BLUE RECEIVES PRESS AWARD

A man who was a member of the press for 40 years and edited the Southeast Missourian for 19 was honored by the Southeast Missouri Press Association Friday night.

John Blue received the 1998 Mildred Wallhausen Friend of Southeast Missouri Press Association Award at the organization's annual banquet at Dempster Hall.

The award is named for the longtime Charleston Enterprise-Courier publisher who was its first recipient in 1997.

The banquet capped a day of newspaper-oriented workshops that included a lecture by Nancy Friedman, who bills herself as The Telephone Doctor.

More than 350 people, many of them community members not associated with the press, attended Friedman's lecture at Dempster Hall.

A past president of the SEMO Press Association, Blue worked for the Southeast Missourian from 1940 until he retired in 1980. The newspaper won four general excellence awards from the Missouri Press Association during his tenure and in 1967 was named Missouri's best newspaper.

He taught in the mass communication department at Southeast Missouri State University from 1978-1988.

He also is a Paul Harris Fellow, one of the Rotary Club's highest achievements.

Blue served on the Southeast Missouri Hospital Board of Directors for 38 years and received the Chamber of Commerce's Golden Deeds award in 1990.

Also attending the banquet was Blue's wife, Mary, who wrote a popular gardening column for the Southeast Missourian for 35 years.

In accepting the award, Blue quoted another esteemed Cape Girardean, the late Rush Limbaugh I.

"When you live long enough you don't know what's going to happen to you," he said.