Covering a minister's death in the old days

Coverage of Rex Humbard's death reminded former Beacon Journal news editor Tom Moore how another such story.was covered in the old days.

Here are Moore’s recollections:

A few years ago I was working Saturday night. First edition was off the floor and with only Donn Gaynor and myself left on the news and copy desk and one person on the metro desk waiting to check to paper for errors, a call came to the desk from publisher Ben Maidenburg.

Seems he called the city desk to report that another well-known minister, the Rev. Dallas Billington, had passed away.The fellow on the city desk was new to the city and wanted to know just who Billington was.

And that had not set too well with Ben, so he called the news desk. I told him to to worry. We'd take care of it.

Donn, who had been a long-time reporter and rewrite man before joining the copy desk, picked up the phone and called Billington's son.

While Donn got the information for a story, I made plans to clear off a spot on Page one because we still had at least three-fourths of the run to go and the presses were shut down for a few minutes beteen the first and second run.

I went to the morgue for a photo of the Reverend. Plenty of photos but no engraving (this was in the days of hot type).Seems we were in the process of changing to a thinner thickness of engraving plate, so all the old mugs in the thicker metal had been
thrown away, even though we could still use them by adjusting the base used to mount them in the page.)

And of course, the engravers had long since gone home. I bemoaned this fact to old buddy Donn. He reminded me that on Saturday mornings, Billington ran an add with
his mug in the ad.

I ran into the composing room and one of the printers found that ad and cut the mug from it.

So we wound up with a photo and a story on the death.

But even then there were screwups. Somebody forgot to tell me that a full page of type and pictures had been readied for just such an occasion. So we ran that on Monday.

But we got the death with a photo in the paper...with a local byline.

--tom moore

[Blogger Note: Billington died in 1972. Gaynor died July 6, 2005]