[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 69 (Monday, June 5, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5426-S5428]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO HUGH PATTERSON

 Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge the life and 
the courage of Hugh Patterson, who died last week at the age of 91. Mr. 
Patterson was the publisher of the Arkansas Gazette in 1957 when the 
Arkansas National Guard was called up to prevent nine young Blacks from 
enrolling at Central High School in Little Rock. This hugely divisive 
issue not only had to be reported on in the Gazette, it had to be 
evaluated on the editorial page. Mr. Patterson's initial reaction was 
the right one; support desegregation. He later recalled that he said, 
``Well, of course, it's got to be recognized that the Supreme Court 
decision was the only decision that could have been made. We have to 
recognize that this is a transitional time in terms of public policy 
and it will, perhaps, take some time for that to be realized, but 
there's just no option to this. It's a fundamental matter.'' Mr. 
Patterson was the paper's first publisher, responsible for policy as 
well as business, but he was not the only one making major editorial 
decisions. He had to help convince the owner, his father-in-law, J.N. 
Heiskell, and he did.
  The reaction to the newspaper's stand for desegregation was severe. 
There were boycotts against advertisers and mobs out to prevent 
delivery trucks from delivering papers. Circulation fell. The financial 
losses were significant, and harmful on a larger scale because Mr. 
Patterson's philosophy was that profits should be put back into the 
paper, which he saw as a public service to the State. The Gazette won 
two Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage in 1957 and they were well 
deserved. As today's Democrat-Gazette

[[Page S5427]]

said last week, ``Dante reserved a special place in his Inferno for 
those who would stay neutral in times of moral crisis. No one need 
bother looking for the Arkansas Gazette there. Fully aware that his 
paper had much to lose, Hugh Patterson never hesitated to stake it all 
on what he knew to be right.''
  Mr. Patterson grew up in Pine Bluff and learned the printing 
business. After serving in the Army Air Corps in World War II, he 
joined the Gazette in 1946. He became publisher in 1948 and stayed in 
that job for 38 years. There was much more to his career there than the 
events of 1957, and to fill in those details I ask that his obituary 
from the Democrat-Gazette be printed after my remarks. Arkansas is much 
the better for his voice in a time of crisis and his many other 
contributions at the helm of the Gazette for so many years.
  The material follows.

           [From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 30, 2006]

   Hugh Patterson, Chief of Arkansas Gazette for 38 years, Dies at 91

                           (By Noel E. Oman)

