Paper's first decade a bumpy ride

'Rising gloriously in the eastern horizon'

When North Central College graduates Harold White and Gordon Haist

 

 

bought The Naperville Sun for $600 in 1936, the year-old publication

 

was little more than a typewriter, a desk and a name.

 

 

 

 

Oh, and a "smouldering spark of goodwill," White wrote much later, "in constant peril of being extinguished."

 

 

 

 

So much for auspicious beginnings.

 

 

 

 

At the end of The Sun's first year the paper was still being

 

distributed for free to some 2,000 families, and printed in Downers

 

Grove for a fee that exceeded the revenue coming in, while its size had

 

dwindled to four pages.

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

In that first decade, the number of publishing pratfalls were barely

 

exceeded by the will to learn from a bumpy start — and keep the paper

 

in print.

 

 

 

 

'Rising gloriously in the eastern horizon'

 

 

The first Sun, dated July 19, 1935, rolled off the press in Downers

 

Grove under the watchful eye of printer Gordon Isaac, who would come to

 

be a mentor to early publishers Harold Moser and Harold White.

 

 

 

 

"I don't recall that any champagne flowed ... (though) I found it quite

 

satisfying to be the midwife in attendance at the birth of a new

 

newspaper," Isaac recalled in 1976.

 

 

 

 

Moser launched the paper to compete with the Naperville Clarion. The

 

first edition covered the bases: a report and picture of Elmer Yanke's

 

car versus tree collision; gate receipts from 4,298 nonresident

 

visitors to Centennial Beach; the "matrimonial plunge" of Harold Kopp

 

 

and Esther Topp; a classified ad section; sports; even Cromer Motor

 

Companies used cars.

 

 

 

 

Column two on the front proclaimed "Rising gloriously in the eastern

 

horizon, the sun reigns supreme over the entire earth each and every

 

day. So also The Naperville Sun, upon its inaugural edition ... and on

 

each successive week, it will reign supreme in offering you the latest

 

and most complete stories on sports, news and social gatherings."

 

 

 

 

The paper drew hometown boy White like a moth to the flame. He offered

 

to do most of the writing as well as proofread stories and set type.

 

Moser couldn't afford to pay him. Within months, though, the

 

21-year-old Moser was offering to sell the newspaper to his 22-year-old

 

employee.

 

 

 

 

Moser wasn't exactly finished in Naperville, though. He went on to

 

found Moser Lumber and the Macom Corp. and build Naperville from

 

farming town to booming 'burb.

 

 

 

 

White and Haist, meanwhile, fought for The Sun's existence.

 

 

 

 

"There was no subscriber list," White remembered in 1976 on the

 

occasion of his 40th anniversary as publisher. "Every Thursday night,

 

we loaded up Gordon's old Willys-Knight touring car with our weekly

 

efforts, and distributed them door to door, with the aid of the Koehler

 

boys, Grover Little's sons, and others."

 

 

 

 

The reporting staff consisted of volunteers. North Central College

 

student Shirley Mercer penned book reviews and Dwight Davis, a curator

 

at the Field Museum, offered scholarly columns. Helen Marshall, another

 

North Central product, was the paper's first paid writer at $2 a week.

 

 

 

 

The newspaper's one-room office could only be reached by walking

 

through the cutting-room floor of Ben Hansen's barber shop, at Benton

 

Avenue and Washington Street. The weekly tab for printing in Downers

 

Grove ran $25 for 2,200 copies of the four-page tabloid. Trouble was,

 

many weeks' profits from ad sales came to $22.

 

 

 

 

After two years as publishers, the duo owed $2,000 in printing bills.

 

Haist, who was planning a wedding, wanted out. White let him go.

 

 

 

 

White, too, was entering the bonds of holy matrimony. He and Eva

 

Anderson, an art student White fell for at North Central College, were

 

married July 23, 1937. So while White lost one business partner, he'd

 

entered into a new, 53-year team effort.

 

 

 

 

Upgrades and a new front door

 

 

In 1938, Stanley Pauling showed up on White's doorstep selling type.

 

When White replied that he had no press, and thus, no use for Pauling's

 

type forms, the enterprising Pauling took White to Chicago and came

 

back with the Sun's first, hand-fed press.

 

 

 

 

Their antique hunting had only begun. Soon, Pauling had White paying

 

$100 for a press salvaged from a Flanagan, Ill., chicken house,

 

"covered with dirt, feathers and all rusty," White remembered. Printing

 

mentor Isaac fondly described it:

 

 

 

 

"Your first newspaper press resembled something that Noah might have

 

used on the ark," he wrote in a 1976 remembrance. "Fact is, the

 

cylinder rolled on wooden bearers, which even in the 1930s had been

 

obsolete for so many, many moons. That press surely must have been

 

circa 1800."

