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Show Cyclops By BRYAN GRAY Printers ink was the true life blood of John Stahle Jr. In 1903, when John Stahle Jr. was bom, one of the major stories of the year was the revolutionary secession of Panama from Colombia. Colom-bia. When he died last week, Panama was once again the major headline. It was an irony that John would have found fitting. After all, he lived liv-ed for the headlines-and even the agate type buried at the bottom of the page. For him, the newspaper business was not a career. For John Stahle, it was a life. He was born into the newspaper business and, no matter how ill or infirm, could never comfortably leave it "I was too dumb to do anything else," he joked. But he was also too proud. "One of the greatest thrills a man can have is to see the newspaper roll off the presses," he once told me. "You see, you start off with a blank sheet of newsprint-and the next thing you know, you've got yourself something to read and think about." Hemingway might have said it better-but no one felt it more deep ly than John. As he approached his mid-80's, John could still be found at the Clipper office. He'd open the mail, answer the phone, and enter a spirited debate about the merits of the dusty linotype. The machine he so loved was dormant now-but his newspaper had survived. He didn't understand the new-fangled computers com-puters and costly color photographs, but he waived all of it off as mere technology. Technology didn't make a newspaper, he thought Stories did-and he wanted as many as possible. Of course, not every story held the same value. A piece on a city councilman or a sewing group was much more valuable than a damn sports story. ("When we played ball, we went out and did it for fun to pass away the time," he told me. 'I don't understand how people can care what the final score is But I guess times have changed.") chang-ed.") Yes, times had changed. When he was born, Roosevelt was president-Teddy, not Franklin. The average American had only a fifth grade education, and the average worker earned $44 per month. There were no movies, no radio, no television. Comic strips were considered con-sidered indecent by righteous churchgoers, and the most popular songs of the year were "Sweet Adeline" and "Rock a-bye Baby." To put John's 86 years of life into perspective, he was bom 20 years too early for even Little Orphan Annie, Agatha Christie or Mary Pickford. But as times changed, there was one constant: His newspaper. Admittedly Ad-mittedly bored with school ("I used to look out the classroom window and wonder why I was cooped up in a building!") he began working with his father at the Clipper office when he was only 15. He never left In 1954 he became publisher...Later he would win honors as Publisher of the Year and Editor of the Year from the Utah Press Association. He enjoyed the awards but didn't relish them. "If you hang around long enough, you're bound to win some," he laughed. His relish went to his newspaper, complete with the smells and energy of the printing plant. "You can never get the ink off your hands," he said. And you could never get the ink out of his mind either. Three years ago I wrote a column about the Bountiful Senior Citizens Orchestra. He was the drummer, and he later thanked me for "catching the spirit" of his appearance ap-pearance at the Golden Years Center. But he had a problem with the piece, he said. "I have to wonder if it's really news." I assured him it was. "The thing with news, Mr. Stahle," I told him, "is that sometimes the little events turn out to be the biggest things. You just never know." He should have, of course. In the year he was bom, a small story appeared about a couple of guys at Kitty Hawk. They had this strange idea about flying machines. John would have liked that story. It was news. h |