The Courier - Celebrating 160 Years

THE COURIER

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2019 |

L

0 6 1YEARS

9— 18 5

20

19

JULY 25, 2019

G

CE

E

A T R IN B

WATERLOOCEDAR FALLS COURIER

NEWSPAPER ESTABLISHED JAN. 18, 1859 TEXT BY PAT KINNEY

O

Reprinted from Courier 150th anniversary

n Christmas Day 1858, partners Will Hartman and George Ingersoll loaded a printing press on a bobsled and embarked on a sevenmile trek through the snowy wilderness from Cedar Falls to Waterloo, then a teeming metropolis of 800 people.

The town was ripe for a new newspaper, Hartman reasoned.

COURIER FILE PHOTO Continued on PAGE 2

00 1

Courier building; streetcar lines can be seen embedded in pavement

C1

C2

COURIER 160 YEARS

| THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2019

THE COURIER

160 YEARS GROUT MUSEUM ARCHIVES

The Courier staff, Waterloo, October 22, 1890.

Blackhawk Courier ‘dedicated to general news, agriculture, science and the diffusion of republican principles’

‘H

e little realized then the decades of toil, hardship and abject poverty which lie ahead,” reported longtime Courier associate editor David Dentan in a centennial account of the birth of The Courier in 1859. It was published in the Palimpsest, the State Historical Society of Iowa’s monthly publication.

“Seldom, if ever, did a newspaper have more humble beginnings than the Waterloo Courier,” Dentan noted.

Hartman, a native of Allentown, Pa., was just 19 at the time. His family had moved to Ohio when he was 2, and then to a log cabin near Anamosa, where he was apprenticed at age 12 to William Haddock, then publisher of the Anamosa News, the first paper in Jones County.

After working at papers in Dubuque and Delhi, he wanted to start his own. In Delhi, Hartman met Marvin Lott, a teamster who was taking a wagonload of supplies to the new city of Waterloo. Hartman was interested, so he talked his landlord into giving him time to pay his rent and headed to Waterloo with Lott. Hartman found work as a typesetter, once again working for Haddock at the Iowa State Register, Waterloo’s first paper, established in 1855 at The Courier’s former location in the 500 block of Commercial Street.

Hartman soon discovered “a better opportunity in Cedar Falls,” Dentan noted, then a larger community than Waterloo. Hartman and Ingersoll took over operations of the paper there, The Banner, publication of which had been suspended about a year earlier.

That paper had been operated by businessmen who were not newspapermen by trade and had other enterprises to tend to.

Hartman and his partner found difficulty obtaining supplies, in large part because a Cedar River steam ship in operation at that time, the Black Hawk, could only navigate the river as far north as Waterloo and found negotiating some rapids between Waterloo and Cedar Falls as too risky. It was time to move to Waterloo, where Hartman’s one-time mentor, Haddock, was having problems.

The paper’s Democratic leanings and his one-time pro-Southern advocacy of states’ rights and slavery did not go over well with residents. “There was increasing desire in Waterloo for a thoroughly Republican newspaper, and some

Courier mailroom equipment being installed in this ‘60s-’70s-era photo.

COURIER FILE PHOTO

A historic cornerstone bearing the inscription, ‘Waterloo Courier 1903’ is shown being removed from the building at 208 W. Park Ave., in 1973.

The building had been occupied by Gates College since 1924 and was formerly occupied by the Waterloo Daily Courier from the time the building was constructed in 1903 until the Courier moved to a building at West Park Avenue and Commercial Street in 1924. The Gates College Building was torn down to make way for the Conway Civic Center, now the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center. residents so indicated to Hartman and Ingersoll, when the two young editors found it impossible to continue publication in Cedar Falls,” Dentan reported in the Palimpsest.

The first issue of Hartman and Ingersoll’s Blackhawk Courier on Jan. 18, 1859, espoused that it was “Devoted to General News, Agriculture, Science and the Diffusion of Republican Principles.”

Eventually the Register folded, and Haddock sold much of his equipment to a new paper in Waverly. Waterloo’s population grew to between 1,000 and 1,200 as the 1860s dawned. Another rival, The Cedar Falls Gazette, began to capture a good portion of The Courier’s classified advertising revenue.

Trying to make up the lost revenue, Hartman established the first paper in Grundy County, The Pioneer, printing material used in The Courier on one side of the broadsheet in Waterloo and the Grundy Center news and advertising on the other side in Grundy Center.

Hartman also married his Ohio sweetheart, Dorinda Clark, and they provided room and board for the printer’s apprentices working at the paper. The “devils,” as Hartman referred to them, were paid $40 to $50 a year “plus board and washing” their first year and that annual salary increased to $80 to $90 by their third year.

That time was a period of great rivalry between Waterloo and Cedar Falls, Dentan noted. Cedar Falls was the county seat. A group from Waterloo who tried to steal the county record and plat books in the middle of the night, and effectively move the county seat, were betrayed by an informant and driven off with a barrage of rotten eggs by the Cedar Falls residents.

