Description:
David Sellers talks about his life working with the Capitol Hill Beacon.
Transcript:
Interviewer: I’m speaking to David Sellers today, editor of the Capitol Hill Beacon. Welcome, thank you for being here.
David Sellers: Thanks.
Interviewer: I’d like to know a little bit about how you got involved with the paper and what exactly your role has been over the years.
DS: Oh, we came to Oklahoma City in 1945, my Dad and another man bought the newspaper, so I’ve been here since then. Then since ‘67 I bought out the other person, R.V. Peterson. I’ve been the main owner since 1967.
Interviewer: What does your role encompass as the owner of that paper; you’re also very involved with every aspect of it, is that correct?
DS: [chuckles] Yeah, small paper you do a little of everything, it’s advertising, news writing, photography and bookkeeping and cleaning, so forth and a little of everything.
Interviewer: Did you always want to be involved in the paper?
DS: Sort of, I sort of grew into it without any much choice. I was 15 when we moved to the city so I worked in the print shop, worked with the carrier boys and that sort of thing.
Interviewer: The carrier boys. What are the carrier boys?
DS: It was the people who delivered the newspapers, 12-9-10-12-year-old boys. So I was practically one of them. No I just sort of grew into it and went on graduated from Capitol Hill High School in ‘48, went on to OU got a degree in journalism which was sort of normal, natural.
Interviewer: Where did you come from before you came to Oklahoma City?
DS: I grew up in Wewoka and my Dad and E.M. Sellers and R.V. Peterson owned, they worked at the newspaper there in Wewoka which was owned by Lou Wynce (sp?) and it was a chain of newspapers. So I grew up there in Wewoka, I was born in Holdenville which was right close by.
Interviewer: When you moved to Oklahoma City with your parents, did you move with siblings as well?
DS: No, I’m an only child, just me.
Interviewer: So, life really revolved around the paper.
DS: Yeah, everybody was busy.
Interviewer: How is the paper different from when you began working it and compared to now and over the years what are the changes?
DS: Oh, there’s been a revolution in newspapers. The newspaper was printed by letterpress which is a hot metal method you had linotype and you set stories on linotype and they came out in lead and you put that in form printed it on the big press. So since then there has been a lot of changes in the method.
Interviewer: Does it mean that you manually put in the letters?
DS: Well, linotype sets the line of type and it’s a lead slug which is about an inch high and you make a form and you put all these lines in together and they’re covered with ink and you put the paper over it and print it from that. That’s been a long time ago. And some of it was hand set when the newspaper first started back in 1905 it was all letter by letter hand set type you made a big page, a 11 x 17 page and it was letter by letter so it was very tedious and the guy that started it didn’t do that very long. He did it for a year or so then he sold out he said the community, the growing community needed a better newspaper, so he sold it to a guy, he was a printer. The guy who started the paper, Tool Jackson, he was they sort of talked him into that
Interviewer: Oh really, they thought someone else could do a better job of it.
DS: Well, that’s what he thought so he sold it to a guy and the guy that took it over and ran it for 17 years I think, he did a better job he was more of a news man got more of a newspaper into it.
Interviewer: Nice. Well I bet you run across some interesting characters over the years.
DS: I have.
Interviewer: Interesting stories, any highlights you want to a divulge?
DS: Oh, I don’t know if I could call them right off, all these people were very interesting. It was Capitol Hill was pretty much of a separate community; it grew up south of the river which was separated by a big flood plain. It was a real barrier and it was incorporated from 1904 to 1910 as a city. Then they merged with Oklahoma City but the flood plain was still there it was still separate and so it grew up as a separate business area and it grew from a huge trade area. Everything south would come to Capitol Hill, Del City wasn’t here, Midwest City wasn’t here, drew from all Harrah, Choctaw and west out towards Wheatland, and Mustang, Union City and so grew to be an alternative to going downtown. And there was a lot of people came to Capitol Hill and didn’t even know there was a downtown. So, that was pretty much that way in ‘45 when we came here it was still a separate place and the river was still a barrier. So, the river continued to be a barrier until the Canton Dam, when they built the Canton Dam that stopped the flooding. And the barrier would still be there until the M.A.P.S. program put in the three dams on the lake to make a scenic river.
