Lou Major Sr. marks 60th anniversary as newspaperman
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Sixty years ago, I became a newspaperman.
Well, actually, it was a few years earlier, but that's a different story.
On Friday, July 20, 1951, I became a cub reporter with The Bogalusa Daily News.
After graduating from St. Aloysius High School in New Orleans (now Brother Martin), I spent two years at Tulane University in what was to be pre-law, since my Dad wanted me to be an attorney. He actually named me for an attorney, Marion in Merdian, MS, where I was born. My middle name, Luther, was from a grandfather. After two years at Tulane, I decided I did not want to become a barrister; I wanted to be a journalist.
So I talked Mom and Dad to let me transfer to LSU, which had a bonafide School of Journalism. In my senior uear I became president of Pi Alpha Mu, a journalism frat (no, not that kind), which was advertising oriented. But upon graduation, I knew that writing was my love.
Shortly thereafter, answering a classified ad from New Orleans, I wound up with an interview at Bogalusa, LA. Publisher Hal Houser, an Indiana transplant to the South, grilled me in the little office at East Fifth Street, and offered me a job.
Peg and I, with infant Lou Jr., were eager to get on with it -- a paying job!
Mr. Houser, in a letter dated July 6, 1951, wrote to me:
Dear Mr. Major:
Glad to know you will be with us July 20.
Let us help you with your housing if you need help. You may find what you want alone, and I know that's a personal problem, but if you don't find it, we have friends in the real estate business who might help.
I admire your determination to enter this profession, and I realize that your starting salary won't keep you in luxury. If you show the stuff that I believe is in you, you won't stay long at $45 a week.
Sincerely yours,
Halford R. Houser
Publisher
That was a great letter for me.
I had a job.
Forty five dollars a week, even back then, provided no extras. We ate a lot of red beans and fish sticks. We loaded up a cheap station wagon to go to the drive-in.
But our little family grew to four great kids, my income grew steadily, I was allowed to buy-in to the newspaper, thanks to great friend/attorney Bascom Talley, Houser and Milton Wick, owner of the newspaper.
The years went by. I became Sports Editor, News Editor, Managing Editor, General Manager, Publisher and then later on became President and CEO of Wick Communications, partnering with great owners and friends, Bob and Walt Wick.
And so, here we are 60 years later, with the same company, retired, Board of Directors member and complete supporter of my successor, a great young newspaperman named John Mathew from Wisconsin.
As they say down here in the South, "It don't get no better'n that!"
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