A similarly spirited rivalry grew up between the Courier and the Cedar Falls Gazette, where the publishers of the respective papers would openly challenge each other on items like the amount of freight handled at each community’s rail depot. Each paper accused the other of distortions about their community. “That paper finds fault with every enterprise our town undertakes,” Courier editors declared. “The people of Cedar Falls ought by all means to reward the Gazette for telling such contemptible little fibs in favor of their little village.”

Dentan reported those challenges were designed “to build up civic pride and spur citizens into competitive activity” on projects of common interest to both communities, such as securing railroad repair shops. With many of its employees leaving to serve in the Civil War, Hartman was hard pressed to keep the paper operating through the laborious printing process.

“Despite such difficulties” Dentan noted, Hartman “missed few editions.” After the war the Gazette owners moved to Sioux City and began publishing what is now the Sioux City Journal. The last half of the 19th century saw considerable competition between the Courier and a new rival, the Iowa State Reporter, founded by H.Q. Nicholson and later acquired by J.J. Smart and pioneer Waterloo businessman Matt Parrott. Joining the competition was the Cedar Valley Tribune, which later became the Waterloo Morning Tribune.

During this period Will Hartman also was appointed local postmaster by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. Hartman was succeeded by John von Lackum, one of the first three mail carriers in Waterloo, who eventually married Hartman’s daughter Genevieve, whose children would own the family stock in the paper for generations.

The Courier became a daily permanently in 1890 and the W.H. Hartman Co. was incorporated in 1891 with Will Hartman as president and his son, John Hartman, as secretary-treasurer. W.H. Hartman died in 1895 and son John took the paper’s reins.

During that decade women began to work at the paper. It had editorialized in 1890 that while “responsible young women might teach school or become librarians, there is no telling what sort might come to work in an office.”

Despite that chauvinistic stance, six years later Margaret Van Metre became the paper’s first woman reporter and its first society editor. In 1907, two years before the paper’s 50th anniversary, Martha Taylor became the paper’s first advertising saleswoman and

office assistant, and worked for the paper 40 years.

The paper’s most famous employee of that or perhaps any time was Sinclair Lewis. Hartman fired him and he went on to become one of the greatest American novelists of all time and the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

Lewis, then 23, was fired after a falling out with Hartman. His downfall was his “radical” editorials, biographers wrote. Topics ranged from defending the nude in art, to plans for a national theater in New York. Although he tried to relate his cosmopolitan ideas to Iowans, it appeared they couldn’t care less. Upon winning the Nobel Prize in 1930, Lewis recalled his short-lived Courier stint and his dismissal in an interview, published in the Nov. 8, 1930, Courier.

“I was fired the first month. The editor (Hartman) came to me and said, ‘I’ve got a telegram from your successor.’ “ ‘What?’ “ I said. “ ‘I’ve got a telegram from your successor. I didn’t want to say anything until I heard from him. But we’ll give you a full week’s pay. We want our boys to leave satisfied.’ “With the $80, minus two or three that I had saved, I was on the train for Chicago on Friday morning,” Lewis said.

Hartman brought in Arthur W. Peterson, previously associated with the Minneapolis Tribune and Indianapolis News, as general manager, purchasing a minority interest in the paper in 1908.

Waterloo had grown into a major commercial and farm machinery manufacturing center by then, its largest employer being The Rath Packing Co. It had added rail and trolley service and its population grew from 5,500 in 1875 to more than 12,000 by 1900. John Deere purchased the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co. in the spring of 1918, and built that enterprise into the world’s largest tractor manufacturing complex.

Arthur W. Peterson died in 1923, and the Courier, under the leadership of his nephew and successor, Jackson McCoy, also stepped up its production in 1926 with a new press capable of printing 37,250 papers an hour. Wilton “Hap” Floberg also was installed as the paper’s first sports editor. The paper eventually outlasted its competition, purchasing the Reporter in 1914.

Competition between the Courier and the surviving rival Waterloo Morning Tribune continued through the Great Depression, Please see 160 YEARS, Page 3

00 1

COURIER 160 YEARS

The Courier

Thursday, July 25, 2019 | C3

Courier of yesteryear had grungy glamour TEXT BY JACK HOVELSON

Reprinted from Courier 150th anniversary ‌

‌It was a little more than 80 years ago that New York playwrights Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur authored the Broadway hit comedy “The Front Page” lampooning the flamboyant, sometimes outrageous, nature of newspaper reporting in the roaring ‘20s.

It was journalism in the raw at the time, a culture of cockiness played out by a cast of devil-maycare hard-drinkers hell-bent for scoops, sensationalism and a seat at the bar.

By the early 1950s, the hijinks of those legendary days had virtually disappeared — as well they should have — into an era of responsibility and fairness. Fortunately, however, The Waterloo Courier newsroom a half-century ago retained just enough of the flamboyant flavor of those bygone times to whet my appetite for a 40-year career in newspapering.

The Courier’s second-floor newsroom in 1952 had big windows overlooking the intersection of Commercial Street and Park Avenue. A few years later, after The Courier added a floor and renovated much of the rest of the building, I questioned why it had covered all that revealing glass with aluminum, preventing those inside who were obligated to reporting on what was going on outside from seeing what was going on outside.

