Owensboro Kentucky: High achievers in the heartland, a nod to the past
Part 1
Owensboro, Kentucky’s fourth-largest city at about 50,000 people, is to Roman Catholics as Salt Lake City is to Mormons: a town that spawns clean-scrubbed high achievers like racing star Darrell Waltrip of NASCAR fame and Florence Henderson, the unflappable 1970s mom of The Brady Bunch.
In the early 1980s, the Messenger-Inquirer was something of a legend in regional journalism. It was owned by brothers John and Larry Hager, sons of a newspapering family who had been in the business since 1919. John graduated from Phillips Exeter prep, Princeton, and the University Of Michigan College of Law. He practiced law for 19 years before returning in 1973 to run his father’s paper. John’s intellect, love of abstraction, and old-money manner permeated his relationship with the newsroom.
John loved to talk about big ideas, yet he was infamous for being unable to remember the names of people who worked for him. Copy editor Paula Anderson was for nearly three years “Pam” and I was “Julie.” That was better than some people, who, when John wanted to talk, but couldn’t even remember the name he had made up for them, would stand in front of them saying, “Uh ah, ah, ah, ah.”
John retained the manner born of his privileged upbringing and his back-East schooling…
