With this, Volume 7, No. 1, The Paper marks its sixth birthday.
Six years is a long time in the “publishing business,” especially for a non-profit, all-volunteer, neighborhood newspaper like ours. It has endured through the loyal support of neighborhood residents, organizations, and some very civic-minded advertisers. Since the first issue in April 1970 there have been many changes in the neighborhood and in The Paper as well.
In that April issue six years ago, the lead story concerned the “Jack-in-theBox Conflict”. For those unfamiliar with that cause celebre we should explain that the site of the present Southwestern Bell parking lot at Skinker and Delmar was once scheduled to be a Jack-in-the-Box drive-in restaurant — a plan which met with considerable neighborhood opposition. Other front-page stories announced that St. Roch’s school would begin an open enrollment program the following September and that there would be an area-wide spring clean-up of the alleys in Skinker-DeBaliviere. (Some things in our nieghborhood haven’t changed a bit.)
Page two carried a picture of Jim L’Ecuyer, then Executive Director of the Skinker-DeBaliviere Community Council, surveying the damage in the recently burned out SDCC office at 433 DeBaliviere.
Some ironies are suggested by the titles of articles elsewhere in that first Paper: “THE DAY CARE CENTER – a dream now, reality tomorrow” “DeBaliviere Businessmen Plan Area Revitalization.” Sad or ironic from our present perspective seem the ads for Mrs. Turner’s Flowers, Parkview Food Basket, Ideal Driving School, and Technical Education Corp., especially the latter’s exhortation to “Think Future, Think Success, Think Security, Think TEC.” Some may not remember that the management of TEC, a business machines training school at DeBaliviere and Waterman, closed it and departed suddenly without notifying the students.
Gone also from the neighborhood are many of those who inaugurated The Paper: Sharon Mier, Ed Schaeffer, Jo Ann Budde, Dempster Holland, Jynny Meininger.
Evidence of continuity and permanence, however, is found in ads for Colonial Rug, Delmar Cleaners, Schoemehl Painting and Paperhanging, and Parkview Shell, and in the names of those staff members still in our midst: Jody Creighton, Bob Moore, Jean Eberle, Jane Davis, Pat Kohn, Jim Hitchcock, Joan Bender, Susie Roach, Dorothy Santen, Vince Schoemehl, Betty Klinefelter.
Some of the headlines and articles could be reprinted virtually without change in current issues of The Paper: “Art Fair,” “House Hunting,” “Grace Easter Sunrise Services,” “Area Resident — Bill Kohn Shows Paintings at Gallery.” Six years have made many changes in our community, some for the worse, most for the better, we think. This positive trend can only be credited to the active commitment that residents, businesses, and institutions have shown to the preservation of the good things and the improvement of the not-so-good things about life in Skinker-DeBaliviere. We hope that The Paper serves an important purpose in the effort to preserve and improve and that we are able to reflect on our progress on future birthdays.
Originally published in The Paper, April 1976.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Printed “nieghborhood” retained.
Original source: SD_Times1976_04.pdf, printed page(s) 1; PDF page(s) 1.
