Congratulations, Roy

Jonesboro Sun Editor Roy Ockert, the guy on the right chatting with Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, was installed today as president of the Arkansas Press Association.

Roy and I were both born in the summer of 1945 and got our start in newspapers back when the work was done with typewriters and Linotype machines. He's a newspaperman through and through and a champion of the Second Amendment - the kind of guy you want at the helm of a state press association.

The APA, founded in 1873, includes all of the legal newspapers in the state - 33 dailies and 104 weeklies. It's the oldest professional association in Arkansas.

G. Hamilton Rigg

This is G. Hamilton "Ham" Rigg, at work as news editor of the Tipton Tribune in November, 1966.
Ham was my editor at my first newspaper job. I worked at the Tribune from September 1, 1966 to Feb. 3, 1967 when I left to be a reporter at The Indianapolis News.
I learned a lot of stuff from Ham, who was a genuinely nice guy and also covered sports for the Tribune. I'm told he was instrumental in a lot of Tipton County kids getting athletic scholarships to colleges and universities.
Mostly, I remember Ham as a lonely little guy who drank every night and always smelled of booze. I heard he died of cancer a few years after I left Tipton, so I guess I caught him in the twilight of his newspaper career.
At some point in his career, Ham was a sportswriter for the Muncie Star. The Muncie Star Press memorialized him with the Ham Rigg Award, given to the most outstanding athlete at the Central Relays in Muncie. This year's winner was Eric Streit, a senior at Shenandoah High School.