Sunday, October 26, 1997

Farewell to 18-year fixture

By Dick Tarpley / Abilene Reporter-News

When I came to the Reporter-News a few months after the end of World War II, Abilene was beginning a building boom. Returning veterans who wanted the city to utilize its potential put their effort and their skills into achieving that.

Life magazine had declared Abilene a ghost town with the sudden closure of Camp Barkeley six months before the atomic bomb ended the mammoth conflict. Arrival of troops back home (including many "foreigners" who had married Abilene girls) began a building surge. The city's boundaries spread rapidly as homes shot up everywhere.

The city had shown plenty of quality in its leadership earlier in its existence, including the successful effort to acquire an army camp in 1940, and the forward-looking acquisition of water by constructing Lake Abilene and then Lake Fort Phantom Hill.

Like the city in which it is based, the Reporter-News had long been a publication recognized by other newsmen in the state for its quality and its fairness. When I came here in early 1946, Frank Grimes was a titan who had reached the finals three times in Pulitzer Prize competition for editorial writing.

His sometimes pithy, sometimes tongue-in-cheek editorials helped citizens better understand issues while also laughing with him when he described his dislike of pumpkin pie and his "feud" with weatherman C.E. Sitchler.

I came to Abilene because policy changes in my pre-war employer's newspaper conflicted with the basic elements of any reporter's or editor's dedication to Accuracy, Thoroughness and Fairness. Those three tenets drive most people in my profession.

In Abilene, under the leadership of Wendell Bedichek (who hired me) and Ed Wishcamper (who was my immediate boss and my predecessor as editor), the Reporter-News placed those three goals as unalterable requirements to journalism here.

That attitude remained with my successor, Glenn Dromgoole, who made changes but always kept the basic principles of accuracy, thoroughness and fairness as essential.

I was impressed with the Byron quote at the top of page one, "Without or with offense to friends or foes, we sketch your world exactly as it goes," and I truly believe it becomes ingrained in virtually every reporter and editor who has worked here. Publisher and founder Bernard Hanks insisted on it, and his successors, Howard McMahon, Stormy Shelton and Frank Puckett, also demanded it.

I am proud of its quality of reporting, the newspaper's leadership in progressive efforts for the city and the Big Country, and in its role as a guardian of good government.

I enjoyed writing positive stories about the city and area, but I also felt I was serving the public by exposing criminal and slipshod actions, such as open bootlegging, failure of many convicted persons to pay fines, use by the sheriff of inmates to work on his farm.

I retired as editor at the start of 1986. Now my column, a Sunday fixture for nearly 18 years, also retires with this recap, thus ending nearly 52 years of my association.

I shall miss sharing with readers my travels to all points of the globe, including such things as driving on the wrong side of the road in England and Scotland; discussing earlier-day ties to current events; giving background and commentary on political concerns, including those in China, Israel, Bosnia, Russia and other places my wife and I have traveled; sports memories; and, most important, my granddaughter.

My spelling test of 50 most misspelled words drew comments from distant points. But my suggestion that the art museum include a room displaying prints of the 50 greatest paintings and of rotating artists, though getting lots of agreement, died quietly.

Not everyone agreed with my commentaries, I'm sure. No editorial writer expects unanimity. But I tried to help people understand issues, and laugh or cry with such columns as the death of my dog, the indignity of my home burglary, the trauma of moving after 26 years, our garage sale, and, of course, the ups and downs of a little girl's soccer game or ballet recital.

I hope readers have enjoyed my ramblings these past 18 years half as much as I've delighted in sharing them.