It was noisy in that old newsroom with sounds I wish I could have recorded for background noise on my home telephone answering machine. Rickety upright L.C. Smith and Underwood typewriters clattered, a ticker-tape

COURIER FILE PHOTO‌

In the late 1950s, the Waterloo Daily Courier announced “Big News” — the arrival of colored comics. machine on a shelf over the sports desk clicked off game scores by the innings and quarters. A police radio behind the city editor’s chair squawked incessantly. Associated Press, United Press and International News service tele-typewriters rattled out whatever was going on in the world onto rolls of yellow paper that spilled from the vibrating machines onto the floor.

All this was accompanied by interruptions of laughter, grousing, jangling telephones and, yes, an occasional four-letter word that couldn’t go into the newspaper.

Complementing the audible atmosphere was its appearance.

Green and gray in various shades were the predominant colors of the desks, floors and walls. Green also was the color of the eyeshade worn by the aging wire editor who was as much an icon of the past as anyone in the newsroom. Woody, as he was known, said little but when he did speak it usually came out grumpy.

Much of that was excusable because an affliction had left Woody with only two or three fingers on each hand.

Every Saturday around 10 p.m.

— after the Sunday edition was put to bed — a poker game broke out on the wire desk finally cleared of the stacks of yellow wire copy.

Woody was not the only iconic character in that newsroom. Bill Dunlevy began his newspaper career while still an East Waterloo High student. By the time he was a full-time fire/police reporter at the Courier he had established himself as a swashbuckling flashing-red-light chaser who sometimes would arrive at crime scenes before the cops. He would ride fire trucks to fires and fearlessly wade into dangerous venues to come out with exclusive stories and photos.

I didn’t see the Courier newsroom for more than six years while I was off to the Army, teaching a couple of years and spending a year

BRANDON POLLOCK, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER‌

as a Fort Dodge Messenger reporter before returning to Waterloo in 1960 as a full-time general assignment reporter.

Gone in 1960 was the old second-floor newsroom accessible from the Courier’s main entrance via a long, dark green stairway.

In its place was a brightly lit, glass-partitioned room, served by an elevator, that had more than twice the floor space of the old newsroom. It was nice ... but I couldn’t see outside.

For five working hours, Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, was another of those proverbial slow news days.

Wire Editor Seltzer and I were finishing our noon lunches in a room off the newsroom when the door flew open and there was City Editor Ken Murphy. I’d never seen him move so fast, nor his face so contorted. “Dave! Dave!” he shouted. “The president’s been shot!”

Dave Seltzer and I leaped up and ran to his glass-enclosed wire news cubicle. Several months earlier I

had been designated as the assistant wire editor. When Dave was gone, I handled the wire service copy and made up pages one and two, as he did on all his work days.

We squeezed into a smaller room where three or four teletype machines and a wire photo transmitter were going nuts. The Associated Press printer tapped away incessantly but no words appeared on the roll of paper feeding into it.

“BULLETIN! President Kennedy shot in Dallas.” Then nothing for seconds that seemed like hours. Then “Rushed to Parkland Hospital!”

By now, the tiny room was jammed with people from the newsroom and other departments in the Courier building. Seltzer and I were trapped, unable to get out to his telephone to shout “Stop the press!” to the men in the pressroom two floors below. We literally had to physically push people out of the way.

Actually, we never really told anyone to stop the presses because the presses weren’t rolling yet.

But, we did order them to hold the presses which was close enough. It now was well after 1 p.m. and the first of three editions was about to run. Composing room workers tore up the first two pages and maybe some others to make room for what was to come. Seltzer ordered the largest type face in stock for page one’s new banner headline.

I left the Courier just over four years later for a challenging reporting job with the Des Moines Register. Thus ended an oft-interrupted Courier career that began in 1948 when, as a high school sophomore at New Hartford, I delivered the papers to several dozen residents of the town’s east side.

COURIER FILE PHOTO‌

A view of the Courier’s Display Advertising Department in the 1980’s in the Commercial Street building.

160 years From 2

00 1

when Courier employees took a 10 percent pay cut and the Morning Tribune could not make payroll until carriers brought in their route collection money. The Courier finally purchased the Morning Tribune in 1931, but not its radio station with the namesake call letters of WMT. That was purchased by a Des Moines Register subsidiary and moved to Cedar Rapids, where it has operated for decades under different owners.

After acquiring the Tribune, the Courier’s circulation increased from 21,000 in 1930 to 33,000 in 1931, but that dropped back to 27,200 by 1933 due to the Depression. The Courier used some of proceeds from the Tribune sales to establish the Cedar Falls Daily News in 1937, which went defunct after a short period.

Bruce A. Palmer became the Courier’s first full-time photographer during that period. John Hartman, who received the Iowa Press Association’s Master Editor award, died in 1941, leaving behind a paper of 35,000 circulation, an extensive history of Black hawk County and an estate bequest that evolved into what is now Hartman Reserve Nature Center. After Hartman’s death his nephews, John P. von Lackum II and Karl von Lackum, became president and vice president, respectively of the W.H. Hartman Co. Jackson McCoy became editor while retaining the title of general manager.

World War II brought exponential growth and challenges to the Courier. Its circulation topped 40,000; at the same time, newsprint was in short supply, matched only by shortage of its personnel who were called into military service. As was the case with many industries women filled the void,

GROUT MUSEUM ARCHIVES‌

The Black Hawk National Bank at the corner of West Fourth Street and Commercial Avenue, circa 1923.

