heart and into this thing so deeply, and he got so excited in talking about it. He came around from the back of his desk and he got up on it and crossed his legs like a child would do, sitting on that big desk and talking about the prospects.
    “But other than that, I think the biggest thrill I got out of it was when I walked in, everybody else was there because they went together and I came later, and they all looked around at me and began wondering, ‘How did you get here?’”

    You represent a community journalism background. Do you think the problems and pressures of being a weekly community newspaper publisher and editor are different from those of editors and publishers of large metropolitan dailies?
    “Well, the short answer is yes. I was an undergraduate at Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1931-35, and I founded The Lee County Bulletin in 1937. I found out that in a small community it was best to write about the Chamber of Commerce projects, Rotary Club meetings, that sort of thing. But when you got into writing about such things as trying to point out that we were all captives of some myths about our own history, if I suggested that we need to do something about hookworm or pellagra, that was throwing off on the South. You don’t do that. You are supposed to write, ‘We have a great community.’ You don’t write about such things.
    “Then, when I moved cautiously from that to suggesting that we need to do something about the poll tax, abolishing it.... Well, poor people that didn’t vote would show up to become registered to vote for a few years found out that they owed $10, $12, $15. That’s a lot of money. They didn’t have it, so they couldn’t pay it. They couldn’t vote.”






 

--30--

News release



 

Thanks for visiting my Alabama Newspaper
Hall of Honor Web page!

 The next Hall of Honor induction ceremony
 will be in fall 2006.  Details later.

Ed Williams
Professor, Department of Communication and Journalism

willik5@auburn.edu
Tichenor Hall 217
Auburn University, Ala. 36849