PUBLISHER HELPS TO CHRONICLE COMMUNITY

CHARLESTON -- It's been said that a newspaper is a mirror of the community.

Mildred ("Millie") Wallhausen, who has been involved in a newspaper operation for more than a half century, agrees.

"A weekly newspaper plays a big role in the community and the newspaper business," said Wallhausen, publisher of the Charleston Enterprise Courier. "It gives local information, tells stories about local people, the good and the bad. Weeklies are the history of the community, its people, its problems, and solution of those problems."

Wallhausen said the weekly paper can play a big part in literacy.

"We don't depend on the computer to be an editor here," she emphasized. "We read and re-read our copy and try to catch all grammar and spelling errors. We want our weekly to be a textbook of the county."

She said the Courier finds its way into many homes, not only in Mississippi County but elsewhere.

"The weekly finds its way into many homes which do not subscribe to the newspaper," she said. "People read and re-read it, then give it to a friend. In many cases, readers will clip out local articles and send them to relatives and friends all over the world."

Wallhausen, as publisher of one of the state's prize-winning weekly publications, knows the ins and outs of small-town newspapers.

"We started here with an old press and a handful of type," recalled Wallhausen, who has been involved in the operation of the Courier her more-than-50 years in the newspaper business.

Wallhausen, who authors a weekly column in the Courier called Millie's Soap Box, said the column provides an appropriate forum for her opinions. Her opinions won't turn up in the news space, either. "One thing we have always strictly adhered to is keeping personal opinions out of news articles," she said. "We reserve our opinions for the editorial page."

Wallhausen began her "Soap Box" column after assuming operation of the paper following the death of her husband, Art L. Wallhausen Sr., in 1969.

A writer in the mid-1970s described Millie's Soap Box as filled "with fire, vim, vigor and compassion, depending on the circumstances." The writer observed that "You may not agree with Millie, but there is never any question about what she is talking about, or the way she feels about it."

Wallhausen, the former Mildred Savell, New York-born and a graduate of the old Brown Business College there, was a secretary for a large real-estate firm before leaving the big city to visit relatives in Poplar Bluff. It was there that she met her future husband. "I never returned to New York," she said.

Her husband, a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, worked at the Sikeston Daily Standard for a few years and joined the Poplar Bluff American Republic news staff in 1933.

In 1935, he leased the Enterprise Courier with an option to buy. Less than a year later, he married Miss Savell, who joined him in the operation of the newspaper.

"We really loved the newspaper," she said. "From the beginning it was more than just a business; we became part of the community in a hurry.

"My husband never had a door on his office," she recalled. "He wanted the door to be open to anyone who walked in. We have maintained that policy at the Courier."

Today, her desk is just inside the newspaper's main entrance. There is no office, no door.

Although she is listed as publisher, her son-in-law and daughter, Jim and Liz Anderson, have been operating the corporation since July 1984.

"The Andersons are newspaper veterans," said Wallhausen. "Jim worked with the Review Journal in Nevada and later with the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee. Liz also put in time at the Review Journal and with the Bee.

"I'm the second of four generations of newspaper people in my family," said Wallhausen. "My parents operated the East Prairie newspaper a number of years after leaving New York."

Her son, Art Wallhausen Jr., worked at the Enterprise Courier until 1984, when he accepted a position at Southeast Missouri State University. Also working at the newspaper is one of her granddaughters, Kellie Golightly, "who has expressed an interest in keeping the newspaper in the family in later years," she said.

Wallhausen's service to journalism and that of her family goes far beyond the confines of the Courier's modest office.

She is one of three members of her family to serve as president of the Southeast Missouri Press Association; her husband was president in 1962 and her son headed the association in 1972.

These days Wallhausen can be found at the Courier most days, surrounded by some of the watercolor art she enjoys painting during her spare time.

Wallhausen also has illustrated a book. A friend, Marion Wallace, wrote the book, "Bobby Butterfly," which deals with youth drug problems.

But still at the top of her priority list is the Courier and the community whose life it mirrors. And it looks as it the Enterprise Courier's reflection of good community journalism is likely to be around for years to come.