‘Big News Day’ promotion at the Courier, 1950s in addition to traditional roles in the “women’s department,” forever shattering another gender barrier.

The Courier was the first to report the Waterloo’s five Sullivan brothers missing after the USS Juneau went down on Nov. 13, 1942.

In an era of voluntary censorship to protect troop movements during the war, the news was not broke until January 1943.

Managing Editor Gene Thorne, who saw combat service in Sicily and Italy, returned home and back to work in time to order the presses to roll the day an “extra” reporting the war’s end roll off the presses. It was the last “extra” the paper would produce until the Iraq war began in March 2003.

The paper’s growth was concurrent with that of Deere and Rath, both of which supported the war effort with tank transmissions and meat for U.S. troops and as part of the lend-lease program.

Growth continued after the war into the late 1940s and early ‘50s punctuated by two major strikes at Rath in 1948 and Deere in 1950.

Tragedy struck the paper on June 22, 1952, when Jackson McCoy died following an emergency appendectomy. His son, Robert McCoy, trained in the trade,

would succeed him at age 31 and lead the paper over the next 30 years as Waterloo and Cedar Falls entered an era of unprecedented prosperity.

In 1959, the top two floors of the Courier building were encased in aluminum siding in a renovation.

Circulation broke the 50,000 mark and, in the mid-1970s the Courier became one of the first computerized newsrooms in the country, earning international recognition and visits from industry professionals from around the world.

Gender barriers continued to be broken when Pat O’Conner was named the paper’s first woman assistant city editor in the late 1970s. The Courier also saw some of its first African-American reporters during this time, including, among others, Glenn Reedus and Linda Turner.

The Courier also operated the Cedar Falls Record, a Tuesday-through-Saturday morning paper which complemented the Courier’s afternoon publication schedule, operated on its own offset press and won numerous awards for reporting and news writing.

The Courier phased out the old hot-metal type in favor off an offset press, and moved its presses from the Park Avenue side of the building to the adjacent former Montgomery Ward building along West Fourth Street. In the early 1980s, typewriters in the newsroom were abandoned completely in favor of computer terminals.

Local ownership of the paper came to an end in the early

1980s when McCoy, acting on behalf of the von Lackum family, engineered a purchase of the Courier by Howard Publications of Oceanside, Calif. James Lewis was installed as publisher. Howard took the reins during difficult economic times in the 1980s. Rath liquidated, Deere cut its work force by 10,000, and the Courier, like other businesses, was similarly affected. An initial batch of across-the board the board cuts were implemented, resulting in layoffs. The Record closed, its news product merged into the Courier and the paper became known as the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.

Nevertheless, Howard recapitalized the paper with press improvements and Lewis, following McCoy’s tradition, quietly maintained the paper’s editorial independence with community leaders for two decades.

Ownership of the paper was brought back inside Iowa when Davenport-based Lee Enterprises, which already owned and operated the Quad-City Times and the Mason City Globe-Gazette, bought The Courier and most other Howard papers in early 2002. It also marked the first time The Courier became part of a publicly traded corporation.

In 2004, Nancy L. Green, Lee’s corporate vice president of circulation, became the first woman publisher in the paper’s history.

In 2007, Green named managing editor Nancy Raffensperger Newhoff, a 28-year newsroom veteran of the paper, to succeed departing Howard alum Saul

Shapiro as the paper’s first woman editor.

The Courier faced major challenges in 2008, when June flood waters backing up through storm drains flooded the buildings basement along with a good portion of downtown Waterloo. The building had to be evacuated for several days. The paper received printing help from The Gazette in Cedar Rapids and newsroom operations were temporarily relocated to Hawkeye Community College, as the paper continued operating and keeping the public informed as the area sought to recover from the twin spring disasters of a killer tornado and a flood.

The Courier took another difficult but significant step later in 2008 when it began printing the paper out of a central printing house in Cedar Rapids, ending press operations here. It resulted in job losses — the most at one time since the Howard acquisition in the early 1980s — but avoided the substantial expenses that would have been incurred from buying a new press, in favor of an existing state-of-the-art operation with multiple capabilities.

In December 2011, the Courier began a new chapter in its history as the business moved to a new location.

The newspaper, having been at the corner of Commercial and West Fourth streets since 1923, moved across the river to 100 E. Fourth St. and into the former Waterloo Industries Building.

The new building gave employees not only updated facilities but natural lighting and more space.

COURIER 160 YEARS

C4 | Thursday, July 25, 2019

The Courier

GROUT MUSEUM ARCHIVES‌

Waterloo Evening Courier newsies, 1916.

The Waterloo Courier THROUGH THE YEARS: 1859-2019

160 years of history, award-winning news coverage 1‌ 845: First permanent settlers arrive in Black Hawk County, establishing Sturgis Falls (Cedar Falls) and Prairie Rapids Crossing (Waterloo).

1851: Prairie Rapids Crossing’s name is changed to “Waterloo” when the first post office is established

by Charles Mullan.

1854: Waterloo becomes the county seat of Black Hawk County; John H. Leavitt establishes the first bank in Waterloo.

