Compiling Memories is my favorite pastime

As the calendar flips to a new month I get to do one of my favorite things as the editor of the Phillips County News, i.e. looking through past volumes of this newspaper, one I was fortunate enough to inherent searching for old stories which peak my interest.

I spend a solid eight hours scanning the pages of old newspapers for tidbits from the past that I find interesting …tidbits I hope you find interesting as well. Early on I found out the folks at Hi-line Retirement devote a time, once a week, to gathering to hear the Yesterday’s Phillips County New Memories. Once I heard about this gathering I quickly bamboozled Pierre Bibbs, my right hand man, into trading me for the former News Briefs. In return, He inherited Senior Spotlight and Grapevine features – a lopsided trade, in my estimation, Sorry P.

Being the editor of a newspaper that has a history which creeps upon 100 years -- technically the PCN is only 93 years old -- is a huge deal to me. The last paper I was the editor for was one in which I helped start and I didn’t have the wealth of back logs that I now enjoy here in Phillips County.

The main reason I traded Pierre for the Memories feature – aside from the built-in readership – was to try and understand this community better. I have only been here for six months and still sort of feel like a fish out of water. Scanning old, crinkly pages of the PCN (and a few of its predecessors) is a history lesson in Phillips County that would be hard to find otherwise. Besides watching the county change over the past 100+ years in these retired pages, I have also have the chance to see how journalism has changed over that time span as well. Many of the changes are great, some regrettable, but in the end they are all worth exploring and compiling these old stories is a great pleasure.

So far, when I see a name I recognize, I bring it on into the pages of our 2014 editions of the PCN. As I am here longer, and have read more and more old copies, I will start including the new names I recognize in attempts to bring back fond memories for families in our readership area.

What I would to propose is that you, dear readers, send me names, topics, dates etc… of things/people that you would like to see in the Memories feature. Once these ideas have been brought to my attention I will go into my research with more of a plan of attack.

I would like to thank the ladies out at the Phillips County Museum for allowing me to use their extensive archives and for always been there with an answer to one of my silly questions (Sharron and Diane, you guys rock.)

Thanks for reading and Aloha.