It had been the
tradition in our family for Mom and Dad to give Linda and me one gift and
“Santa” would give us another one. Although it was never said, we knew if we
ever expressed a disbelief in that jolly old gentleman from the north, the
gravy train would be cut off. Consequently, in my seventh-grade year, Santa
gave me a real printing press. It was rather small, and you could only feed 5 ½”
x 8 ½” paper through it but the bite of printer’s ink left a lifetime impression on me. As I am sure you
noticed, I had made it out of grade school! Not only did I move up a grade, the
walking distance to school was reduced from uphill for a one-half mile to one block. Next, I actually
had multiple teachers. It was like going from your General Practice Family
Doctor to a Specialist who could operate on just one section of your brain.
Perhaps the one
teacher who made the greatest impression on me that year was Charlsie Mae
Harding. Known as Miss Harding to her students, she brought the State of New
Mexico to life through her phenomenal history
class. Born in 1911, she had graduated as Salutatorian from high school at the
age of 15, graduated from West Texas Teachers College (now WTSU) in 1931, and
taught for the next 50 years apart from
one year, in the Clayton system. In 1977 she received the National Teacher of
the Year Award and in 1983 she was named to the New Mexico Educators Hall of
Fame. Physically a small woman, she was a giant for so many children.
I am sure you
are wondering how Miss Harding could be linked to my new printing press. Well,
I have a natural tendency to look at almost everything from a business point of
view. For example, while a printing press is fun to play with, a printing press
that makes money is even better. After I had printed letterheads for my mother
and tally pads for my parent’s card club the time had arrived to make some real
money. The high school had a newspaper but alas the Jr. High did not have the
benefit of a reliable news source. I consulted with Miss Harding about
publishing a periodical called “Jr. High News” and since she had been an
advisor for the school newspaper she freely provided a wealth of information
from the best type of stories to advertising sources and other income. From
that point forward all my spare time was consumed interviewing, writing, setting
type and then printing the initial FREE issue. The praise sent my ego out of
the ballpark. I just knew that I had a winner and went to work the next day on
selling subscriptions. If Al Gore had asked me years later about the difficulty
of turning a free information source into a money-making proposition, I would have
advised him to avoid the word Free! The sad part of this story is that the sale
of subscriptions was slower than a crippled turtle. Since everything was prepared
to go to press, I did publish a second free issue of the paper, but lessons
were learned and filed for later applications.
As a closing note,
Miss Harding passed away in 1998 at the age of 86 leaving an unparalleled legacy.
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