NATIVE OF AREA MADE HER MARK AS A PUBLISHER

HOBBS, N.M. (AP) - The founder and publisher of The Hobbs Flare, is dead at the age of 88.

Agnes Kastner Head died July 9 in at Lubbock, Texas, hospital after a brief illness.

Mrs. Head owned the Lovington Leader from 1944 to 1958 but is best known for founding The Flare, a weekly Hobbs newspaper, in 1948. She operated the newspaper until her death.

Mrs. Head was inducted into the New Mexico Press Association Hall of Fame in October 1990. At the age of 86, she was recognized as the oldest working publisher in the nation.

A Republican, she was known for lampooning local and state politicians, particularly Democrats, in her weekly column, "Via The Grapevine."

She was born in 1904 in Dexter, Mo., and earned a teaching certificate from the former Cape Girardeau Teachers College in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

She married J.C. Head on Sept. 1, 1923, in Dexter, Mo., and moved with him to El Dorado, Ark. There she began her journalism career on the El Dorado Daily News, advancing from copy rewriter to reporter.

The couple made their home in Hobbs beginning in 1932.

J.C. Head, a former Hobbs mayor, died in 1981.

It was his 1944 candidacy for mayor that led to a dispute between the couple and Tom Summers, then publisher of the Hobbs News-Sun. Summers reportedly refused to publish Head's political ads.

Head won the race, and Mrs. Head vowed to start a rival newspaper - which she did with The Flare.