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DAZE WORK: Wilbur’s passing leaves hole in the Banner Graphic family
When word of the death of longtime Banner Graphic employee Wilbur C. Kendall reached me earlier this week, I was incredulous, refusing to believe that a man who kept our newspaper equipment running well past its prescribed shelf life had somehow succumbed to the ravages of old age and illness at 83.
For years, with the proverbial duct tape, baling wire and a heavy dose of ingenuity, Wilbur made sure our AP machines, tape perforators, typesetters, desktop computers and even the presses kept running and we continued our march toward deadline and creation of what during his 43-year career was a six-day daily newspaper.
Wilbur’s title may have been production manager but he was clearly the MacGyver of the Banner Graphic. He was the wizard behind the curtain. We always figured he could repair the space shuttle if necessary with that duct tape and chicken wire.
Computer not working? Wilbur would pop in over your shoulder, grab your mouse and click here and click there and before you knew it, you were back in business.
He never really told us what he had done, so I’m guessing it was more magic than manual instruction.
Like a second father to me, he fixed things that went wrong with my vehicles so many times I’ve lost track of what and when he did them. I remember he got my diesel truck to run and get me home after it sat out in -22 temperatures as we put together the Saturday paper one December morning.
Then there was the post-blizzard mess in 1978 when I busted a tire on a West Walnut Street Road chuckhole and with narrow traffic lanes and a berm piled 10 feet high with snow, there was no pulling off the roadway. Instead I pulled into the nearest driveway and walked back to town when I couldn’t budge the lugnuts to get the tire off in the pre-dawn cold.
Returning with the resourceful Mr. Kendall in tow, we met unhappy homeowners who couldn’t get out of their driveway because of the presence of my car. As I conversed with them, calming them down and apologizing profusely, Wilbur was changing my tire like he was in the pits at Indy, putting me back on the road in what seemed like seconds.
Working side by side with Wilbur Kendall for a quarter-century, I admired more than that ingenuity and resourcefulness and his nature of helping with anything that needed help, oftentimes at his own sacrifice. But oddly I really knew little about his past.
Oh sure, he shared stories of Daily Banner days, and of him being otherwise indisposed when fire broke out and burned down the building at the northwest corner of Jackson and Walnut streets. Or how in the succeeding months the paper was based in several locations around town, including one old restaurant site in which a fellow popped in one morning trying to order breakfast as Wilbur hung perforated wire tapes in preparation for that day’s production of the paper.
Likewise, I knew he was a Korean War veteran but only because he let us know how much he disliked the TV show “M*A*S*H,” set during that conflict. Like my grandfather who never cared for the prisoner-of-war comedy “Hogan’s Heroes,” he found no humor in “M*A*S*H” after serving in the Korean conflict.
Then there were his basketball glory days and tales of how the Reelsville High School Indians had posted an unbeaten regular season for 1953-54 only to have Greencastle knock them out of the sectional. Thirty years later, Wilbur still fumed at the notion that Dorwin Duncan – who I only knew as a local realtor – made last-second free throws to end Reelsville’s run.
By all accounts, Wilbur was the last surviving regular of the Daily Banner days. And the story goes that it was his contribution that the name became the Banner Graphic after the "Graphic Banner" was at least initially considered.
Wilbur reportedly noted that it was The Banner buying The Graphic, so Banner should logically come first. And the rest is 50 years of history.
One of our proudest moments working side by side came during the infamous August 1990 Downburst when virtually all of Greencastle was without power for the day, the Presbyterian Church was destroyed by fire and dozens of trees were down all around town. Yet relentlessly we printed a newspaper (as we had during the Blizzard of ‘78), which was delivered to homeowners all over town, many of whom met our carriers on their lawns with the question: How did you guys do that?
Well, a good deal of the credit goes to the resourceful Mr. Kendall, who had lived through a previous occasion when the Daily Banner fire put the paper out of commission until it could be pasted up and printed at Crawfordsville for weeks.
Using Radio Shack Tandy laptops – state-of-the-art computer wizardry back in that day – we gathered our news, checking with police and fire officials and contacting all the funeral homes (we were a good five years away from cell phones at the time, remember) – and put the paper together and printed it, working around and alongside the folks at Crawfordsville doing their own thing.
When we got back to Greencastle (where the power was still out) about 4:30 p.m., Wilbur and I were a little full of ourselves, literally giggling with glee at putting out a newspaper when others around town couldn’t even brew their own coffee or make a piece of toast.
Then it simultaneously dawned on us like one of those jinx-you-owe-me-a-coke moments and a look of anguish wiped the smiles from our faces. Without any power, we were going to have to do it all over again tomorrow.
And believe me, today I would love to do it all over again, Wilbur. I certainly wish that we could …
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