Interviewer: That’s quite a change.
DS: It is. It’s been there all along [laughs], now it’s a focal point of Oklahoma City, should bring the city together.
Interviewer: Right. Well, what else is special about the Capitol Hill area?
DS: Oh that was the main thing up through the 70’s it was still a real busy center commercial center retail and when Crossroads Mall came in some of the big stores went there and shopping centers came in, shopping center phenomena, in Redding came in ‘55.
Interviewer: What did?
DS: Redding Shopping Center. And they came in ‘55 with acres of parking and all that you know. We were always short of parking and so that looked like that would be the end of Capitol Hill, but it wasn’t and it was more diversified then any of the shopping centers. You know we had offices and lawyers and accountants and you know all kinds of small business that competed with the shopping centers very well up until the 70’s.
Interviewer: I heard something about the first flight in Oklahoma being over Capitol Hill. Do you know anything about that?
DS: Yeah, that was in March of 1910, it flew from Lee School, Lee School was brand new at that time, and it flew from Lee School which is down here at 29th and Walker and it flew to about where the library is, right here.
Interviewer: Is that right?
DS: There’s a plaque on the west wall of the library and that was the first flight in Oklahoma. This guy, a barnstormer, I don’t know how he got here, I think he must have trucked the airplane in, he didn’t fly it in for sure ‘cause they didn’t fly very far, from 29th-24th, 26th is not very far. I talked to several people who were there and Clarence Page was one of them, early pioneer aviator a lot of local people here guy who ran the laundry down the street he was there and they wanted to charge fifty cents and he said these kids weren’t about to pay fifty cents. [laughter] They just snuck into around the fence where the thing was happening said the guy, he was supposed to fly one day he threw up a handful of dirt and it was too windy. So they put it off until the next day.
Interviewer: Why did he choose this area. Was it wide open?
DS: I don’t know I don’t know why he choose this area this is the highest ground in Oklahoma City. It could be that and it was open it was open prairie I don’t know why they choose, and the fellow, the pilot sent us when we were going to make a notation of the 50th anniversary that flight well the pilot sent us a picture he was still alive he lived to be 93 so he was an interesting fellow.
Interviewer: He sent a picture to the paper of the plane?
DS: Yes, of him and the plane and some more stuff. The Chamber of Commerce, well there’s a fellow named Burl Tibbs, he was aviation an early aviation guy and he knew about this he talked to the Chamber of Commerce and got them to recognize this 50th anniversary. All happened mainly due to him. And he was a character.
Interviewer: Did you bring some information to talk about?
DS: Oh, this is the history that we had published it was supposed to be a 50th anniversary of the Beacon and ended up being the 60th anniversary by the time we got it done. So it was very time consuming to do these.
Interviewer: So, this was 1965?
DS: Yes, sort of an index of the newspaper is what it is and it’s got some of--
Interviewer: Pictures of--
DS: Yeah, this guy was the first Marshall named Bodine, school named after him out south had a big family. This picture was taken before all the children were born.
Interviewer: Seven was just the beginning. The Marshall, interesting.
DS: Yes, got his badge there. This is what the newspaper looked like, this is the first issue of it, and it’s about the right size.
Interviewer: Really.
DS: About 11x17, and all that’s hand-set type, letter by letter.
Interviewer: Oh, this is beautiful, is this anniversary edition available in the public libraries?
DS: Well, they bought several editions, issues of it but I think they have lost them all, I think there’s maybe one or two around. So, I don’t know they have one I think one here and one at the Southern Oaks, whether we got any more or not.
Interviewer: So, tell us what the paper is like compared to this early edition of the paper, just in scope and breadth. Condition to technology.
DS: This was pretty limited because it was all hand-set type and all.
Interviewer: Right. Smaller.
DS: The newspaper now since ‘67 has been printed by offset, which is a whole different process photographic. Well when we started that, we could use a typewriter or anything we used the linotype and we would print the stories, make a proof of it, paste them up into a page then you photograph it. And that was the beginning of that you photographed the paper then you printed it and made a big negative made a plate of it and printed it on photography and we’re still doing that, we photograph everything but we do it now with a computer. You make a page, then you make a PDF of it and send it by the telephone to the press and they printed by lithography(?) still that’s quite a lot of changes a lot of changes in between their methods of setting type and I guess 6 or 8 different kinds of type setters over the years.
