MILLIE WALLHAUSEN, FRIEND OF THE PRESS

Mildred Wallhausen has strong opinions -- enough to fill a weekly newspaper column for more than 60 years. But if you meet Millie -- as she is known to all acquaintances, old and new -- you also find a charming 83-year-old who has energy to spare. And nothing makes her eyes light up like talking about newspapering, then and now.

Wallhausen is the publisher of the Charleston Enterprise-Courier, a newspaper she and her late husband, Art Wallhausen Sr., purchased in 1936. She has been involved with the Southeast Missouri Press Association for virtually all of those years, serving as president and continuing to serve as the group's historian.

To honor her long career and her devotion to the press association, an award was named for her, the Mildred Wallhausen Friend of SEMO Press Award. Fittingly, the first recipient of the award was its namesake, who graciously accepted during the press association's annual banquet recently in Perryville.

There are any number of great journalists whom newspaper reporters and editors can name as role models and guiding lights. Count Millie Wallhausen among those bright names. She truly is a beacon for the good name of community journalism at its best.