Here & There Column

  Great Media Memories

  Memories are so valuable......we all should cherish them and hold them close to us.
  Does getting older bring memories any closer to us?
  Just thinking the other day about the news media in Sullivan County and the so many reporters, writers, columnist, editors and publishers we have had the pleasure to know over the some 71 years that I have been penning articles for various news media.
  Yes......you read that number correctly folks.......I started writing at the age of 8 while attending the Liberty Elementary School on North Main St. and remember well how I started.
  My uncle Cliff Sprague, who owned and operated Sprague Printing and published the Liberty Gazette along with his brothers, asked me one day to pen a column about what was going on in the elementary school some several blocks down the road from their printing plant.

                                                               

   
  I was a frequent visitor to the Liberty Gazette as my aunt and uncle lived four houses down the street from our house on Winslow Place and I would go down to the Gazette office and wait for a ride home with my uncle.
  Since I was always asking Cliff what he was doing (he was the Linotype operator) he introduced me to Hazel Leroy who was famous in Liberty for writing the Liberty locals column and she and Cliff taught me how to write a column......so the beginning of a long and very rewarding career.
  I wrote in high school, college and was a Journalist in the U.S. Navy where I served as sports editor of the China Lake military base newspaper.
  After serving four years in the military I worked in advertising at Radio Station WVOS and announced high school basketball games.
  Then worked as a reporter and columnist for Harold and Clara Schue at the Liberty Register, served as assistant editor when Dick Rosenbaum took over as editor following the passing of Harold, worked  with Don and Emily Battey at the Livingston Manor Times and had a joint venture with them in the purchase of the Liberty Ad-Visor and Sullivan County Press from Harrison Krum, worked as a reporter, advertising sales rep and later as editor of the Hancock Herald replacing editor Paul Fagan, served as advertising manager with Ruby Katz of Southern New York Publishers who printed a weekly shopper and three weekly newspapers including the Republican Watchman and Liberty Evening News.
  Worked with some outstanding newspaper people at Southern Publishers including great writers  like Art Sugarman and Les Woods.
  Served a number of years as a photo-journalist for the Times-Herald Record working with well-known photo-journalist Charlie Crist.
  Also around that time Bruce Wells was a popular news announcer for WVOS.
  My association with the Stabbert family and this newspaper tops my list with cherished times I spent with Fred Stabbert Jr. particularly at the summer picnic and Christmas party when Fred and I could sit off in the corner or in his office and reminisce about some of the same things I have mentioned in this week's column.
  Cherish these memories..... see ya at the next event.