       Hugh B. Patterson Jr., the longtime publisher of the former 
     Arkansas Gazette, died Monday. He was 91.
       Patterson was publisher of the Gazette from November 1948 
     until December 1986, when the newspaper was sold to Gannett 
     Co. Inc. Patterson's 38 years directing the ``oldest 
     newspaper west of the Mississippi'' began in the era of the 
     mechanical typesetting machine and lasted into the age of 
     computer-generated print.
       His tenure coincided with Little Rock's public school 
     desegregation crisis in 1957. The Gazette won two Pulitzer 
     Prizes in 1958, one to the newspaper for public service and 
     the other to Executive Editor Harry S. Ashmore for editorial 
     writing.
       ``This first thing I think of, as you might guess, is the 
     1957 school crisis, and the Gazette's performance through 
     that period,'' said Roy Reed, professor emeritus of 
     journalism at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. 
     Reed was a reporter at the Gazette for eight years, later 
     joining The New York Times as a national and foreign 
     correspondent.
       ``It's not fully appreciated outside of a very small group 
     the role Hugh Patterson had. He was absolutely vital to 
     leading the paper to the position it held: Obey the law and 
     the court decision,'' Reed said.
       Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter E. Hussman Jr. 
     said Monday that Patterson should be remembered for his 
     leadership of the Gazette ``during its greatest years,'' in 
     the late 1950s.
       ``It was a difficult time, and he certainly responded,'' 
     Hussman said.
       Al Neuharth, who founded USA Today and helped build the 
     Gannett newspaper empire that purchased the Gazette, said he 
     was sorry to hear of Patterson's death.
       ``He was considered by all of us who knew him as a real 
     Southern gentleman, real dedicated newspaper person and I 
     considered him a good friend,'' Neuharth said. ``He did a lot 
     for the state of Arkansas.''
       Patterson was born on Feb. 8, 1915, in Cotton Plant, Miss. 
     He came to Arkansas with his family in 1917. He was educated 
     in the public schools of Pine Bluff and at Henderson State 
     Teachers College, now Henderson State University, in 
     Arkadelphia. He also did special studies in graphic arts and 
     advertising in Washington, D.C., and New York.
       He married the former Louise Heiskell of Little Rock on 
     March 29, 1944. His wife was the daughter of J.N. Heiskell, 
     who was president and editor of the Gazette from 1902 until 
     his death in 1972. The Pattersons had two sons, Carrick H. 
     Patterson and Ralph B. Patterson, both of Little Rock.
       Ralph Patterson said Monday that his father emphasized 
     putting profits back into the newspaper. ``That was very 
     important to him: That the paper not be a cash cow, but a 
     public service to the state.''
       Before World War II, Patterson worked primarily in the 
     commercial printing business in Pine Bluff, Little Rock, New 
     York and Washington. His first job in the field was at Adams 
     Lithographic and Printing Co. of Pine Bluff when ``I was 
     about 14 or 15, I suppose,'' Patterson recalled in a 2000 
     interview with Roy Reed, who is also director of the Arkansas 
     Gazette Project at the University of Arkansas. The project is 
     an effort to collect and preserve the newspaper's history.
       ``The Depression was coming on and they had to cut down on 
     staff some... so I melted type metal and washed the platen 
     presses, and I was the shipping clerk,'' Patterson said.
       After dropping out of Henderson State because his family 
     didn't have enough money, Patterson purchased his first car, 
     a 1931 Chevrolet for $75, on credit, and traveled the roads 
     of south Arkansas and north Louisiana selling printing 
     supplies for the Smith Co., another Pine Bluff printing firm, 
     according to the Reed interview.
       In 1936, he moved to Little Rock to work for Democrat 
     Printing and Lithograph Co., where he earned $20 a week.
       Patterson served in the Army Air Corps in World War II, for 
     the most part, in Mobile, Ala., where he specialized in 
     supply and maintenance management. He left the service with 
     the rank of major.
       Patterson pondered forming a management consulting company 
     when the war ended. But during a weekend trip to Little Rock, 
     he had dinner with his father-in-law, who appreciated his 
     printing background.
       Heiskell, whose son had died in the war, had a proposition.
       ``Mr. Heiskell said, `You are the only one with related 
     experience and as soon as you can get out, I'd like for you 
     to come to the paper,''' Patterson recalled in the Reed 
     interview.
       Patterson joined the Gazette as national advertising 
     manager in 1946. Two years later, Heiskell made him the 
     newspaper's first publisher, responsible for policy as well 
     as the business. Before that, the Gazette had a business 
     manager to run the business and an editor who was responsible 
     for newspaper policy.
       James O. Powell, the Gazette's editorial page editor from 
     1959-1986, said Patterson recruited him from the Tampa 
     Tribune. ``He was an excellent publisher, a good businessman, 
     who knew the newspaper industry well indeed,'' Powell said. 
     Patterson ``knew well the pursuit of the public interest 
     using the newspaper.''
       On the business side, Patterson consolidated the ownership 
     of the Gazette under the Heiskell family and successfully 
     fought off an attempt by financier Witt Stephens, who owned 
     Gazette stock, to obtain a controlling interest, a move that 
     Patterson enjoyed retelling to Reed.
       ``He thought I was a yokel,'' Patterson recalled, laughing. 
     ``I suppose that was the best poker hand I ever played.''
       Patterson, relying on his experience in commercial 
     printing, also developed financial controls that showed the 
     relationship between costs and revenue, which he found few in 
     the industry knew.
       ``It was absolutely new,'' Patterson told Reed. ``And so I 
     developed this thing, and I wrote a paper on it, and it was 
     adopted by the Institute of Newspaper Controllers and Finance 
     Officers.''
       The Gazette's controller, Jack Olsen, a former Internal 
     Revenue Service accountant, fine-tuned Patterson's accounting 
     system. Olsen eventually went to work for the St. Petersburg 
     Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, using the 
     budgeting process Patterson developed.
       Patterson also organized the newspaper into more sections, 
     added stock tables, more news services and beefed up the 
     Sunday newspaper with the addition of color comics and Parade 
     Magazine.
       On policy, it was Patterson who set the Gazette on the 
     course that won it the Pulitzer.
       Patterson was a regional chairman of the National Council 
     for Public Schools when he was interviewed by a reporter for 
     The Associated Press about implementing the May 17, 1954, 
     U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, 
     which found that segregation in schools was inherently 
     unequal and in violation of the Constitution.
       ``I said, 'Well, of course, it's got to be recognized that 
     the Supreme Court decision was the only decision that could 
     have been made,'' Patterson recalled. ``We have to recognize 
     that this is a transitional time in terms of public policy 
     and it will, perhaps, take some time for that to be realized, 
     but there's just no option to this. It's a fundamental 
     matter.'''
       A wire service story containing those quotes appeared in 
     the Gazette. Upon returning to Arkansas, Executive Editor 
     Ashmore wondered whether Heiskell would fire Patterson, 
     Patterson said. About a week later, the subject came up with 
     Heiskell, who was over at the Patterson home to visit his 
     grandchildren. Patterson said he told him, ``Well, you know, 
     deep down we're talking about your grandchildren's 
     generation. And we feel that we can't misrepresent these 
     issues to them. We can't bring them up feeling that what is 
     inevitable is not true.''
       ``That was the last time it was ever discussed,'' Patterson 
     told Reed. ``And when Ashmore heard about that, for the first 
     time, he was able to deal more realistically with the 
     question textually in the editorials.''
       Jim Johnson, a former associate justice of the Arkansas 
     Supreme Court and the Democratic Party nominee for governor 
     in 1966--and no favorite of the Arkansas Gazette's editorial 
     page--said his battles with the Gazette over segregation 
     amounted to a ``political vendetta.'' But he said he always 
     respected and admired Patterson's civility and tenacity.
       ``He was a master at his craft and a worthy, worthy 
     adversary. He was keenly effective. You had to admire it. As 
     my daddy would say, he learned me something.''
       Arkansas Times columnist and former Gazette employee Ernie 
     Dumas said Patterson never really got credit for his role in 
     1957 and 1958, critical years for the Gazette and the state.
       ``Everybody has also attributed the heroism and courage to 
     Heiskell and Ashmore. Hugh played a very strong role in 
     bringing Harry and Heiskell around, that despite the peril to 
     the Gazette, they should take a stand against Orval Faubus.''
       By the mid-1980s, Patterson and the Gazette began feeling 
     pressure from the Arkansas Democrat, a newspaper that the 
     Walter E. Hussman family had acquired in 1974 and converted 
     from an afternoon daily to a morning newspaper to compete 
     head-to-head with the Gazette. In the early 1980s, he met 
     with representatives of Times-Mirror Corp. and the New York 
     Times Co. in an effort to sell the paper to a company that 
     could allow the Gazette to continue publishing.
       Unable to find a suitor, the Gazette filed a federal 
     lawsuit accusing the Democrat of

