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Show 'm A. B. WILLIAMS i i A. B. Williams of Tribune Starts Fiftieth Year In Varied Newspaper Career Drawing deeply on his old familiar fam-iliar pipe and casting a smile of friendliness about the Mail Tribune Trib-une shop, A. B. Williams, veteran printer, completed his forty-ninth year with the trade last night and gave a short sketch of the things that have happened in the newspaper news-paper world since he entered it as a printer's devil back in 1882. During those forty-nine years "A. B." as he is known to all his friends, has filled all chairs in the business from printer's devil up to editor in chief and during the less exciting moments amused himself and the public with poetry. "Chester A. Arthur was president presi-dent of the United States when t entered the printshop in Greenville, Green-ville, Cal.," he said last night. "1 was 14 years old and I began then my contacts with the pioneer history his-tory of California. Everything from stage coach robbings to lynch ings found a place on my boyhood horizon. I worked five years in the shop of the weekly paper then went to Utah and worked on a daily in Salt Lake for four years. "Those were tedious days, seU ting type by hand and by lamp light, after midnight, for the electric lights were turned out and . the lamps lighted at that hour through out the city. I had been in the printing business 10 years when the first linotype machine came west and that one only as far as Denver. Den-ver. Not one thing in this shop was known to the newspapers of that day." He glanced about the Mail Tribune shop, his eyes traveling trav-eling from the hurrying linotypes, to press and back to the various Jixtures, which have brought the ever necessary element of speed into in-to the news. "Yes, I pied a lot of type," he admitted, "when I had to set that iittle stuff by hand, sometimes half a galley, sometimes a galley, and once a whole form." .After working for four years ou the daily in Salt Lake City, "A. B." started a weekly at Mt. Pleasant and ran it for eight years. He sold it and went to Richfield and started another newspaper, which he sold 10 years later to come to Medford where he joined the staff of the old Medford Mail, predecessor predeces-sor of the Mail Tribune. He has been in Medford 23 years. During the territorial days in Utah he played an important part in the affairs of the country. He was commissioned as territorial officer of-ficer by Grover Cleveland. Later when political lines were drawn, exciting times .were known and "A. B. " was in on all of them. The most interesting campaign of his career he lists as the Bryan-McKinley Bryan-McKinley presidential race. He was editing the paper then in Mt. Pleasant, Utah, where he also served as justice of the peace. A. B.'s mother, Mrs. M. A. Parks, who was born on an emigrant train crossing from Illinois to California, is now living in the Sams Valley district. Her father was captain of the train and during A. B.'s earliest childhood and listening to the stories of the perils and struggles conquered by the early settlers, he developed the same pioneer spirit, which has kept him carrying on year after year to do more and better bet-ter printing and when the day is done to grip his pipe, and write another poem. Medford MaU Trib une, Medford, Oregon. |
