Changing with the times
1975 to 1985: The Sun adds a second weekly edition to keep pace with booming city
had a saucer full of commas on his desk that he liberally sprinkled
onto all the copy that he edited.
No one worked at The Naperville Sun for long before realizing that the
newspaper's publisher seldom deviated from the old-school rules of
grammar, punctuation and spelling. One of his "interesting edicts,"
Tindall recalls, was his requirement that reporters spell the holiday
celebrated on Oct. 31 as "Hallowe'en" because it was a contraction of
All Hallow Even.
Another was that he preferred that the first letters of such words as
street, avenue and road not be capitalized when used in an address.
Some 30 years later, Tindall still finds herself inexplicably following
that rule.
"I still write on my envelopes like that," said Tindall, of Naperville,
who worked for The Sun from the 1970s through the early '90s. "Old
habits die hard."
During the mid-'70s Harold White wasn't about to rethink his position
on matters of spelling, punctuation and grammar. But he knew he would
soon have to make concessions to the rapid changes in the community he
covered. In 1975, Naperville was embarking on a period of growth,
acquiring new schools, parks, subdivisions, fire stations, businesses,
shopping centers and land in a 10-year period. A much-needed addition
was built onto Edward Hospital. Naper Settlement continued to uproot
historic buildings and transplant them in its expanding museum. The
Riverwalk was the city's gift to itself when it celebrated its
sesquicentennial in 1981. White and his wife, Eva, underwrote the cost
of the plaza on Main Street at Jackson Avenue.
By the end of the '70s, it became apparent to the Whites that their
weekly newspaper could no longer keep pace with the modern-day boom
town it served. The publication was getting too unwieldy, sometimes
running more than 100 pages an issue. And a growing population didn't
want to wait a week to catch up on all the hometown news.
So on Nov. 1, 1978, after nearly 44 years of Thursday publications, The
Naperville Sun became a semiweekly paper, publishing on Wednesdays and
Fridays.
As it grew, The Sun managed to maintain the family-like environment
typically found in mom 'n' pop businesses. The Whites, who never had
children, liked to think of their employees as kin. The first request
Harold White made of new hires was that they call him by his first name.
"We're informal around here," he would say.
A glance around the office confirmed that. The newsroom at 9 W. Jackson
Ave. was eclectically furnished with mismatched desks of wood or steel
and an assortment of manual typewriters of varying vintages. In an
interview years later, White facetiously called them "cordless"
typewriters.
Mary Lou Cowlishaw pounded out her feature stories on one of those
relics. The retired state representative fondly remembers her more than
five years with The Sun as a great experience that led to a first-place
award for investigative reporting from the Illinois Press Association
for her series about substandard conditions at a local nursing home.
"I really treasured that job," said Cowlishaw, who left The Sun in 1982
for Springfield. "It was so exciting running around the community to
find people who had done something worth a feature story. And they were
everywhere. I came up with so many people. Their stories practically
told themselves."
The memories that stick in Cowlishaw's mind are those that make her
laugh. She remembers the time when a woman handed her a press release
hastily written on a paper towel from the bathroom down the hall. She
can't forget the woman who complained that her baby's birth
announcement was incorrect and that the same mistake was made in each
of the 10 issues she had just purchased. She still recalls the struggle
in 1981 to wedge the word "sesquicentennial" into a one-column headline.
"We had so much fun in that newsroom back then, and everybody got along
well with everybody else," said Cowlishaw, who continued to write a
column for The Sun from Springfield for several years while in office.
"We would laugh and laugh over the things that happened and some of the
mistakes we made."
Tindall, who worked for both the Naperville and Lisle Suns from the
1970s to the mid-1990s, had a succession of jobs, including reporter,
photographer, columnist and editor. She initially worked out of her
Naperville home writing the Newcomers column. She also had the
unenviable task of compiling a list of hospitalized Naperville
residents for publication. Each week she called patients, asking the
nature of their illness and permission to print it in the paper. Not
surprisingly, many of them hung up on her.
But that kind of over-the-fence news began to die out during the mid-
to late '70s. By then, The Naperville Sun included a variety of regular
features, old and new. The Ramblings column, a fixture since the 1930s,
continued to serve as a catch-all of musings, information nuggets and
newsy items. Tim West's column was then called All Points West. Out of
the Files was still taking a look at what went on in Naperville decades
earlier.
Other regularly published features at that time included Genevieve
Towsley's long-running Sky-Lines and The Grapevine columns, Erv Hake's
Something For Seniors, the Dear Hal/Dear Arch columns and the Culinary
Collectibles recipe of the week.
One popular feature with readers, if not reporters, was Roving
Reporter. The newest hire was typically assigned the task of putting
together this man-on-the street piece. Armed with a notebook, an old
Polaroid camera and the resolve to get through it, the freshman
journalist approached countless people at grocery stores or public
events, hoping to get at least five of them to answer the week's
question. Queries ran the gamut, from "What famous person would you
like to sit next to on a long flight?" to "Should it be legal for
public school teachers to strike?"
Tindall put in her time on Roving Reporter.
"It was not a particularly happy thing to do," she said. "Most people
would answer your question and smile and say, 'You're not going to take
my picture.' ... I used up all my friends and acquaintances in the
first couple of weeks. Most of my friends wouldn't do it, either."
The Sun continued to grow in the early 1980s. Looking to expand, the
Whites bought newspapers serving Bolingbrook and Romeoville in 1982
and, two years later, launched The Fox Valley Villages Sun.
By that time several community newspapers from neighboring towns were
being printed at The Sun's printing plant, at the Jackson Avenue office
building. Having outgrown that space, the Whites purchased 2 acres at
1500 W. Ogden Ave. and began construction of a new printing plant. The
first issue rolled off the presses at that site on March 23, 1983.
Timeline
1975: In April, Chester Rybicki beats incumbent Kenneth Small in mayoral election.
1979: In September, School District 203 teachers strike.
1980: In March, Knoch Knolls Park purchased by Naperville Park District.
1980: City of Naperville purchases the old Kroehler Manufacturing building in April.
1981: Naperville celebrates its sesquicentennial and builds the Riverwalk.
1983: In March, Jeanine Nicarico, 10, is kidnapped and murdered.
7/17/05
