THE FLINT JOURNAL / STEVE JESSMORE After reading the front page, longtime Journal subscriber Beatrice Coke-Pollard, 87, goes directly to Ann Landers’ column and the comics page.

For some, readership a lifelong commitment

By Michelle Edwards
Journal Staff Writer

When Beatrice Coke-Pollard was a little girl, she and her sister would wait by the mailbox for the latest edition of The Flint Journal.

The year was 1918, and Coke-Pollard, who at the age of 5 had just learned to read, couldn’t wait to peruse the “Maggie and Jiggs” (“Bringing Up Father”) comic strip. The paper was delivered by mail to the family’s 680-acre farm in Millersburg, a tiny town southwest of Rogers City.

“It was a serial story,” Coke-Pollard, 87, said. “I remember as a little kid just waiting for that paper to come.”

Since that time, Coke-Pollard, like many Journal readers, has been a loyal subscriber to the daily newspaper. Other faithful readers include:

• Sabra Culver of Clio, a subscriber since 1932. She read The Journal before then at the home of her parents, who had the paper delivered even when “they were very hard-up for money.” Culver said her father thought people were “ignorant” if they didn’t take The Journal.

• Maria Giles of Flint Township has subscribed since 1934. She said three of her sons delivered The Journal.

• Pauline Beaubien of Flint subscribed the year she was married — 1936 — but read the paper at her parents’ home before that.

• Margaret Lucky of Flint began reading the newspaper in 1920 and has been a subscriber since 1930.

• Nate Eashoo now lives in Ithaca but still gets The Journal every day. He “peddled the paper” from 1932 to 1943.

“I had one of the worst routes,” Eashoo said. “But I enjoyed every minute of it and made good money.”

• Elizabeth Meisner has subscribed to The Journal since 1923 and, at 100 years old, still reads the paper daily.

“She’s taken it for 78 years and is still reading it after all these years,” said Meisner’s daughter-in-law, Thelma Meisner. “The first thing she would go for was the puzzles.”

• Margaret Pilinyi of Flint, a subscriber since the early 1930s, also delivered the newspaper. She was about 8 years old and helped her brother with the deliveries.

“The paper was 15 cents a week, and even then that was hard,” she said.

Peggy McWhirter

• Peggy McWhirter, 96, began subscribing in 1927, the same year she started work in The Journal’s classified ad department.

McWhirter was editor of her father’s newspaper, the Manila (Ark.) Sentinel before she and her husband, Max, moved to Flint.

“My father owned three newspapers: a weekly, (twice)-weekly and a daily,” McWhirter said. “He bought the Blytheville (Ark.) Courier when it was a weekly and converted it to a daily. It’s still in existence today.”

McWhirter said she merely walked into the newspaper office to check out the operation when she was offered the job. She took ads for two years before quitting to raise her son.

While Max McWhirter managed AM Davison Clothing, a downtown men’s clothier, Peggy McWhirter founded the Easter Seal Society of Genesee County. She championed causes for the disabled from her home office until Charles Stewart Mott donated the money to build the Third Street facility, still in existence today.

“I’m there at least once a week,” McWhirter said. “And if I’m not, they call to see if I’m OK.”

Coke-Pollard and her family moved to Montrose in July 1927 because the area offered better educational opportunities. It also brought the family closer to her father, who had been living in Flint for his job. He supervised crews installing sanitary sewers systems and came home only on the Fourth of July and Christmas holidays.

Coke-Pollard, who retired after 43 years in education, was the first instructor to teach special education in Montrose. She became an official subscriber when she and her husband married in 1940.

While Coke-Pollard never misses Ann Landers’ column, she also enjoys reading the letters to the editor.

“It’s like an old friend,” Coke-Pollard said of her daily newspaper. “It’s like a part of the family. I’d be lost without it.”

Michelle Edwards started at The Journal in 1998 and left in 2001.