The Times from Munster, Indiana • 89

A Sr BB-3 THE TIMES Quaint Hamlet Became Market Garden of By PATRICIA HARPER miPes Correspondent Tne Calumet Reg'on was stUl woodland Indian country when the Dolton family settled on the banks of the Little Calumet River in 1837. Neither the Illini Indians nor founding father George Dolton would have recognized the town by 1906. The Dolton of 75 years ago seems a quaint little hamlet to the modern The Times: 75 Years of Progress located at 142nd Street and Chicago Road expanded to serve the growing community. Adolph Lund's drug store established in 1870 was one of the original Dolton businesses. The building now housing an antique shop still stands at Lincoln Avenue and Chicago Road.

The motion picture industry came to Dolton when a nickelodeon was installed on the second floor of the Lund building in 1907. In 1908 Mr. and Mrs. August Dieck started Dolton's first restaurant on Lincoln Avenue. In the same year a grocery store managed by Theodore Koch opened on Chicago Road.

The Koch family grocery business is still a fixture in the downtown area. A bakery came to Dolton in 1910 and thirsty citizens looking for more lively entertainment patronized Edward Dillner's saloon and beer garden on the present site of the Value Village Mall. The Park Avenue School now the village hall educated the young. A city directory of the time describes the building as "a good public school, large, well-ventilated and heated." In 1906 the first school telephones were installed and a teachers' salary schedule was adopted outlining minimum and maximum monthly wages of $50 and $75. Desite all these modern conveniences, the building was abandoned in 1911 and students were shifted to the new Lincoln Avenue School which Dolton Sunday, June 21, 1981 Region is still at 14151 Lincoln Ave.

School officials relocated because noise from adjacent railroad tracks disturbed Park Avenue School classroom activities. As the northern section of town urbanized, the southern area remained primarily rural at the turn of the century. Sibley Boulevard a modern-day maze of fast food and slow traffic was still a dirt road. The Sibley and Lincoln intersection near the Calumet Expressway was then the site of Propper's Coner home of a prosperous farm family who settled the land in 1858. Farm children attended the log cabin Berger School at Sibley and Meadow Lane Avenue until 1917 when a new brick building was constructed at 1506 E.Sibley.

Ironically, the original Berger School has outlasted its successor. The cabin now the home of the Cargill family still stands at 14287 Lincoln Ave. The 1917 model Berger School was demolished by District 149 two years ago because of declining enrollment and costly maintenance problems. Excerpts from the 1907 Dolton Municipal Code illustrate the combination of urban and rural life in the community. Vandalism and littering two features of modern suburbia engaged the attention of early village legislators.

Fines were imposed for disposing of banana peels, watermellon rinds or seeds on public sidewalks and for throwing "any stone or other missile" at buildings, railroad cars or trees. But the old order had not yet passed. Section 56 of the code imposed a $100 fine for driving "any vicious or excited cow or other unruly animal" through the village streets. nnnnnrt FF UULwJUD 75th YEAR 1890. The Indiana Harbor Belt, Illinois Central, and Chicago and Eastern Illinois railroads all had extensive operations in Dolton.

The railroads aided Dolton's growth and prosperity as a market garden for neighboring Chicago. Railroad employees and skilled workers from the Chicago Brick Co. Increased the population. The traditional business district office near the Holiday Inn South in Hammond. The compass had financial support from the typographers' union, but lost that support and folded after about a year.

Meanwhile, the Organization of Newspaper Employees was established to represent news and advertising employees. That union exists today. On Aug. 1, 1979, a new chapter in The Times history began when Tompkins retired and Walter J. McCarthy became publisher.

McCarthy, 40, came from The Gary Post-Tribune, where he held jobs as controller, business manager and general manager. Before that, he worked for a Chicago accounting firm. McCarthy is a member of the board of trustees of the Lake Area United Way and is past president of that board. He also is a member of the directing boards of the Hammond Chamber of Commerce and the Northwest Indiana Association of Commerce and Industry. McCarthy has worked successfully to expand The Times' circulation, especially into Illinois where a news bureau has opened in Lansing.

Times daily circulation hit 70,042 at the end of March, up 5 percent from the same time in 1980. Sunday circulation rose 6 percent, to 79,002. The circulation gain was one of the biggest in the United States, according to Richard Perez, circulation director. In 1906, by contrast, The Times circulation was only a few hundred. For 75 years, The Times has brought issues and events home in the Calumet Region.

Growing tremendously, along with the Region, The Times has campaigned against wrongs and strived to serve Region residents. It is a newspaper eager to serve at least another 75 years. (Continued from page BB-1) The second Irony to the railroad crossing campaign is that McHie died from injuries he received when his car was hit by a train. On Friday, August 25, 1944, McHie was driving southbound on Torrence Avenue, heading toward the Heiland Lodge and golf course, which he built on farmland he owned on the Kankakee River near St. Anne, 111.

