Published: March 06, 2008 11:56 pm            

Stan Champer: 3/7/08

He was headed straight for my office and the long box straddling his cart teetered to the left and right. It was about all he could do to keep it from pitching to the floor.

“What in the world do you have there, Bud?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve just been rummaging on the third floor and found an early Christmas present for you. I’ll slide it under your desk.”

That was Monday, and it was Wednesday before I had a chance to peek in the box and learn what he’d found among all the stored items on the upper level.

Old newspapers. Old copies of The Independent, many of them with the breaking news of important events in U.S. history — the Kennedy assassination, Nixon’s resignation, our landing on the moon.

Bud was right. For a history buff, even one of strictly amateur standing like me, such an opportunity had all the makings of a Yule season surprise.

Never mind that all our old editions are preserved on microfilm. There’s nothing quite like thumbing through the pages of the Real McCoy.

Someone had the foresight to set these aside, and I was grateful for that as I dug deeper into the box Wednesday afternoon.

One of the papers I found to be of particular interest was a July 22, 1962, special publication pegged to dedication ceremonies at the new Greenup Dam later that afternoon.

But while the newly built dam was the basis for the effort, the publication covered the gamut of business and industry in the Ashland area, and was labeled accordingly: Industrial Edition.

We’ve had similar publications down through the years, many of them under the banner Progress Edition, and coincidentally are in the process of producing a Progress Edition for 2008, which will be distributed March 27.

It’s interesting to look back and see how news content has been affected by the ebb and flow of economics, from periods of unfavorable business conditions and the diminished presence of some industry to periods of great optimism and the successes in diversification.

Throughout all of this, the central premise of these special publications has remained unchanged. Progress is the name of the game, and talking about it is part of the newspaper’s role.

As I continued thumbing through that 1962 edition, another coincidence caught my eye, a story generated by the Ashland Board of Trade, predecessor of the Ashland Area Chamber of Commerce and today’s Ashland Alliance.

The story, as reported by Thornton M. Tice, board secretary, told of the organization’s Retail Merchants Division embarking on a new program called “Sell Ashland,” essentially an all-out effort to attract out-of-town shoppers into the community.

It was accompanied by an aerial photograph of the Central Business District with superimposed numbers identifying each business place.

It struck me that those early ’60s efforts on behalf of the downtown were interesting in the light of an all-new downtown program launched just this week, the product of a summit.

Given the changes that have taken place in the Central Business District over the past 45 years, a different set of challenges and opportunities looms for those who will work to preserve the district as a shining element of the community’s future.

Here’s hoping they’ll make progress. Progress, after all, is the name of the game.

In the meantime, I think I’ll resume digging into this box. Prospecting for coincidences is a natural inclination among us history buffs.

STAN CHAMPER can be reached at schamper@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2640.

        

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