Columnist John Moore marked his 600th newspaper column with a reflection on how a family blog became a newspaper feature and a way to record stories from his father’s life.
Moore wrote that a Tyler newspaper contacted him in 2014 after its publisher read a blog he had been writing for relatives. The blog focused on older family stories, and the paper wanted to turn that writing into a regular column.
The column said Moore began the blog to encourage his father to document his own memories. Moore described his father as having been born during the Depression and as having told stories about family life near railroad tracks in Foreman, Arkansas, relatives who worked in a blacksmith shop, and a first car, a Model A Coupe bought for $25.
Moore also recounted stories his father shared about service in the National Guard at Central High in Little Rock, listening to St. Louis Cardinals games on a transistor radio in the 1950s, and working at Red River Army Depot. His father later became an early government computer programmer after volunteering to learn the machines, Moore wrote.
According to the column, Moore’s father eventually retired early at age 54 with full pay and benefits while part of the depot was being closed. Moore said he worried that his children and grandchildren would not know those family stories if they were never written down.
