Recreating Hat Day Was a ‘Special’ Event at Paper

An old friend of mine sent me a weird black-and-white photo the other day. It was Hat Day 1987 at the Chattanooga News-Free Press – the only newspaper in America that would place a hyphen between News and Free to form a compound modifier that denotes a newsless newspaper.

The Chattanooga News and the Free Press had merged many years before, but sometimes a hyphen is overkill.

(By the way, the Hat Day 1987 photo is shown at right. The first reader who e-mails me my position in the photo and describes my hat without insulting me as “special” wins a comics umbrella.)

The picture is so funny that I sent out a semi-mandatory request that this newsroom recreate Hat Day. Some of the women in this newsroom – OK, only one woman actually (the first reader who guesses her identity wins a comics umbrella) – complained that a hat would mess up her hair. I reminded her that my own concerns about “hat hair” transcended her own. This newsroom was instructed to bring a funny hat. Period.

I wanted this to be fun – and “special.” I invited Publisher Carl Esposito to participate. If you check the color photo at right, he’s the dude under my left arm. As you read this, Carl and I are in the air to Los Angeles to finish up a four-month fellowship at the University of Southern California’s Knight Digital Media Center. Carl had to be there for Hat Day.

Going back to Hat Day 1987, there are several reasons why this photo is so “special.” Journalistically, this might have been the worst metro daily newspaper in the country. It was the second-most conservative paper in America to the Union Leader in Manchester, N.H. It had an unabashed right-wing agenda – the print
version of Fox News on steroids. There were sacred cows whose misdeeds went uncovered. Hard news couldn’t be delivered too hard.

But this newspaper had something going for it that few did: It was a fun place to work.

And then there’s this: Many of the people in this photo are dead. And they were incredibly interesting.

The city editor, Julius Parker, died several years ago. He was a former professional wrestler turned beer distributor who became a journalist on a lark. (The first local who guesses which one is Julius wins a comics umbrella.)

Julius covered the six-week-long trial of gangster Jimmy Hoffa in Chattanooga’s federal court in 1964.

True story: While the jury was out, Julius had to go No. 2 in the restroom. He was there so long that the verdict came in and he missed it. A cub reporter by the name of Irby Park (also deceased) was shadowing Julius that day and got the byline. Irby would become Julius’ – and my – assistant city editor.

Both Julius and Irby are in this photo.

So is Van Henderson, one of my best friends and the reporter who sat next to me on the front row of reporter desks in the newsroom. Neither Van nor I should have been placed in the front of the room. We were the guys who should have been buried in the back.

Van died in the 1990s in a Tennessee lake while trying to teach his new, terrified-of-drowning bride how great the water is. He died of cardiac arrest right there in the water in front of her.

The picture also includes the funniest man I’ve ever known. Buddy Houts was the automotive editor. The Free Press (as we called it) wasn’t into journalistic ethics. Buddy got to drive a new car every week from a local car dealer and produced an entire Automotive page.

Buddy knew that the paper’s top editor would review his Sunday page every Friday. After a week of driving a Cadillac, Buddy wrote a fake banner headline that said: “Them white folks shore can build cars.”

It was racist, but Buddy didn’t have a racist bone in his body. He just wanted to send the editor ballistic. He succeeded.

The Free Press was an afternoon paper back then. We reported to work at 6 a.m. every Monday through Saturday. Most afternoons, I played golf with two people pictured in the Hat Day photo – Tom Turner and Mike Finn. Turner was the guy in the airplane with me when I went on my solo skydiving adventure (http://www.tricities.com/tri/news/opinion/editorials/article/my_brush_with_a_pothead_parachutist_his_coonskin_hat/25083/).Mikey remains a dear friend, although I went 20 years without seeing him until recently. Most of the stories of me and Mikey can’t be printed in a family newspaper.

The Free Press was a white man’s world, but we had four female photographers back then. Two of them – Deborah Shaw and Angela Lewis – are pictured.

It was an eclectic group of men and women who didn’t so much toil in the vineyards of journalism, but had fun being journalists. And we had fun after work.
It was a photo worth recreating. I hope you enjoy it.

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at or (276) 645-2513. Follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jtoddbhc.