1861-1865: Civil War forces financial and operating hardships on Courier as many employees enlist.

1918: The Moline, Ill.-based Deere & Co., purchases the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co., for $2,100,000.

1920: Courier circulation is 15,661, according to an advertisement in McCoy’s Waterloo City Directory.

1923: The Courier moves to its present location at Commercial Street and Park Avenue from the building that later becomes Gates Business College.

1926: The Courier installs a new Duplex Web-perfecting Unitype press, which is capable of printing 37,250 papers an hour. Lou Henry Hoover, who grew up in Waterloo, becomes first lady when her husband, Herbert Hoover, is elected president.

1930: Circulation of the Courier is at 21,135.

1931: The Courier’s Saturday afternoon editions are discontinued in favor of a Sunday morning edition.

1933: Courier circulation declines as the Great Depression takes hold in the area.

1868: On June 22, Waterloo officially becomes a city after its citizens vote to incorporate. R.A. Whitaker becomes the first mayor.

1958: The Waterhawks ski team is organized.

1959: Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at West High Nov. 11. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and his family visit Iowa. Columbus High opens. The computer chip is patented. Buddy Holly, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Ritchie Valens and pilot Roger Peterson are killed in a February plane crash near Clear Lake.

1880: Telephone service comes to Waterloo.

1884: In September, Professor Thomas Tobin founds Waterloo College, which later becomes the Waterloo Business College (also known as Gates Business College).

1890: Dec.13, Courier becomes a daily paper, published every day except Sunday. 1906: Miss Margaret Van Metre, daughter of Isaiah Van Metre (one of the founders of the Waterloo Tribune), becomes first female reporter and first society editor for The Courier.

SCRIPPS HOWARD PHOTO/MCA RECORDS‌

The Crickets in the late 1950s (from left), Jerry Allison, Buddy Holly and Joe B. Mauldin. On Feb. 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper all died in a plane crash after performing at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake.

Buddy Holly plays at the Hippodrome (now McElroy Auditorium) in April and at Electric Park in July. He dies the following February in a plane crash near Clear Lake. Waterloo Baseball Inc. is incorporated.

1879: On Sept. 11, the Cedar Valley Tribune begins publication. Its name is later changed to the Waterloo Tribune. Electricity and gas are first introduced in Waterloo.

1886: The Waterloo Water Works begins operation, providing running water to the citizens of Waterloo.

1957: “American Bandstand” first airs on ABC on Aug. 5. Congress adds the words “In God We Trust” to our currency.

Tommy Carroll, a member of John Dillinger’s gang, was shot and killed in Waterloo in 1934.

This is a police mug shot from the 1930s.

1934: On June 7, Tommy Carroll, a member

of bank robber John Dillinger’s gang, is shot and killed in Waterloo.

1939: On Sept. 1, Germany invades Poland, beginning WWII.

1960: Norma “Duffy” Lyon of Toledo makes her first butter cow for the Iowa State Fair. The Cedar Falls Ray Edwards pool is built. The Food and Drug Administration approves the birth control pill.

1961: Roger Maris hits 61 home runs and sets a record that stands until 1998. President Kennedy appoints the first black man, Robert Weaver, to serve on his cabinet.

1962: The Waterloo Black Hawks hockey team forms.

The Cedar Falls Historical Society is founded. Marilyn Monroe dies of an overdose.

1946: Thousands of fans venture out to the new Municipal Stadium to welcome baseball and the White Hawks back to town. Bob Hope appears at a show sponsored by the Waterloo-Cedar Falls AMVETS. 1947: The Waterloo Museum of Art is founded. R.J. McElroy founds KWWL and the Black Hawk Broadcasting Co. 1948: On May 19, strikes are followed by rioting at Rath Packing Co. GROUT MUSEUM ARCHIVES‌

Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co. at West Third and Cedar streets, Waterloo, shown here in 1912.

The company developed the Waterloo Boy Tractor in 1914 and sold to John Deere in 1919.

1893: The Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co.,

was founded by John Froelich and a a group of businessmen to sell a gasoline-powered tractor. A few years later, the company began manufacturing the Waterloo Boy tractor.

1909: The Waterloo Evening Courier begins publishing through 1929.

1910: The population of Waterloo grows to 26,693.

The National Dairy Cattle Congress is first held in Waterloo.

1914: World War I begins in Europe and lasts until November 1918.

1917: U.S. Congress votes to declare war on Germany, Austria and Hungary and begins sending troops.

1950: Waterloo’s population is 65,198. United Auto Workers stage a 109-day strike at John Deere.

1951: On April 14, 25 people sign a petition saying they want to start a new town, Elk Run Heights, east of Evansdale. Phyllis Singer starts at The Courier as a reporter. 1953: Chevrolet introduces the Corvette, America’s first production sports car. The structure of DNA is discovered.

1954: In June, the Courier prints 55,000 copies of a special Waterloo Centennial edition. The edition contains 278 pages and the full run uses 2,500 miles of paper, enough to encircle Iowa twice. Carol Morris is named Miss Iowa. She becomes Miss USA and Miss Universe in 1956.

