Past President Willis Webb’s reflections from 50 years ago

In tapping the keyboard for one of those old-timer pieces requested for our Texas Press Messenger, a flood of memories rushed forth.
Almost without fail, I've found, such memories from newspaper veterans of many decades tend to run to errors and hard times, sometimes bordering on disaster. My recollection is somewhat of that vein.
My very first real newspaper job came when, after two years of college, I depleted my bank account and took a news editor's job at my hometown Teague Chronicle in the summer of 1957.
Vic Koleber, publisher of the Goldthwaite Eagle, bought the Chronicle for his daughter and son-in-law — Vicki and Ralph Massey — who were seniors at North Texas State University. Vic told me he needed someone to handle the news, lay out the pages and "sort of hold things together." He came to Teague two days a week to sell advertising and direct the staff.
Our group consisted of a woman to handle reception, classified ads, some billing and subscription record-keeping; a woman Linotype operator, who was 40ish and single; a 72-year-old pressman-job press printer-ad makeup man and handset headline type magician; and naïve me.
According to local legend, the married pressman and the unmarried Linotype operator had a "fling" several years earlier, only to be discovered by the operator's mother. This resulted in Mama accompanying Daughter Linotype operator to work every day whereupon she sat in a straight-back, woven rope-seated chair. She knitted as she kept an eagle eye on everything, especially when any male approached the Linotype.

Of course, as news editor I had to take news copy to the Linotype. The first week there I thought either Mama hated me or there was something "wrong" with her. However, after she determined that 20-year-old me wasn't the least bit romantically inclined toward her daughter, I began to get an occasional smile and an approving nod of her gray head.
I quickly learned that news writing, page layout and proofing were just part of the job at a small town weekly newspaper. While the pressman hand fed sheets into the old Babcock press, I got them into position for folding on our custom-built folder, which had been built in a buggy shop in 1902. Then, when there was a single sheet (2-page), I had a special sideboard from which I fed the single sheet while the pressman fed the quad-divisible pages from the "front end" of that horse-and-buggy-days wonder.
I alarmed the old pressman the first week when I handed him all my front-page headlines. Contrary to the previous look of the Chronicle (one column machine set heads, none large than 24 point), I submitted multi-column headlines seeking to get the "horizontal look" that I'd learned in the college classroom was the very latest trend"in page design. His assessment of my hand-set heads for the "horizontal look": "I'll have to cut up all them !@#$%^& expensive column rules!!!"
He did them anyway.
However, the crowning week was my final one before going back to the relative calm of college.
Per my regular routine, I went to work at 7 a.m. Monday and sat down at my Royal manual typewriter. I immediately got a phone call from Mrs. Pressman informing me that her husband had suffered a mild heart attack Sunday night and, as was the medical result in those days, would not be able to ever return to work.
Just a few minutes later, I heard the back door open and close and I knew it was Miss Linotype and her mama.
So, I went back to inform them of our pressman's misfortune and condition. No sooner had the words left my mouth, when Miss Linotype had a complete nervous breakdown right there. Our back shop production crew was kaput.
Between that moment Monday morning and Thursday afternoon — 24 hours late — when the Chronicle rolled off the press, I got less than eight hours total sleep and spent hours and hundreds of miles of driving to neighboring newspapers to get our Linotype work done while a "tramp" printer-pressman did all of the work our septuagenarian did.
One might wonder why I chose to stay in country editing and publishing for the next 50-plus years, but I wouldn't go back and change much of anything. It was a heckuva ride.

Background of Willis Webb
Webb graduated from the University of Houston with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1960. He retired as an active editor-publisher Jan. 1, 2007, after more than 50 years (all in Texas) in journalism and the newspaper business. Webb currently writes a weekly column printed in 40 Texas community newspapers. In his last post before retirement, Webb spent 15-1/2 years as editor and publisher of The Jasper Newsboy (Hearst Corp.).
He and Julie Webb, his wife, were included in The Press in Texas, in honor of TPA's 125th anniversary, in the courageous editors' section, with articles they wrote about the race-hate murder in Jasper and its subsequent trials and anniversaries. In 1992 he was the founding president of the Jasper Boys & Girls Club, serving for 10 years. In 1997, he was selected for the Hearst Corporation's Eagle Award for outstanding contributions to journalism, the first weekly newspaper journalist to be accorded the honor.
In 2005, he and his wife, Julie, were honored by Youth Service America with the national Harris Wofford Award for service they provided Jasper community youth. They were nominated by the Jasper Independent School District and were the first newspaper personnel to win this national award.
In 2008, he and Julie were honored by the South Texas Press Association with the Chester Evans Award for their years of dedicated service to the association. He is a recipient of the Texas Press Association's Golden 50 Award for his more than a half century in journalism and newspapers. In 2010, he received the Alumni Lifetime Achievement in Print Media award from Sam Houston State University's mass communications department
In 2013, he was named to the Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame. In 2014, he was named to the Texas Gulf Coast Press Association Hall of Honor. He spent more than 20 years, in several segments, on the TPA board and served as its president in 2003-2004. He has also served as president of the Texas Gulf Coast Press Association and on the board of the South Texas Press Association.
He has been privileged to speak about tragic events in Jasper, including a race-hate murder that drew world-wide coverage; the space shuttle crash in a neighboring county; and Hurricane Rita to the Texas Press Association, the South Texas Press Association, the Texas Gulf Coast Press Association, the Panhandle Press Association, the West Texas Press Association, the Beaumont Rotary Club and the Texas Association of College Counselors and on open meetings and open records to the Texas Association of Tax Appraisers. He has lectured communications classes at Baylor University, Sam Houston State University and the University of Texas-Austin.