Checking a page for a July 4 edition are David Cooper and Jane O’Neal. Photo provided by David Cooper. The March day I walked into the Chattanooga News-Free Press building looking for a job as a copy boy in 1968 was very different from the day I retired from the Chattanooga Times Free Press earlier this year.
Over a half-century, production and personalities constantly changed. There were both challenges and fun times while putting the latest and most accurate news into the homes and hands of thousands of readers – and taking pride in a business very much in the public eye.
At age 20 I was on furlough from the University of Chattanooga. I had lost my student job. I had bought my first car. I needed money. The afternoon paper needed a copy boy. (Read gopher.) The Youth Opportunity Center connected us.
The editor doing the hiring was Charlie Crane. The Coopers and the Cranes once lived three doors apart, so I had an entrée. He started me the next day.
The job was to circulate around the newsroom all day, collecting stories on paper, sending them up a chute to the union printers in the composing room one floor above and then distributing galley proofs sent back down the chute to various editors and reporters. When the press sprang into action with the first edition, I distributed papers “hot off the press” to every desk in every office and to all the writers and editors.