 

 

 

 

Papers were produced by taking copy down to Lemont, where the type was

 

set into galleys. Then, between 10 p.m. and midnight Wednesday, White

 

and his crew would head back to Naperville to run off copies on the

 

press, finishing sometime before 6 a.m. when the papers were due at the

 

post office for Thursday delivery.

 

 

 

 

"The first issues we printed on our own press was a sorry mess to

 

behold!" White remembered. "Eva, my bride of a year, was in the

 

hospital in Aurora for surgery; and when I took her a copy (which was

 

only partly readable) she became even sicker!"

 

 

 

 

A Linograph machine followed, enabling the staff to set type in house.

 

That is, if they could figure out the balky contraption. White called

 

Isaac, asking if he knew how to master the thing.

 

 

 

 

"I assured (White) that I didn't," Isaac quipped, "having started in

 

the business after the Civil War. ... My recollection of that event is

 

that we could offer nothing but moral support, which I have long since

 

learned did not make machines operate nor put any money in the bank."

 

 

 

 

On the verge of bankruptcy, White invested in a brand-new Linotype

 

machine in 1942, which served the company for the next three decades

 

after a few initial hiccups.

 

 

 

 

"I remember your first brand spanking new Linotype machine," Isaac

 

wrote, "which endeared itself to the Whites by spewing molten lead over

 

one of Eva's legs as she struggled to learn the operation of this

 

beast!"

 

 

 

 

A smashed finger later, the White's new arrangement had Harold setting

 

the type and Eva selling the ads. She was an adept saleswoman, as she'd

 

proven in 1939 when The Sun cut off free circulation. Eva and Marshall

 

canvassed the city for paid subscribers in November and December.

 

 

 

 

"We had a wonderful reception in most of the homes," Eva remembered in

 

1965. "Many of the women offered us coffee, especially in bad weather."

 

 

 

 

By Christmas, they'd sold 1,075 subscriptions, at $1 per year. Business

 

was going well enough by the late 1930s that White stopped paying $25

 

monthly rent at the Old Spanish Tea Room at 128 S. Washington St. and

 

bought the building that served as The Sun's headquarters until 1965.

 

 

 

 

Item! 'Com. Keller gets new truck'

 

 

Early editions of The Sun delivered on Moser's promise to "give ... an

 

accurate account of all the news events of the week." This included the

 

$269,000 budget adopted by the city, as reported in the third edition;

 

and the council's petition for the state to wind Route 34 through

 

Naperville, reported in the fifth installment.

 

 

 

 

Certainly, not all stories were of historical import. Municipal news

 

from the inaugural edition included a break in that Monday's council

 

meeting so the mayor and four commissioners could inspect the new city

 

truck.

 

 

 

 

"After much discussion pro and con Mr. LaSanska timidly suggested that

 

the councilmen take the truck to the gravel pit load it up and see if

 

it would pull itself out of the rut," went the breathless report.

 

"However his intimation went haywire with the more dignified city

 

fathers who then returned to their more arduous task."

 

 

 

 

In the Dec. 11, 1941, issue there are no blaring front-page headlines

 

with news of the attack on Pearl Harbor four days before; but rambling,

 

languid prose calls for able-bodied boys to read the Navy's recruitment

 

ad on Page 8, and for residents to write letters to enlisted men and

 

celebrate Christmas with gusto.

 

 

 

 

Not that the staff didn't respond to breaking news. White and the rest

 

were at it "like beavers" one night, putting the paper to press, when

 

fire sirens interrupted their work. Marshall came back from the

 

greenhouse blaze on Washington Street with the shortest fire story on

 

record.

 

 

 

 

"Flash! Fire," was the heading, followed by "destroyed two cars, garage, part of greenhouse, at 6 a.m. at Rohr's!"

 

 

 

 

"The reason it was so short is that we had only two inches of space

 

left on the front page," White remembered, "and the story had to be set

 

entirely by hand."

 

 

 

 

"We can look back upon the trials and hardships we went through in

 

nurturing our infant newspaper into maturity, and laugh at them now,"

 

White wrote in 1976. "But they weren't so funny in the days when we had

 

to dodge bill collectors, pay cash on delivery and work 30 to 36 hours

 

straight without sleep every week so it could 'happen every Thursday.'"

 

 

 

 

Contact staff writer Colt Foutz at cfoutz@scn1.com or (630) 416-5196.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7/12/05