Moody Courier 120 next year

Our Moody Suburban Courier will be celebrating 120 years old starting in January.  We printed our Centennial Edition January 24, 1991.

Since then the world has changed. We have had to change to stay in business. Now we make up pages and send them over the internet with PDF files (Don’t ask me what that means.)

Now everything is on computers. Email has helped us stay in business too. If you send us a typed or hand written story we ask you to go back and email it to us. Less mistakes, and beside we don’t have anybody to type it.

Looking back at that 1991 issue we had an office and a  post office box in Moody.

We had to close them and do like the telephone and light companies do. Operate on the phone lines, internet and U. S. mail. It is working. We are staying in business. We can’t offer that personal service like Mr. C. O. Moore used to do: Sit and chat with our readers. Even so, when Jim Courtney was our sports editor he liked to office at the Dairy Queen writing his stories. Anna Belle Madson held the paper together when we had the nice office on Hwy 317. The rent went up way above what we could pay. Steve Cook would cover when we got in trouble with our computers. Sonic White was one of our office managers.

We’ve had many good people to help keep the paper alive. And we’re sorry that we don’t have them now. We miss ‘em.  People like Joyce Woods Cox and Doe Johnson. Joyce Wall wrote travel stories for us. We appreciate them very much and everyone who is helping today.

In that 1991 issue Paula DeWald was our manager in Moody.  We had an office at 517 Ave. E, across from Joe’s. The rest of our staff was in Waco.

Paul Kitchens, Moody Drug,  had a quarter page ad congratulating us on our centennial. It wasn’t long afterwards that Paul closed and sent his files to WalMart in Belton. Today Paul is in charge of 36 HEB Pharmacies.

Rev. James Haney was a great supporter of the paper until he moved to Salado. He had an ad in the 1991 paper featuring his Creative Art Services next to the Post Office. The store is still there but closed a long time ago.

 

Many other businesses are gone too. When I bought the paper I could go around and collect from Paul Kitchens at the Drug Store and others and pay the bank and Mrs. Gates, who held a note on the business. We paid them off in three years.

On the front page in that Centennial edition is a picture of our Country Campbell press used in the early days. It traveled to Temple as part of the Railroad Museum, but later local folks brought it back and today it is in the Moody Library. The press was used until Larry Ingram converted the paper to a more modern press when he was publisher. He also owned the Belton Journal.

 

Over the years the Courier has printed stories about the life and death of our citizens. One of the most notables was when we had to publish the funeral notice on “Beans” Vandiver in our July 12, 2007 Issue. She and her husband Bert Vandiver were married for 50 years, and were a big part of everything that happened in Moody. Even today their son Bert Jr. carries her name on his new funeral home calling it Grace Gardens. It is located on Hwy. 84 in Waco. In our last weeks issue we had the privilege of printing another funeral notice of a prominent Moody business person: Earl Ray Perryman.

Over the 100 plus years we have carried the news of the town of Moody. Some good, some bad. Like today, we’re working with the schools to give you better coverage. We’ve always supported events such as the Cotton Harvest Festival.

Because so many businesses have gone out of business in Moody, we have had to expand our coverage and reach out to other communities. We sell combination ads with our sister paper The Waco Citizen and this has helped greatly.

We’d like to hear from you, our readers, with stories about how our newspaper has touched your lives. What it has meant to live in Moody?

What do you suggest for this milestone? A cake with 120 candles and plenty Dr Pepper at the library?