1955: United Packinghouse Workers of America begin lobbying the Courier to stop identifying people in news stories by race. Iowa State University holds a contest to choose a mascot. Cy (a cardinal) is selected. Bob Keeshan creates “Captain Kangaroo” 1956: Waterloo police officer William Mehlhorn is shot by a burglar fleeing the scene of the crime, Jan. 14. The Grout Museum opens. The interstate highway system is created by federal law. A federal gas tax of 4 cents-per-gallon is introduced to finance it.

AP PHOTO‌

On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, arrive at Love Field airport in Dallas.

1963: The old Black Hawk County Courthouse

is razed. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. TV reporter and Waterloo native Tom Pettitis is the only broadcaster on the scene and on the air when Lee Harvey Oswald is killed in Dallas. Victor Harry Feguer, 27, of St. John, Mich., is hanged at dawn on March 15, at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison after being convicted under a federal law known as the Lindbergh statute. He becomes the last man executed in Iowa. Ku Klux Klan members bomb a Baptist church in Birmingham, Ala., killing four young African-American girls who are in the church basement. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech. Betty Friedan writes “The Feminist Mystique.” Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is assassinated.

00 1

COURIER 160 YEARS

The Courier

1964: The new Black Hawk County Courthouse is built. John Wayne Gacy marries Marilynn Myers and becomes the manager of three local Kentucky Fried Chickens franchises. The Civil Rights Act outlaws segregation. The Beatles debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” North Vietnam attacks U.S. ships. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution is passed by Congress.

1965: At age 35, James Jackson is the first black elected to the Iowa Legislature from Waterloo. John Wayne Gacy is named the Waterloo Jaycees “Man of the Year.” He is later tried, convicted and put to death in Illinois for the murders of 33 young men.

Lloyd Turner is elected mayor of Waterloo. The death penalty is outlawed in Iowa. Congress passes the Voting Rights Act, outlawing measures to suppress minority votes. More than 180,000 U.S. troops are sent to Vietnam.

1966: Hawkeye Institute of Technology opens. Dan Gable graduates from West High undefeated in his high school wrestling career.

1967: Iowa State Teachers College becomes the University of Northern Iowa.

1968: In September, Bruce Palmer collapses from a heart attack while in the Courier’s photography department darkroom. He dies in the arms of Jim Humphrey, a staff photographer. The Waterloo Courier hires its first African American reporter, Imogene Jones. In September, the Waterloo race riots occur.

Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated in California.

and 130 million Americans tune in. Elvis dies Aug. 16.

“Star Wars” debuts in theaters. 1978: Cable television first comes to Waterloo.

1979: In December, a bomb hoax at the Courier results in two arrests. The National Dairy Cattle Congress drops the word “Dairy” from it’s name.

The First College Hill Arts Festival is held. Margaret Thatcher becomes the Prime Minister of England and the first European woman to hold her country’s highest office. Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1980: The Black Hawk County double murder trial of Michael Moses is the first time Iowa courts allow news cameras to be used in the courtroom. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Black Hawk County has 138,000 residents. John Deere builds its tractor works on East Donald Street. 52 Americans, including Jesup native Kathryn Koob, are held hostage in Iran.

1981: The Courier changes to its current section and page numbering system (e.g., section A, page 1, vs. page 1). On July 15, the motors on the Courier presses are damaged by lightning. Spokesman Press, Inc., of Grundy Center prints the paper for the Courier. James M. “T-Bone” Taylor shoots and kills officers Wayne Rice and Michael Hoing on July 12, setting off a manhunt that ended in Taylor’s capture. The Cedar Valley Food Bank opens. Liz Mathis becomes the first female anchor at KWWL. AIDS is identified. The hostages are freed from Iran. Kathryn Koob, a Jesup native, is among them.

Britain’s Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer are married.

1982: In February, the Courier installs a new computer system which reporters and the classified department use to type in stories and ads. The first My Waterloo Days festival is held. Johnny Gosch, 12, of Des Moines vanishes on Sept. 5. He is still missing. “E.T.” hits theaters. Tylenol laced with cyanide results in the introduction of tamper-proof packaging.

NASA‌

From left: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. share a light moment together in 1969.

1969: College Square Mall opens in November. Neil Amstrong becomes first human to walk on the moon.

O.J. Simpson wins the Heisman Trophy.

1970: Crossroads Mall opens. Glenda Mabrey becomes the first woman to serve on the Waterloo City Council. The John Deere Foundry opens in Waterloo.

Waterloo wrestler Dan Gable has his only loss ever — in college or high school — in his final match, the 1970 NCAA 142-pound championship at Northwestern. After 181 straight wins, he suffered a 13-11 loss to Larry Owings. Janice Joplin and Jimi Hendrix both die of drug overdose.

1983: On May 2, Saul Shapiro becomes executive editor of the Courier. On Aug. 13, the Cedar Falls Record (4,000 circulation) is merged with the Courier. The Iowa state sales tax is raised to 5 percent.

The movie “Country” is filmed in Northeast Iowa.

Steven R.Hadley steals $1.16 million from the John Deere Community Credit Union in Waterloo in July and flees Waterloo. He is captured five years later.

Iowa has one reported case of AIDS. The first official Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated. On June 18, Sally Ride becomes first woman in Space.

