2004-05 Wanda Garner Cash Baytown Sun

Wanda Garner "Fluffy" Cash was elected 127th president of Texas Press Association June 19, 2004, at the 125th Summer Convention in Austin. She was editor and publisher of The Baytown Sun from August 1999 until 2006 when she joined the University of Texas School of Journalism in the S. Griffin Singer Professorship.

A community newspaper veteran with more than 20 years’ experience, Cash previously was executive editor of The Brazosport Facts, assistant managing editor of The Galveston County Daily News and editor of the Kerrville Daily Times.

Cash and her husband Richard also owned The Ingram News in rural Central Texas for eight years, winning the Texas Press Association’s designation of best weekly in the state in its circulation class in 1985.

She has worked with the Legislative Advisory Committee jointly comprised of members from TPA and Texas Daily Newspaper Association. She has been an long-time advocate of open government, testifying at the Legislature, organizing freedom of information education efforts, lobbying for public access and resisting attempts to limit the public’s right to know.

In 2004, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips named her to the Judicial Advisory Council’s Committee on Public Access to Court Records.

She is a past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. She has served on the national FOI Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

In 1994 she served as president of Texas Associated Press Managing Editor.

Cash served two terms as president of the Texas State Arts and Crafts Fair and was appointed by Gov. Ann Richards to the board of the Lower Colorado River Authority.

In 2002, Cash organized The Baytown Sun’s Teaching Excellence Awards program that recognizes outstanding teachers in area school districts with cash prizes funded by Southwest Bank of Texas.

Cash received a bachelor of science in journalism in 1971 from the University of Texas-Austin and attended the UT Graduate School of Education where she was certified as a secondary reading specialist in 1975.

She and her husband Richard M. Cash live in Austin and have two sons.