MESSENGER Texas Press
TEXAS PRESS ASSOCIATION • TEXASPRESS.COM • JUNE 2013 • VOL 88 NO 6
TPA honors three with Golden 50 Awards Texas Press Association members recognized three newspaper stalwarts as “Golden 50” journalists at TPA’s recent summer meeting in Houston. J. Tom Graham of Frankston, Louis C. Stas of Wheeler and the late Wesley W. Burnett of Rockwall were awarded the Golden 50 designation for having worked in the newspaper industry for 50 years.
ies, including Del Rio, Burnett, Mineola, Lindale and New Boston, Pasadena. Graham loved the challenge of getting community newspapers out of the red and making them relevant to their communities. After taking the reins in Pasadena in 1998, he worked to merge Westward and HCN into one company. He became the chief operating officer for AP Westward, where he oversaw more than 60 newspapers around Houston, Austin, East Texas and Colorado. Since 2006, he has been the owner and publisher of The Frankston Citizen. Graham has served on numerous press association committees and has written several books, plays and songs.
J. TOM GRAHAM Graham’s newspaper career began at the age of eight in Knox City. He remembers that he was offered a quarter for a day’s work, pulling the papers off the press, and that seemed like far better money and less work than the toil in the cotton fields that he had been used to. He worked at the Knox City paper until he graduated high school in 1960. Graham graduated North Texas State in 1964 with a journalism degree. While attending school, he worked his way up to the position of city editor of the Denton Record Chronicle. After graduation, Graham became the managing editor of the Gonzales Inquirer and then joined the Abilene Reporter News in 1966. He served as AP wire editor and later state editor before entering the Army in the fall of 1966. In the Army, he served as news bureau chief of Pacific Stars and Stripes’ Korea bureau. He covered the North Korean attempt to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee, as well as the Pueblo incident in 1968. He also worked on Stars and Stripes in its Tokyo headquarters and as a correspondent in Vietnam. After his two-year service in the Army, he traveled through the Far East and spent a year with two Australian newspapers before returning to the U.S. and rejoining the Abilene Reporter News in November of 1969.
LOUIS C. STAS
Top: James Burnett (son), Kim Dolberry (daughter), Tim Burnett (son) and Pat Burnett (wife) accept the Golden 50 Award on behalf of Wes Burnett from TPA President Russel Skiles. Left: J. Tom Graham says a few words to convention attendees after accepting the Golden 50 Award at the Saturday awards luncheon. Right: Louis C. Stas accepts the Golden 50 Award from TPA President Russel Skiles.
Next, he became the publisher of the Huntsville Item, where in 1974 he led a news team in covering the Carrasco prison hostage situation, which would later
earn the team a national press award and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. After leaving Huntsville, Graham served as publisher in numerous cit-
Louis Stas was born northwest of Watonga, Okla., and received the first five and a half years of his education in a oneroom schoolhouse, walking three miles to school each day. In 1949, he moved to a farm eight miles southeast of Geary, Okla., and attended school in Hinton, Okla. After finishing his sophomore year in school, Stas took a job at The Hinton Record as a Linotype operator. For the next two years, he authored School Chatter, keeping everyone informed of what was going on at school. In the fall of 1957, Stas enrolled at Oklahoma State University, formerly Oklahoma A&M, and worked at the O’Collegian as a Linotype operator while attending classes in an effort to obtain a degree in architecture. At the end of the summer in 1959, he married and returned to college with his bride. At the end of the first semester, they learned they were
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Summer convention photos inside! PAGE 4