The last new episode of “M*A*S*H” is broadcast.

1984: Eugene Martin, 13, disappears Aug. 12, while delivering papers in a south Des Moines neighborhood. He remains missing. Production ceases at Rath Packing Co. following a 1983 bankruptcy filing.

Geraldine Ferraro is the first female candidate from a major political party to run for vice president.

COURTESY GROUT MUSEUM ARCHIVES‌

Rath Packing Company, was liquidated in 1985. Here is an aerial view of the property taken October 20, 1993.

1985: Rath Packing Co. is liquidated. Water-

THOMAS NELSON, THOMAS.NELSON@WCFCOURIER.COM‌

1972: Dan Gable wins gold at the Munich Olympics.

1973: Gates Business College closes. RAGBRAI begins.

Barb Coffin, Waterloo’s first female police officer, is hired. Mary Berdell becomes the first African-American to serve on Waterloo City Council. The Black Hawk Building at West Fourth and Commercial streets is demolished. The Roe vs. Wade decision legalizes abortion. The U.S. withdraws its last troops from Vietnam. Secretariat wins the Triple Crown (Preakness, the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes).

The Sears Tower is built in Chicago. The Endangered Species Act is introduced. The draft ends.

1974: The Courier hosts delegations of international guests here to see the new typesetting system installed in 1973. On Feb. 1, Francis Veach retires. A Courier staff writer for 39 years, he covered the fatal shooting of Tommy Carroll, a member of John Dillinger’s gang. In December, Russell Smith, the Courier sports editor, publishes “The Legend of Dan Gable: ‘The’ Wrestler.”

1974: Construction begins on the UNI-Dome. Nixon resigns over the Watergate scandal. Newspaper heiress and socialite Patricia Hearst is kidnapped.

Stephen King writes his first novel “Carrie,” which becomes a best-seller. The national speed limit is lowered to 55 mph because of the fuel crisis.

1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft.

“Saturday Night Live” first airs on TV. 1976: The UNIDome opens. The first Sturgis Falls festival is held.

Dan Gable becomes the University of Iowa wrestling coach.

00 1

1977: The City of Waterloo purchases the old Waterloo Post Office (415 Commercial St.) and uses it to consolidate the two city libraries into one location.

KBBG-FM 88.1 is founded as the Afro American Community Broadcasting Inc. “Roots” appears on TV,

1992: Mona Van Duyn, 71, a Waterloo native and University of Northern Iowa graduate, is named the nation’s sixth poet laureate and becomes the first woman to hold the post. The Mall of America in Minnesota opens. Johnny Carson retires from “The Tonight Show.” Prince Charles and Diana separate.

1993: Major flooding affects much of Iowa. Apartheid ends in South Africa. The North American Free Trade Agreement treaty is ratified. Janet Reno becomes the first female attorney general. Toni Morrison, receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, becomes the first black woman to receive any Nobel Prize.

1994: In May through September, two gambling referendums divide the community. Both are voted down. Chamberlain Manufacturing closes. The Waterloo Diamonds baseball team is sold and leaves Waterloo. The National Cattle Congress declares bankruptcy. Nelson Mandela is elected President of South Africa. Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are killed. O.J. Simpson is accused.

1995: In December, the Courier Photo Department gets its first digital camera, enabling photographers to send photos from remote locations on tight deadlines. In December, political reporter Eric Woolson leaves the Courier to become press secretary for Gov. Terry Branstad.

1996: Carolyn Cole leaves the Courier. Melody Parker is promoted to Lifestyles Editor. 1997: In September, the Courier Web site goes live for the first time. Waterloo Industries closes.

1998: The Courier wins an Iowa Newspaper Award for general excellence in papers over 8000 circulation. The Courier wins 12 other INA awards as well as 15 awards from the Iowa Associated Press Managing Editors association.

1999: In May, the Courier installs a new computer network in the newsroom, enabling reporters to access e-mail and the Internet at their desks.

2001: On Aug. 5, the Courier introduces the Celebrations tab, which includes birthday, engagement and wedding announcements as well as other social news. The Courier’s Cedar Falls office moves to 1904 Main St. On April 1, Lee Enterprises completes the purchase of Howard Publications and becomes the new owner of the Courier. Lee Enterprises is headquartered in Davenport, and with the acquisition of Howard Publications owns 45 daily newspapers.

2003: On March 20, the United States invades Iraq.

2004: The Courier reinvents the Hometowner, renaming it the Insider and creating individual editions for Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Waverly. On April 3, the Courier begins printing a Saturday edition. This marks the first time in the Courier’s history that it has published seven days a week. On Aug. 26, Nancy Green is named publisher of the Courier, the first woman to hold the position. In December, Dave Braton is hired as advertising director at the Courier.

2005: In August, the Courier breaks ground on a warehouse addition to its property in downtown Waterloo. The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission grants a license that enables the Isle of Capri casino to build a facility in Waterloo.

1971: A staff of 867 youths delivers the Courier. La Porte City holds its centennial celebration. On Jan. 11, Courier owner W.H. Hartman Co. purchases the Montgomery Ward building on Fourth and Commercial streets for $175,000. The first coin-operated video game “Computer Space” introduced by Nolan Bushnell.

