It’s time to share stories about the ‘GOOD OL’ DAZE’

By Dean Rea

Sixty-seven years ago, I joined the Eugene Register-Guard’s news staff.

A lot of words have been printed since I walked into the daily newspaper office at 10th and High in downtown Eugene, Ore., and began to meet some of the most talented and interesting professionals in the news biz.

On June 29 several dozen of those former news side employees plan to attend a reunion. It appears that I’ll be the most senior member among those who attend the reunion. That is, if I survive a few weeks after my 95th birthday.

I still recall showing up for a job interview on June 14, 1957, with Herb Baker, the managing editor who soon left the Guard and prepared for a career as a doctor.

Herb offered me a “dream” job, one that entailed working mornings on the desk for News Editor Bill Wasmann and afternoons as a reporter for City Editor Dan Sellard.

For three years I had worked six days and a night or two a week in Hood River as a weekly newspaper editor soliciting advertising, writing editorials, news and feature stories, reporting sports and handling photographic assignments.

While I was learning the ropes in Eugene, the city editor forgot to assign someone to cover and to report a story about the annual Canoe Fete on the downtown millrace, which I learned was one of the few “sacred cows” marked for MUST coverage.

I was one of two newcomers mentioned as a replacement for the city editor, who spent the rest of his career as a reporter.

Fortunately, Donn Bonham, another newsroom newby got the job and performed quite satisfactorily in that position for several decades.

I soon was assigned to cover the police and fire beat, my all-time favorite because of the interesting people I met, the excitement of the work and the challenge of meeting an oft-occurring  pressing news deadline.

I sandwiched a teaching career between my work with what was renamed The Register Guard. I later served as an assistant city editor, features editor and assistant news editor.

As I join oldtimers in sharing “stories” during this summer’s reunion, I’ll be reminded that deadlines once were set by a press run, notes were taken with pen and paper, photographs were taken by a Speed Graphic and calls often were made for a dime from a pay phone.

Ah, yes, we’ll talk about the “good ol’ daze” and wish for a moment that we could recapture the excitement, the adventure, the sense of purpose that once gripped our hearts and steered our vision.

But as I once wrote in letters dismissing three dozen country correspondents that we were being replaced with full-time journalists to cover rural Lane County, “there’s nothing new but change.”

Yes, the news biz has changed since I walked in the door at the Eugene Register-Guard. And, yes, it merits taking a moment during a reunion to remember the contributions such a dedicated staff and members of a publishing family made to the community, the state and the nation.

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Dean Rea is a retired newspaper journalist and a retired university professor who lives in Eugene. This column was originally published at his website and is used with permission. Dean celebrates his 95th birthday on April 18, 2024.