Newspapers have been there

One hundred years ago this month, National City Fire Chief James A. Bird made his case to the public that the fire department and community were in need of a public fire alarm.

Valuable time was lost, he wrote, between the time a fire started in the home and the resident was able to call the department and give them proper directions to the home. Too often, in a moment of panic the wrong address was provided and fire fighters would go to the wrong address or they would arrive to a house that was substantially engulfed in flames.

It would benefit everyone, Bird argued, if a simple fire alarm were established on a street corner: “the handle is pulled, a bell rings in the engine house, the address of the box is stamped automatically on a ribbon and the department is on its way.” No messy human interaction.

Unrelated and decades later in October 1964, in the same week Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35, a former Chula Vista city attorney was charged with beating his wife. Also, Superior Court Judge William Mahedy called a Chula Vista Memorial Park bathroom a “cesspool of iniquity” because it served as the center of “widespread homosexual activity”, while a South Bay jury found a South Bay Union School District teacher innocent of committing a “homosexual act” in the same Memorial Park bathroom mentioned by Mahedy.

And in October 1992 it was reported that most candidates running for a seat on the Sweetwater Union High School District Board of Trustees did not support providing condoms and contraceptives to high school students.
These stories— the call for a fire alarm, the ire of a superior court judge and the idea of district sanctioned birth control—have nothing in common other than having appeared in the local paper.

From long gone social pages detailing which couples were travelling abroad and whose daughter was marrying whom, to pageant winners, scout meetings, city council discussions and police actions, the local newspaper, in this case The National City News or The Chula Vista Star-News has chronicled this region’s history and its place in time and the world.

That is something to keep in mind and appreciate during National Newspapers Week Oct. 5-11.