Dan Gable speaks at his museum’s grand re-opening in 2019. The fabled Waterloo wrestler won the gold medal in 1972 at the Munich Olympics.

Thursday, July 25, 2019 | C5

loo Greyhound Park has its groundbreaking ceremony Oct. 29. Interstate 380 between Waterloo and Cedar Rapids opens. Annabeth Gish, a Cedar Falls native, makes her big screen debut in “Desert Bloom.”

1986: John Deere and the United Auto Workers become engaged in a bitter five-month strike and lockout in 1986-87. The Chernobyl nuclear plant in the U.S.S.R. explodes, killing 7,000 people. Oprah Winfrey’s talk show goes national.

1987: The first racing season opens at Waterloo Greyhound Park. Oct. 19 becomes known as Black Monday when stock markets around the world crash. By the end of the month, the U.S. stock market had fallen 22 percent.

2006: In November, Courier Communications moves its Cedar Falls bureau to 401 Main St. Gas hits $3 per gallon. Local artist Paco Rosic recreates Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in spray paint at the Galleria de Paco.

2007: On March 30, the collapse of two walls at the historic building housing the Courier’s Cedar Falls offices results in the closure of the bureau. In May, longtime editor Saul Shapiro leaves the Courier for a position at Wartburg College in Waverly. On Sept.

13, Nancy Raffensperger Newhoff is appointed the Courier’s first female chief editor.

2008: The Courier installs a new software system in the newsroom to streamline the writing, layout and archiving process. In March, Courier Publisher Nancy Green leaves the Courier for a position with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Dave Braton is selected as the Courier’s new Publisher. On Oct. 20, the Courier ends printing operations in Waterloo, contracting to have the paper printed in Cedar Rapids and shipped back.

2011: Courier moves into new quarters at 100 E. Fourth St.

1988: Courier begins using soybean oil ink for pages with color printing. Conway Civic Center renamed the Five Sullivan Brothers Civic Center.

IBP makes plans to build a meat packing plant in Waterloo.

1989: The Courier spends $480,000 for a new computer and typesetting system in the newsroom. This system remains in use until May 1999. The Courier mail room is completely overhauled and moved from the basement of the Courier building to the first floor adjacent to the press room at a cost of $2.3 million. The Waterloo Indians baseball team becomes the Waterloo Diamonds. RAGBRAI comes through Cedar Falls. IBP begins construction on local plant. The Berlin wall comes down. The World Wide Web gets its start. The United States invades Panama and topples General Manuel Noriega. The oil tanker Exxon Valdez hits a reef, pouring 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound.

1990: On Jan. 6, Russ Smith, longtime Courier sports editor, retires. In March, the Courier joins the Newspapers in Education program. On Sept.

4, a car crashes through the office window at the Courier’s Cedar Falls offices. Germany is unified.

Margaret Thatcher steps down as Britain’s Prime Minister. Jack Kevorkian performs his first assisted suicide. Nelson Mandela freed from imprisonment in South Africa.

1991: The U.S.S.R. dissolves. Mikhail Gorbachev resigns and Boris Yeltsin takes over. Operation Desert Storm is launched after Iraq invades Kuwait.

COURTESY THE COURIER‌

Law enforcement authorities looking for evidence at Meyers Lake where Lyric Cook-Morissey, 10, and Elizabeth Collins, 8, disappeared in Evansdale on July 17, 2012.

2012: Lyric Cook-Morissey, 10, and Elizabeth Collins, 8, disappeared at Meyers Lake in Evansdale on July 17, 2012. The girls’ bikes were found near a bike trail at the edge of the lake.

Their disappearance shocked the community and made national headlines.

2016: Publisher Dave Braton leaves the Courier for a position as publisher of Lee Agri-Media and the Bismarck (North Dakota) Tribune. Roy Biondi is named publisher in July.

2019: Meta Hemenway-Forbes is named Deputy Editor at the Courier.

COURIER 160 YEARS

C6 | Thursday, July 25, 2019

The Courier

FRONT

PAGES I‌ n its 160-year history, the Courier has covered major news events of the day.

Here’s a look at some of our historic front pages.

FRONT PAGE PHOTOS BY BRANDON POLLOCK, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

THE WATERLOO COURIER‌

00 1

COURIER 160 YEARS

The Courier

Thursday, July 25, 2019 | C7

COURIER PUBLISHERS

THROUGH THE YEARS BRANDON POLLOCK PHOTOS, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER‌

‌ William H. Hartman, 1859-1895

‌ A.W. Peterson, 1908-1923

John C. Hartman, 1895-1941

‌ John P. von Lackum II, 1915-1964

‌ Karl von Lackum, 1916-1968

‌ Jackson McCoy, 1912-1952

‌ Robert J. McCoy, 1946-1983

‌ James W. Lewis, 1983-2000

‌ John D. Goossen, 2000-2004

Nancy L. Green, 2004-2008

David Braton, 2008-2016

‌

‌ 00 1

Roy Biondi, 2016 to present

C8 | Thursday, July 25, 2019

The Courier

#

SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM

Get a DIGITAL PLUS subscription for only $3 for three months.

JOIN TODAY at wcfcourier.com/subscribe

00 1