Shortly before noon, his car was struck by two northwest bound locomotives on the Pennsylvania Central Railroad tracks near the Calumet City-Lansing border. A Hammond Times account of the accident follows: "According to an eyewitness report of a (railroad) section gang eating lunch at the intersection, McHie apparently failed to see the approaching engines until his automobile was on the tracks. He stopped momentarily and the train struck the rear end of the car, hurling it into the ditch at the side of the intersection." Members of the section gang said flasher signals failed to operate, the paper reported. McHie died five days after the accident. He was 81.

McHie and his wife had no children. At the time of McHie's death, principal stockholders in the Hammond Publishing Co. were his nieces and nephews. The Hammond Publishing Co. owned The Times.

Athough for a short time McHie prepared his nephew Stewart McHie to become publisher, that nephew fell from favor and the publisher's job went to another nephew, James S. DeLaurier. DeLaurier, named president of Hammond Publishing Co. in 1943, admitted little expertise in the newspaper business, and relied heavily on his department heads, Leas said. Two years later the Dolton land today's downtown and the "valley" section to the northeast was subdivided into real estate plots.

However, even subdividers left a link with the past. Lincoln Avenue follows the contours of an old Indian trail which curved at about 143rd Street to keep to the highest and firmest ground. The town was a railroad center by per experience in several places around the country, became the new publisher. Under Tompkins, many changes were made. In September 1966, a larger, cleaner, easier-to-read typeface came into use.

That November, a Crown Point news bureau opened, joining an existing South Holland bureau. Two more changes came in 1967. In May, the number of columns on main pages was cut from eight to six. On Sept. 3, The Hammond Times became The Times.

Since the name change, The Times has continued efforts to improve its product. In May of 1977, the weekly South Lake Edition was replaced by a daily Southlake section. Both "Tell the Times," a public forum, and a features section, began in 1978. Last October, business and labor coverage was expanded. The Times has experienced two serious strikes by the Chicago-based International Typographical Union.

In 1947, union members walked off their jobs in a pay dispute. The strike, which also affected the Chicago newspapers, lasted 14 months at The Times. During the strike, newspapers "scrambled to create new ways of printing," according to William F. Chapman, current executive editor. To keep the paper going, they devised a crude form of phototypesetting, even though phototypesetting was unheard of at the time," he said.

Union members returned to work, settling for a raise of between $1 and $2 a week, Miss Schultz said. The typographical union held a second strike in 1973, to protest installation of new electronical production equipment. The American Newspaper Guild convinced some newsroom employees to hold a sympathy strike. Striking reporters and typographers began a tabloid newspaper, called the compass, which had an Plant eye, but the early Inhabitants would have seen their town as a booming metropolis with telephone service, shops, industries and railroads. Fertile soil and ease of trans-portion on the river attracted homesteaders primarily German immigrants to the area.

By 1866 a post office was established with Dolton's son Andrew as postmaster. Before working at the Times, DeLaurier worked as a pharmacist, a safety supervisor for Ford Motor Co. at Detroit, and as a salesman of cosmetics, drugs and offset duplicating equipment. Despite his lack of background in journalism, DeLaurier was regarded as a knowledgeable boss with a good personality, Miss Schultz said. Another old-time Times employee said the publisher sent employees flowers at Easter and turkeys at Thanksgiving.

In 1943, the paper's average daily circulation was 31,315. Circulation doubled during the 20 years DeLaurier was publisher. During that time, daily issues grew along with the amount of news content. DeLaurier was extremely active in the community, serving as director of the First National Bank of East Chicago and on the board of the Northern Indiana Public Service Co. DeLaurier was appointed by Gov.

Henry F. Schricker to the first Northern Indiana Toll Road Commission and served as chairman of that commission. DeLaurier also served as a trustee of Purdue University. In 1956, he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in San Francisco. The former publisher reportedly loved to host parties.

Some parties for employees were held at a home he built at the site of the former Salesian Preparatory School near Cedar Lake. At one party, participants rode around on an old fire engine DeLaurier had bought from the Town of St. John. In May of 1962, the heirs of Sid McHie sold The Times to Hammond Publishers which later became Howard- Publications present owner of The Times and 16 other daily newspapers around the country. Because of ill health, DeLaurier retired in November 1963.

(He was 76 years old when he died Oct. 6, 1978.) John S. Tompkins, who had newspa of CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER rnnnn TO ULJL5 OrJ YOUR For Quality Fencing We Invite You to Compare Our Prices EC0I10LII1E FENCE NEW and LARGER LOCATION TO SERVE YOU BETTER RT. 41-SCHERERVILLE-34 MILES SOUTH OF RT. 30 The Hammond Lever Brothers Company Congratulates The Times On Its 75th Anniversary.