Off the Record August 14, 1950

8-14-50
Of special interest to me was the article in the paper the other evening telling of the changes in the staff of the Daily Record. As I read about E. H. Pat Hauenstein relinquishing his duties as news editor, my mind passed through the haze of many years to the incident leading up to Pat’s coming to this paper. They have been busy years, almost forty of them. Two world wars and an industrial panic in between with all the news incident thereto are sufficient to raise one’s blood pressure. Add to this nine presidential elections with frequently a lot of folks pulling for publicity benefits this way and that way, and the necessity of using sufficient fact to steer through the straight and narrow way and be fair makes it apparent that one must thoroughly love his work to be able to stick to it so long. E. H. Hauenstein came to this newspaper in the spring of 1913. Previous to that, he had been working on the Wooster Daily News as local editor and newsman. Previous to then, George Kettler had been local editor and news man on The Wooster Daily Republican, the predecessor to the Daily Record. Fact is, George Kettler was just about every kind of an editor. Since 1898, he and I had been the news force, and up to the time we had a society editor, George and I gathered the society news, too and there personals. George was especially good on personals. He got them generally at the Pennsylvania Depot, for those were the horse and buggy days when everyone who traveled went by train. George was good in every other spot of the news department, too. But at the beginning of George’s incapacity, it was soon understood that the paper was going to need additional talent.

At that time, Pat Hauenstein, on our opposition paper, was going strong. I had noticed that in making the rounds, he gave about the same news value to events that I had given. One day the late Judge L. R. Critchfield asked me why we did not get Pat away from the opposition paper, intimating that he was not too happy there. Up to that time, the late E. S. Wertz, who was a power behind the throne of the other paper, and I had a sort of tentative agreement that we would not try to secure members of each others staff. But soon after Pat and I had got together for a couple of meetings in the Kalkas Confectionery, we agreed that the change would be made at the earliest opportunity. J. E. Britton, who was the manager of the Wooster Daily News working for Mr. Wertz and others, made a proposition to one of our valued operators, Earl Jumbo Snyder, asking him to take a position on that newspaper and pitch for the Wooster Daily News baseball team. That fixed it. We felt as the opposition had broken the agreement, we were ourselves certainly not bound to it, so in a few weeks, Pat Hauenstein’s connection with our staff began, and his connection has been to us an absolute joy ever since. Of course, the fur flew for awhile. Mr. Britton propositioned every member of our staff worth having. One man in the composition room went across, but it was not long until he came to see us wanting to work for us again, saying that the concrete was too hard on his feet. In about a year, he too was back with us.

Pat was with us all through the days when competition was pretty fierce, and I have always thought that his presence and his cool method of handling the news gave us a prestige that helped when the days came along when it was realized that Wooster, like a good many towns at that time and hundreds of others since, had become too small for more than one newspaper. Before the consolidation, Pat and I used to talk of the possibility of the two Wooster papers getting together, and of the belief we had at that time that if the amalgamation were successful, we should be able to maintain a circulation of possibly 5,500, never dreaming we should both see the time when it would be over ten thousand, more than the 5,500 figure which it is today. Newspaper writing and editing is not the only thing Pat is capable of. Early he learned to run a linotype and not too long ago, he corrected several lines in an emergency, and he can whip a page of type together as soon as almost anybody. And while he knows what is news with ability equal to anyone and can develop a story in a speedy and masterly workmanship manner, he has the other important qualification necessary to real success everywhere and that is character that included getting along with people, dealing fairly with the public, with his fellow workers, and with his boss. If indeed, he ever needs a boss, which he doesn’t and with himself I do not believe that through a very active life with something new budding up every minute he has ever done anything that would make it necessary for him to apologize to a single human being.

The changes that are being made at the Daily Record office are not made by handing the news department over to novices. Not by any means. Harold Murray came to be in the early nineteen thirties from the Canton Repository. He was sports editor for over a long period and filled the Hauenstein position on numerous occasions and over a month this summer previous to his vacation from which he was just returned. For some time, more recently, he has been developing the news from communities outside of Wooster, where the Daily Record maintains a solid circulation. But all of us are pleased that Pat will continue to be a member of the staff and among other things, add the charm of many interesting local feature stories to the daily life of the newspaper.