Interviewer: What size of a paper is it now? As compared, this is a couple of pages maybe here. Early edition, right?
DS: Well, this was the whole paper and it was--.
Interviewer: And today it’s more like?
DS: Size of broad sheet they call it, size of the Oklahoman it’s 13 inches by 21, so and it’s colored in [unintelligible] color and all sorts of things now a days. And the paper right now is usually 8 pages, so it has been bigger and smaller, changes.
Interviewer: You know I heard something about this being the original, well how did it get its name of Capitol Hill? Do you know that story?
DS: Yeah, I should have brought that with me, but it was planted in 1900 by a fellow known as Benoni Harrington and he was a reporter from the Wichita newspapers and he came to Oklahoma because of the speculation that they were going to open up this territory in central Oklahoma. So the newspaper sent him down here to report all that and he got real involved with it, he was enamored with the country and the idea they were going to settle it. David Payne was trying to open it up and they kept arresting him, sending him back to Kansas. Benoni was, he was all over the area in fact they gave him credit for setting the date of the opening. He was promoting it and he picked out he didn’t claim any land in the run, he was here and all that and he didn’t claim any land. He bought it later and he bought this quarter section on top of this hill which was from Santa Fe to Walker from 22nd to 29th that was a quarter section of land, a woman, Tyfosha (sp?) Boyd, settled it in the run, he bought it from her. He
planted it as Capitol Hill that’s the name he chose for it and it’s been there ever since. It’s the Capitol Hill addition and the next hill which is where St. Mary’s is that was already started they started it well I guess it wasn’t started, they didn’t start the school until 1903 but he planted this hill I think it had already been occupied so he bought this particular quarter section, called Capitol Hill.
Interviewer: Wasn’t the idea for this to be the home of the capitol?
DS: Well, that was his idea well it was a good idea it was the high ground. The Buttram (sp?) Mansion over there where the Oklahoma Museum of Art was at one time over in Nichols Hills, they claimed that that was the highest piece of ground between Galveston and Kansas City. But this hill is higher than that, so I don’t know why they didn’t know that. But this was a nice prominent hill that overlooked the Canadian River Valley, it was a beautiful site and the land for the Capitol was given to, was given by the Harn family. So, they built the Capitol over there. He called it Capitol Hill and he planted it, there were streets laid out streets and all that even on the plats there’s no place marked Capitol no place for the capitol so I’m not sure how that would have worked. He could have sold the whole quarter section and I suppose he had to plat it in order to get a name so any rate he laid out a city called it Capitol Hill. And then it was separate from the city for a long time.
Interviewer: Right, interesting. Now that Harn homestead, do you know much about that history?
DS: Not up on that. That’s where they built the Capitol.
Interviewer: But they donated land for the Capitol. Interesting, well what are your plans for the future for your paper and personally what do you look forward to?
DS: Oh, I don’t know I’ll just keep on no we’re working on bringing this history up to date.
Interviewer: Oh right, for another 42 years of it.
DS: Yes, there’s quite a bit to go.
Interviewer: The next phase of the paper, huh?
DS: Well I’ve been spending time on that than probably I should have and the newspaper’s not as big as it should be. So, I’ve been doing more of that more history than newspaper so trying to get through with that so I can get back to business. This part of it, the old part of the Capitol Hill that’s so well-known came in the ‘30’s to develop to be real big and all after it merged with Oklahoma City in 1910 well it had civic clubs, major civic clubs the Lions, the Kiwanis and the Chambers of Commerce all that they had their own organization and it was pretty strong and it was a bone of contention with the Oklahoma City people they said why don’t you belong to Oklahoma City instead of having your own everything out here.
Interviewer: Oh really?
DS: So that was high school was built in ’28, Capitol Hill High School, and so we had a lot of community spirit and that lasted and that still exists. There are still a lot of people that have that spirit, there’s a pretty big organization it’s the Capitol Hill Alumni Athletic Hall of Fame. And they’ll have almost 6, 700 people at a banquet every year and they recognize star athletes and people who have gone on to be success in business and other things.
