Golden 50 — 2010
2010 award recipients
announced June 18, 2010 at 131th Summer Convention in San Antonio.
Morris Craig
Duane Howell
Charles and Mary Ann Sarchet
Bob Wright
Morris Craig was born in rural East Texas near Mount Enterprise in a sawmill community where his father was employed. Before he entered school, his family moved to Naples following the sawmill trade. It would be the last move that “Craig,” as he is known to his family and friends, would make as Naples is where he still makes his home today.
Craig was a senior in high school in 1956 working nights running the projector at the Inez theater in Naples when his newspaper career began. Lee Narrramore, then owner, editor and publisher of The Monitor in Naples walked outside the newspaper office across the street from the theater one night and saw Craig sitting on the curb, drinking a Coke and waiting for movie reels to arrive.
As Craig tells the story, Narramore called him over and asked him what he was going to do when he graduated. Craig said he didn’t know yet, and Narramore asked him if wanted to work for him at the newspaper. That would also be the last job change Craig would ever make. He worked for Narramore until 1972 when he bought the weekly paper in Naples. Today, Morris Craig’s name is still on the masthead as editor and publisher.
For a time before and after Craig bought The Monitor, his wife Melba worked on the staff, but she eventually left to pursue a career in teaching. Today, the Craigs’ son, Jeremy, is the paper’s photographer, and at times over the years, both of the Craigs’ daughters have worked for the family business.
In 1998, Craig’s role reverted from owner back to employee when health problems made long hours difficult. Looking for someone to take care of his newspaper, he sold the publication to a trusted former employee, but stayed on the payroll working a shortened schedule for what was to have been a transition period. Fortunately, his health quickly improved and when the opportunity arose for him to buy it again, his name on the masthead changed from “staff” to “editor and publisher” for a second time.
In his career of 54 years, Craig has seen the evolution of hot type to offset, and paste up to digital layout. If you were top ask him, he would tell you he’s still not too sure about this latest transition, but he didn’t have a choice. He was the last convert at Nortex Press in Mount Pleasant, if not the last in the state.
Craig and The Monitor are among the last of an almost extinct breed, the locally owned, family operated newspaper with a publisher who believes it’s his duty to get every name he can in every edition between the birth announcement and the obituary. And at this point in his career, Craig spends his time doing nothing else but that noble job.
The walls of The Monitor office are covered with press association awards spanning the years, including a few sweepstakes plaques. However, Craig says nowadays that he has nothing else to prove to anyone except the residents of North Morris County every week, and that is to continue giving them the best community newspaper produced. And that’s all he’s done since Lee Narramore offered him a job at the only newspaper for which he’s ever worked — 54 years ago.
Duane Howell, a native of Tahoka, was reared on a cotton and grain farm. He studied agriculture at Texas Tech and graduated with a degree in journalism in 1953. Howell farmed in Garza County in the early 1950s.
He was a farm reporter at the Abilene Reporter-News for four years and became the farm editor of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in 1957. He retired from the newspaper in 1996 and his column on cotton continues to run every Sunday in the business section.
He has published a weekly cotton letter circulated throughout the U.S. and in 33 foreign countries. He interviewed every United States secretary of agriculture from Orville Freeman in the Kennedy administration through John Block in the Reagan administration. Earl Butz invited Howell to accompany him on his first overseas trip to the Far East when Butz became secretary of agriculture in the Nixon administration.
Howell received an award for “distinguished agricultural journalism” from the Texas Federation of Cooperatives, the Texas Cooperative Cotton Ginners Association and the Houston Bank for Cooperatives in 1963 and a distinguished service award from the Vocational Agriculture Teachers of Texas in 1965. The College of Agricultural Sciences at Texas Tech University named him a recipient of the Gerald W. Thomas Outstanding Agriculturist award in 1973 and the Texas Cotton Association cited him for “outstanding journalistic ability” in 1974.
He holds the Honorary Lone Star Farmer degree, the highest honor bestowed by the FFA, and the national Gold Medallion awarded by the Federal Land Bank. He received a Celebration of the Land award from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in 1995. The Lubbock Cotton Exchange cited him in 1996 for “exceptional efforts in providing information to the cotton industry.”
Howell was vice president of the Newspaper Farm Editors of America, forerunner of the North American Agricultural Journalists Association, in 1969. He testified in Congress for the National Agriculture Institute on food prices and the federal farm program in 1973. He was a member of a Texas Farm Bureau trade delegation to Europe in 1965 attended the Liverpool Cotton Association’s international trade dinner in 1977.
Charles and Mary Ann Sarchet owned and published The Briscoe County News for more than 50 years. From local politics and school events to helpful tips, the Sarchets provided needed information to readers in Silverton, Briscoe County and beyond. They sold the newspaper to Mr. and Mrs. Jed Moorhouse in February 2010.
