The community column, a record of the life and times

Connie’s Corner

I think most people will agree there is no comparing the dailies you find in bigger cities and towns with small-town weekly newspapers. For starters, they have a larger staff and their writers seem to stay within one genre of writing - not a luxury that small-town reporters can afford. On the other hand, I happen to think that going from news to features, or sports to news, provides a positive challenge to the skillset of the weekly reporter and a versatility you might not find among the elite of the big pressrooms. But the main thing the dailies lack is personality – and much of that comes from the community columns. Nothing has said “hometown” for decades like the community columns.

I don’t know what our readers think of their community columnists or how the columnists perceive themselves, but I see them as historians. If anyone disagrees, I challenge them to peruse the newspaper archives at their local library or newspaper office and then tell me that the writers of those old columns were not recording the history of their community.

My parents were from Leon County. They were just two of the many country-born and bred World War II couples who exited the homestead to make a life in the big city, but even as a small child, I remember one of the things they really enjoyed on weekend trips home was reading Mrs. Burke’s column on the “comings and goings” in Centerville and Concord.

Thirty years later, I was part of the “comings and goings” of Mrs. Keith’s “Louise News” in the El Cam-po Leader. “Fertile Myrtle” that I was, I made the column numerous times for giving birth. And then there were the announcements of our visits home from Colorado, or the mention that my sweet mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her family came to see us in 1974. Sometimes, it was a comment that our children were visiting their grandparents.

No matter how small or large the community, the columns chronicled the lives of its residents – some with great flair reflecting the personality of its columnist. There were the graduations, marriages, births, anniversaries, deaths, wedding and baby showers, domino parties, church socials - the good, the bad and the sad – all recorded for posterity by ladies like Mrs. Burke and Mrs. Keith.

My husband and I subscribed to the Navasota Examiner when we became property owners in Bedias in 1994, and on the weekend, I enjoyed reading Bessie Sharp’s Bedias column about people who one day I would quilt with or sit beside in church.

I think social media has diminished the community column’s importance and I’m told it’s harder to get information from people nowadays, but I applaud those who continue the tradition. Thirty, 40 or 50 years from now someone will come across an old Examiner and get a tug at the heartstrings reading about home “back in the day.” My hope is that community columns do not become a casualty of modern times and that the columnists continue their good work of recording Grimes County history for posterity.

Connie Clements is a freelance reporter and award-winning columnist. She writes feature news articles on a weekly basis and an opinion column as the mood strikes her.