The oldest original edition of the Delray News in the Delray Beach Historical Society’s archives dates from 1923.
Staff photo
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By Mary Thurwachter
It’s hardly breaking news that old newspapers don’t hold up very well over time. Just examine a copy of The Delray News from the 1920s, for example, and you will understand. While you’re at it, you’ll want to be wearing gloves and avoid flipping through the pages vigorously.
“The pages are hard to handle and very brittle,” said Dottie Patterson, archivist for the Delray Beach Historical Society, where old and yellowed newspapers are carefully stored in the Harriet W. and George D. Cornell Archives Room. Along with other local treasures, such as the architectural drawings of Sam Ogren Sr. (the father of Delray Beach architecture), the newspapers are kept in the dehumidified room, cooled to an invigorating 68 degrees.
Bolstered by a $2,000 donation from the Boca Raton Pioneer Club this year, most of the newspapers, dating back to 1923, have been digitized, or made text-searchable. Pages have been photographed and made into PDFs, so they can be viewed on a computer.
The Delray Beach Historical Society, which has a collection of microfiche, microfilm and many original copies of the papers, had already begun the process before the donation but hadn’t completed work on the earliest years of the Delray Beach News, 1923 to ’28. These papers document the rise and fall of the Florida land boom, when Addison Mizner put Boca on the map and Delray grew into a resort destination.
Since Boca Raton did not have its own newspaper until the 1940s, the Boca Raton Historical Society and Museum and the Boca Raton Pioneer Club joined forces with the Delray Beach Historical Society in the project to preserve and make accessible back issues of the Delray Beach News.
In 2004, the Boca Historical Society and the Pioneer Club worked to digitize the Boca Raton News and the Pelican, Boca Raton’s hometown papers dating back to the late 1940s. But much of Boca Raton’s historic people, places and events are written in the pages of the Delray Beach News, which began publication in 1923 and ended in 1986 as The Delray Beach News Journal.
“Having more of the collection searchable is a wonderful resource for all researchers of local history,” Patterson said. The money from the Pioneer Club went a long way in digitizing the Delray News and Delray News Journal collection, she said, but there are several other papers that sprang up in the 1920s (The Rays of Delray, for example) that she would like to have digitized, as well.
Rescued newspapers
Patterson rescued decades of newspapers from the Delray Beach Library when it moved into its new digs in 2005.
“They told me I could have them but I’d have to come get them by the end of the day,” Patterson said. “I piled them onto a desk chair and wheeled them out to my car.”
The Historical Society already had a collection of The Delray News from the ’20s to ’50s on microfilm. But the newspapers she got from the library that day greatly fattened the collection.
Still, several years of papers are missing. No one knows what happened to 1924, for example.
The digital versions of the old papers are easier to read than the originals, Patterson said. The yellow hue has been removed. What couldn’t be repaired were parts of pages long since torn away or tentatively held together by Scotch tape, darkened and more brittle with each passing year.
You can sit at a computer at the Historical Society and read all about life in Delray and Boca 89 years ago. The nameplate of The Delray Beach News back then was bookended by the slogans “Everybody Likes Delray” and “Where Ocean Breezes Blow.”
A long column called “Personal and Otherwise” served as the social network of the day, with tidbits like: “Mrs. Leslie Walker is visiting relatives in Vermont, and Mrs. M.T. Knox will probably return this week from an extended stint in Baltimore and other points of interest.”
In the Nov. 13, 1925, paper, a rail down the side appealed to readers in the town to the south:
“Boca Raton News Items — Some of the Happenings in Our Little Sister City Interestingly Told.”
The publication improved its looks mightily in 1929, with special pictorial sections showing homes and businesses, and even a spread dubbed “Delray from an Aeroplane.”
Once a daily paper
The Delray News was founded in 1923 by Lon Burton. When he retired in 1928, Lauren Hand, who started Hand’s Book Shop (now simply called Hand’s) became the managing editor.
Over the years, the newspaper went through many changes in owners, editors and design. In 1962, when Gary Gooder was editor, the paper became a daily, then a semi-weekly in 1963. But for most of its life, the Delray News was a weekly newspaper.
It became The Delray News Journal in 1959. Palm Beach Newspapers bought the paper in 1969 and owned it until it ceased publication in 1986.
For the last 20 years of the paper’s life, it circulated in Boynton Beach, too. The Delray Beach/Boynton Beach News Journal was 64 years old in 1986 when dwindling circulation and weak ad sales led to its death.
Reporters’ training ground
Many young journalists plied their trade at the paper.
Natalia (Jamie) Prillaman, who grew up in Delray, was a reporter at the paper from 1973 to ’75.
“We focused on local news in Delray Beach and Boynton Beach — it was a real local newspaper. We did occasional stories of a regional nature — one I remember was about the change in the way Florida’s judicial system worked. There were stories about the Loxahatchee Reserve and beach erosion, and we covered the renourishment project extensively.”
Another reporter, Sandy Wesley, also worked at the paper in the 1970s, mainly covering Boynton Beach.
She remembers writing about the agreement between Delray and Boynton to build a joint wastewater treatment plant on Congress Avenue at the Delray-Boynton border.
“I also wrote about the hiring of a professional city manager in Boynton Beach — Peter Cheney,” she said. “Cheney and that city commission turned Boynton Beach around, encouraging Motorola to build its plant.”
To contribute to the financing of the Delray Beach News preservation project, call Dottie Patterson at 274-9578, or Susan Gillis at the Boca Raton Historical Society and Museum, 395-6766, Ext. 104.
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