[[Page S5428]]

     predatory practices. The Democrat contended that it resorted 
     to innovative but legal business practices because the 
     Gazette was the dominant paper. In March 1986, a jury found 
     in favor of the Democrat.
       Patterson sold the Gazette to the Gannett Co. a short time 
     later, and often professed unhappiness with the changes the 
     national chain made to the state's ``gray lady.''
       On Oct. 18, 1991, Gannett shut down the Gazette and sold 
     the Gazette's assets and name to Little Rock Newspapers Inc., 
     now called Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Inc. The company is a 
     corporate subsidiary of WEHCO Media Inc. whose chief 
     executive officer, Walter E. Hussman Jr., is publisher of the 
     Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which began publishing under that 
     name on Oct. 19, 1991.
       Throughout his newspaper career, Patterson was active in 
     civic affairs. He was a member of the Little Rock Planning 
     Commission for 20 years. In 1957, Patterson helped initiate 
     the city manager form of government for Little Rock. He also 
     helped create the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, now 
     known as Metroplan.
       Patterson was awarded the Freedom House Freedom Award in 
     1958 and the Arkansas Council of the National Conference of 
     Christians and Jews Humanitarian Award in 1987. Also in 1987, 
     Patterson was named Arkansas Journalist of the Year by the 
     University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Patterson also served 
     as president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers 
     Association.

                          ____________________