Interviewer: Is that right? Those original high schools have really strong alumni, I know Classen does. And it was just really community focused.
DS: It’s that same thing. Then we had, it was the only high school out here until ‘50 when Southeast was built then after that Grant then they’ve got pretty strong alumni groups, well they didn’t have as much history as Capitol Hill. They were older and stronger and everybody that lived out here was either going to school here or political people and business-people they were all involved. It was very strong and still is.
Interviewer: Was that a fun time for you? Capitol Hill High School?
DS: Yeah, I wasn’t very well acquainted, we moved here in 45 and I was a freshman, had been a freshman in Wewoka and came up here and I was a freshman again. Sophomore year was the first year of high school, so I didn’t know anybody. It was a friendly place you’d get acquainted pretty quickly.
Interviewer: OU was a lot smaller, OU was a little different experience than Jared’s experience over here at OU all his classes are online, 90 % of them.
DS: Really? Huh. I went to OU well it was ‘48 when I graduated from high school so when I went to OU it was full of veterans they had the largest American Legion post in the state with OU so I got a little less of the discipline that you ordinarily you get in college because of the veterans, they didn’t put up with much of that so it was open it was a different thing than going to school earlier or later I think.
Interviewer: That was unique.
DS: The veterans added quite a bit to the university experience.
Interviewer: Did it? In a positive way?
DS: Well yeah, it was sort of no nonsense they cut through some of the red tape, they weren’t going to put up with a lot of, they’d been through a war.
Interviewer: Interesting. What was your experience with of the war here at home being too young to go you had the rationing I guess?
DS: Yeah, the war consumed everything wasn’t anything else but the war hardly I wasn’t too involved with the war I was too young but I followed the war, knew about the airplanes and all of that sort of thing.
Interviewer: What was the year that broadcast, the name escapes me the very famous broadcast that was about being invaded by aliens that’s rebroadcast on Halloween?
DS: That was Orson Welles.
Interviewer: Thank you. How old were you when that--?
DS: That was like in ‘33 or so wasn’t it? Way early, we didn’t hear.
Interviewer: That was in ‘33, okay, that was World War I that came out during one of the wars it must have been World War I.
DS: Naw, I think it’s in the 30’s between the wars. I don’t recall anything about that I didn’t hear it so didn’t believe it by the time that came out it was a hoax
Interviewer: Right, right okay. Well, David Sellers it’s been a delight listening to you. Anything you wanna add that we haven’t touched on?
DS: Oh, I don’t know there is so much of it that you can hardly compress it.
Interviewer: You’ve got to have these volumes. But it’s been interesting, huh.
DS: Newspapers been right in the middle of all this, change the business of hand set-type, gosh there’s I’ve still got some of that stuff in the office sort of a museum I’ve got one linotype left doesn’t work but it’s still there. A great big machine moves in every direction you can imagine the hand-set type they used that in advertising. The way up until we went off set we just switched from the hot metal to the molten lead that business into cold type printed the newspaper for a year, several years, on a typewriter just used an IBM typewriter and typed a little narrow column and pasted them up and photographed them and made a newspaper so you can do newspapers about any way we’ve done it about every way. Nowadays we do it all on the computer and we draw things and take pictures we do it all on computer now and you can send it anywhere in the country we send it up to a, send the newspaper, to a place in Minnesota which archives newspapers for the press association and people can access the newspaper from there and sell subscriptions that way, we can send photographs practically anything electronically anymore. Certainly a revolution.
Interviewer: So, time was when you had a pretty clear idea about what section of town a person came from within a few minutes of speaking to them, is that correct?
DS: Yeah, if a person came into town and took a job wanted to buy a house he could ask somebody and they could tell them immediately which side of town they lived on. That’s been true for a long time and they’re still it not as prominent as it used to be on a count of the river.
Interviewer: More cohesive, well more cohesive anyway. Well thanks so much for coming up early on a Saturday morning.
DS: Well I was glad to do that and I hope this works out. [laughs]