Originally published: . Volume 10, No. 3. Source pages: 2.
by Times publisher, J. Nelson Ten years ago this month my father died his natural death. Those who knew him well understood him to be a challenging, charismatic, and intelligent man. He expressed compassion for the less fortunate, cared little for wealth, and had no problem disrupting a corrupt status quo. He loved classics and quoted Shakespeare for fun or to rub someone's nose in it––"Out, damned spot."
My father chose newspapering as a livelihood when he returned from WWII, met my mother at LSU (she had always known she wanted to be a journalist), and settled in Red River Parish to run The Coushatta Citizen. While raising a family, they built the Citizen into a publication of journalistic excellence and social conscience.
So, I grew up in a newspaper family. At age seven I “stuffed papers," because hand assembly was how my parents' small weekly newspaper, on a shoestring budget, managed to get the second section of the paper into the first. I worked in the “back shop” where lead was melted for the “Linotype” to produce the mold or “type slug” for printing. After technology came along with photographic images of type, I worked in “paste-up,” putting news, photos, or ads on the page. As a teenager I performed as photographer, sent scurrying around town to find something–anything–to shoot to fill a page right before deadline. I loved it all.
During the 1960s Civil Rights era when the Ku Klux Klan attempted to organize a Klavern in the parish, the Citizen was thrust into the national spotlight by my father's provocative, anti-Klan editorial titled, "Against The Fall of Night." He told the Klan that there was no role for them to fill and to "Get the hell out of Red River Parish."
The editorial became a catalyst for retaliatory actions against my father, the Citizen, and our family. The KKK burned crosses on our yard and sent death threats. J. Edgar Hoover sent two men in black suits to help ensure the safety of our family. The paper's efforts to expose the secretive activities of the Klan lead to state and national awards and even an informal Honorable Mention from the Pulitzer Prize judges. In the years that followed, our family dinner table became a think tank of journalism students from Centenary, Northwestern and LSU-S, always dropping in to the after-dinner conversation to hang on to every word my father said. The mixture of journalists, students, and friends drank and laughed and debated truths about human behavior, the role of a newspaper, and the public’s right to know. It was, for a poor, rural parish in north Louisiana, an oasis of thought and meaning about human behavior.
After my father's death in March 2009, my brother and I discovered one of dad’s many safe deposit boxes, seemingly untouched for decades.
We found only one item in this obscure box––a cassette tape with a recording of a phone conversation he and I had in 1976 while I was a young graduate student at LSU in Baton Rouge. He was enthusiastically telling me about his election edition, and the usual advertising windfall. He told me about the community, the local and state elections, who was a “good egg” and who couldn’t be trusted. Why didn't I come home? he asked. I should come home to vote. I should come home because of my roots. I should just come home because he missed me, he finally admitted.
Sometime in 1976 my father had wrapped up the audio tape in a piece of brown paper bag and scrawled across the top of it –– “1976: Julie – Forget Me Not.”
Psychology's first duty is, like that of a good journalist, to discover objective facts and truth so that our social systems can use valid information to self- correct. And it would be even better if we could quote some Shakespeare while we're doing it. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…"
How could I forget?
[Julie Nelson is a licensed psychologist, journalist, and organizational consultant, and publisher of the Times. She also holds other various positions in the community. However, her opinions here are those of her own, and do not represent any group or association. She and the Times receive no compensation other than paid advertising. Email her at drj@drjulienelson.com, ––she welcomes feedback.]
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.