I
bought some vintage books at an estate
sale in Deepstep in January. When I got
them home, inside one I found a clipping
from the Union-Recorder of August 1, 1991,
by community columnist Reynolds Allen, who
wrote about Flannery O’Connor. Beside the
column was the editorial page masthead with
the names of Roger Coover as publisher, Cecil
Bentley as editor and Daniel Baker as manag-
ing editor. That brought back memories of my
10 years at the newspaper.
But I was even more struck by what ap-
peared above our names. The masthead read
‘’The Union-Recorder / The Southern Recorder
established 1820 / The Federal Union estab-
lished 1830 / Merged 1872: The Union-Re-
corder.’’ To think that I was a part of one of the
state’s oldest newspapers, one that began 200
years ago, was a bit humbling.
Before my tenure at the U-R, as we called
it, my knowledge of Milledgeville was scant.
Yes, I knew it had been Georgia’s capital before
the upstart city of Atlanta grabbed it. I played
in a rock band that had a few gigs in Milled-
geville in the 1960s and early 1970s. And I was
familiar with Lake Sinclair, where my parents
had a small trailer on a lot where we stayed on
summer weekends. But that was about where
my connection with Milledgeville ended.
I had spent most of my first 38 years in Ma-
con, attended high school there (Cecil Bentley
was a classmate), then went to the University of
Georgia (at the same time as Cecil) and earned
a degree in journalism. After stints as a high
school teacher and convenience store manager,
I got back into newspapers in Macon in 1983,
eventually working with Cecil.
When he left the Macon Telegraph and
News in 1986 to become editor of its sister
Knight-Ridder newspaper, the Union-Record-
er, I told him to keep me in mind if there were
any jobs there. A few months later, he called.
He wanted me to be managing editor of the
U-R.
That was a big decision. My wife and I had
three children, the oldest 11. Did we want to
move our family to a new town, uproot our
kids, take a chance? We did. And it was a good
decision. Once we got settled in a house in Car-
rington Woods, our children adapted to their
new schools, made friends and thrived. My wife
got a teaching job and earned advanced degrees
from Georgia College.
And I had the responsibility of helping lead
the newsroom. The news staff was small -- few-
er than a dozen people -- but we strived to put
out the best newspaper we could. That same
sense of dedication was felt throughout the
building -- in advertising, circulation, compos-
ing and the press room. We all were invested
and felt like we were making a difference.
I am particularly proud of the recognition
the U-R received from others in the business.
We routinely earned multiple honors from the
Associated Press and Georgia Press Association
for our work, competing against other papers
our size across the state.
But even more important was the recogni-
tion that the Union-Recorder received from the
residents of Milledgeville and Baldwin County.
Circulation continued to grow as readers
turned to the U-R for local news. That was our
niche, what made us stand out from the big-city
papers that were available. We could offer what
they couldn’t -- news of the local community.
I left the Union-Recorder in late 1995 to
work at newspapers in Macon and Athens
before returning to the U-R a second time in
2000, then moving the next year to the La-
Grange paper, where I retired in 2011.
I get back to Milledgeville twice a month and
occasionally run into folks I knew when I lived
there. The people are what makes Milledgeville
special -- whether they are former colleagues
from the U-R, folks at church or neighbors.
Being accepted when we moved there made my
family’s lives much easier.
As the Union-Recorder marks its 200th an-
niversary, I’m proud to have been a small part
of its history. May it have 200 years more.
200th l 17