The Sarchets purchased The Briscoe County News from Mr. and Mrs. M.B. Cavanaugh in April 1959 and lived in the rear of the building for the first few months. The sale of the newspaper must have been the best-kept secret of 1959, because on Charles and Mary Ann’s first night in Silverton, which coincidentally happened to be April Fool’s Day, the joke was on them. Worn out from moving, Charles and Mary Ann’s last desire was to have evening visitors. When they heard knocking at both the front and back doors, they had no clue what they were in for. Sheriff Johnny Lanham and night watchman James Patton just knew that someone had broken into the Cavanaugh’s business because their car, “the only DeSota in town”, was not parked outside and yet someone was inside. They managed to avoid jail, but what a welcome to Silverton!” Jed Moorhouse wrote in the newspaper’s Feb. 24, 2010, edition.
The Sarchets quickly blended into the community, and in May 1969, after 10 years of publishing the newspaper, Mary Ann described the residents of Briscoe County as “the best, friendliest people to be found anywhere. They are the salt of the earth.”
In the course of their long career, the Sarchets saw many changes in the printing and newspaper industries. They toiled steadfastly as news evolved from being the product of numerous strenuous and recognizable efforts to something the public almost takes for granted because it instantly pops up on their computer screens.
Technology has had a dramatic effect on newspaper publishers and printers, making it possible for a person to inexpensively print almost anything they need at home. Wal-Mart has assumed a role once occupied by many local merchants. And somewhere along the line, the art of doing a job right was replaced by doing a job quickly.
Before technology made it possible to design, lay out and edit a publication on one computer, the Sarchets were experts at hot metal typesetting, thanks to the Linotype. As Linotype operators, their skills were many and precise. Correcting a mistake meant redoing an entire mold, a far cry from the quick fix of a modern computer’s delete key. Not only was it time-consuming to build every single line of the newspaper, the molten lead had to stay at an excruciatingly hot 550 degrees Fahrenheit. The metal tablets were so heavy, the manual labor aspect of publishing a newspaper was formidable. The Sarchets did all of those tasks themselves.
They switched to photographic typesetting in the late 1970s, and in the early 1990s, the Sarchets entered the digital age when they bought their first computer. When asked which method of publishing was his favorite, Charles said with a laugh, “Nowadays.” In reflecting on their life as weekly newspaper publishers, Mary Ann once wrote, “I am sold on the life in the small town, and I would be happy to live my entire life in a town just like Silverton.”
Robert E. “Bob” Wright was born in Corsicana, April 19, 1934, moved to Tehuacana in Limestone County at about the age of three and soon developed a love of newspapers. Old newspaper clippings tell of the little boy who could identify newspapers by the smell of the ink, of his knowledge of newspapers “far beyond his years.” A 1951 graduate of Mexia High School, he received his bachelor of arts degree from Baylor University in 1956.
After college he spent two years in the U.S. Army in Germany and time with the National Guard when he returned to Texas. He wrote for the Vernon Daily Record and the Port Arthur News before coming to Mexia as sports editor in 1959. He has chronicled football events spanning three generations.
Wright interviewed such dignitaries as Ronald Reagan before Reagan became governor of California; George Herbert Walker Bush, who was campaigning for the U.S. Senate; Red Adair and Boots Matthews, the famed Houston oil well firefighters; Sammy Baugh; George W. Bush; former Texas Gov. John Connally; and many celebrities including Anna Nicole Smith, who claimed Mexia as home.
In 2009, he was married to Peggy 50 years. They have two sons Mike and Jim, two daughters-in-law, Bethany and Courtney, and four grandchildren, Jackson, Cole, Mason and Macy.
Active in his community, Bob has served in many areas through the years. A member of the Lions Club, and board member of the Westminster Ex-Students Association in Tehuacana, some of his most recent honors include being named Mexia’s Outstanding Citizen and Mexia High School’s Alumnus of the Year. The Mexia Public School Museum honored him again during homecoming activities in September last year. In July 2009, Bob was recognized by the Texas High School Coaches Association at the All-Star Game in Austin and a luncheon as “Texas Sportswriter of the Year.” He has served as head usher for more than 20 years at First United Methodist Church.
Quoted numerous times by legendary broadcaster, the late Paul Harvey, Bob was editor of The Mexia News for many years. Several sports editors have come and gone, but he has always reserved the right to cover Blackcat Football. Firmly convinced there IS no other game, he has no plans to retire from covering the town, the team, and the game he loves. According to Kevin Sherrington of The Dallas Morning News, “No one knows the Mexia Blackcats like Bob Wright.” Sherrington quoted Wright’s son Mike as saying, “We plan to bury him in the end zone at Blackcat Stadium.” “Apparently,” Sherrington added, “it’s the only way to get him out of the press box.”
Now editor emeritus, Wright still spends most of his day writing for The Mexia News and will cover his beloved Mexia Blackcats for the 52nd season come August. According to Dave Campbell of Texas Football fame, this may be a Texas High School record for a journalist covering the same team.
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