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REMEMBERING THE DESLOGE SUN

By Joe Layden
Daily Journal
Managing Editor

It was born in a small building on the edge of town and lived just 10 days short of its 18th birthday. But during those years it recorded the hopes, disappointments, life and deaths of its hometown. It was called the Desloge Sun, the only newspaper on record to ever call the city its home.

This Sun rose for the first time in "a small dwelling" on Aug. 3, 1907.

Its birth came from adversity. Frank Abernathy, out of work because of the cutback in the area's mining operation and with a wife to support, bought a small model Armory press from his former employer.

Abernathy found a local political figure who believed in advertising and from the man the would be publisher obtained $200 and he was off.

He ordered a type foundery, a small foot powered Pearl jobber press and a few cases of type. When it arrived he had no money to pay the freight.

He took a dozen blank receipts and found enough people with faith in the future to buy subscriptions to pay the freight. He also found eight men in the city who were willing to help him put the press into operation.

The newspaper started in a small building on the north side of Oak street between Main and Lincoln. It remained in that same location until 1925 when it was moved to Flat River.

It was in fact the move to Flat River that later lead to its merger on June 30, 1925 with the Lead Belt News which ended the Desloge Sun.

The early copies of the Desloge Sun have been lost in the dust of history but on the 10th anniversary of the newspaper, it carried a story with some insight to the nature of the paper.

It was described as a "five column paper with two patent pages and two local pages."

The reference to "patent pages" were two pages on which features and national stories were printed along with ads from patent medicine companies. The newspaper bought this newsprint at a reduced price and then printed the outside two pages with local news.

While there is no date recorded, Abernathy sold the paper to a C. E. Abshier. Abshier continued the five column format of the newspaper and also the two local and two patent pages.

Then on June 7, 1913 a man would buy the paper who was to carry on the newspaper business in the county for many years. The new owner was W. L. Bouchard, who would later own the Lead Belt News and a well known figure in the state of Missouri.

Bouchard started the change at once. His first edition of the paper carried no patent pages, although they were to return later, and was four pages of solid local news on a six column format.

From that date on Bouchard proudly claimed "we never ran less than four pages of local news and sometimes that has grown to six home printed pages."

It was the Desloge Sun that reported on the men who left for World War I. It recounted each man's name and was quick to come to the defense of the president and the war effort. It supported the efforts of the women of the Red Cross and printed every letter from the men at the front it could get.

But as time wore on in the years of the war Bouchard tired of the newspaper business and he leased the newspaper to S. C. Woodruff. After four months Bouchard announced he had sold the newspaper to Woodruff.

On Feb. 28, 1919 Bouchard reclaimed the ownership saying that Woodruff had decided the arrangement under which the paper was sold to him was not one he liked. Bouchard said he would "leave the verdict to the public" as to how the paper was operated during his absence.

"We shall not be found fighting biased fights, but expect to fight for right and for the building and progress of Desloge and the community," Bouchard told his readers on the day he took over once more.

During the years the newspaper was operated by Bouchard it was a fighter. He took on the county court over the county trucks, he battled for better highways and at one time while he was a member of the Desloge school he took the entire front page of the newspaper to take the superintendent and other members to task over the school's operation.

He was not without problems. Once he wrote of a gun shot through the window of the newspaper. "Some son-of-a-gun plugged the window of the newspaper while I was slumbering."

Bouchard also ran a printing company doing what is called job work. Sometimes the job work would get in the way of printing the newspaper and he would be late with the paper which came out on Friday. But he never failed to tell the readers he was sorry and tell them why it was late.

The newspaper of the times was very different than today's newspapers. There was rarely a headline that ran over more than one column. Most headlines were little bigger than the body type. The stories were short and often dealt with very personal items.

There were few photos in the newspaper other than on the patent pages. Ads in The Sun of the 1910s were run on page 1 of the newspaper. The copy and the ads on the inside of the paper were often intermixed. Some of the ads would be on the top of the page, others at the bottom and some were just in the middle of the page.

In 1924, Bouchard acquired the Lead Belt News in Flat River. For the next 18 months he struggled with a way to keep The Sun and the Lead Belt News in operation.

First he tried putting the two newspapers out on Friday but that did not work because people objected to having the same news in each paper.

He then tried to publish The Sun on Tuesday and the Lead Belt News on Friday but this proved too costly.

So on June 23, 1925 Bouchard made the announcement that The Sun had shown its last rays on Desloge.

The Desloge Sun was combined with the Lead Belt News with a pledge that if the time ever comes where "circumstance warrent to resume publication of a paper in both Desloge and Flat River or one in every town is necessary" the equipment is ready "but we feel for the present one can serve better than two or more."

So closed the chapter in the history of Desloge when it had its very own newspaper. The paper was done in by the increasing business population in the surrounding towns and the automobile that opened the shopping public to travel a few miles and save a few dollars.

The businesses wanted more readers and to accomplish this the newspaper had to raise its circulation and news coverage.

Like it beginnings on borrowed money, the Desloge Sun lived on borrowed time as it tried to fight the tide of an every widening public view of their land. As it did the Sun left behind a record of the times that tells us of the people who made our communities what they are today.

Published by THE DAILY JOURNAL, Flat River, St. Francois Co. MO, Tues. Sept. 1, 1987 in a supplement "We Remember Desloge."

VIEW COPIES OF THE "NEW" DESLOGE SUN

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