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Hale, William G. "Billy" (1875-1927)

HALE, ALLEN, WALES, SCHNEIDER, TEACHOUT

Posted By: County Coordinator (email)
Date: 11/16/2022 at 21:56:17

The Des Moines Sunday Register, Jan. 30, 1927 pp. 1, 10:

'Billy' Hale Succumbs in Tucson, Ariz. Following Many Months of Illness

William G. (Billy) Hale.

Register and Tribune Editor Had Career in Des Moines.

William G. Hale, associate managing editor of The Register and Tribune died yesterday afternoon at Tucson, Ariz. Death was due to a complication of diseases which had kept him from his desk the greater part of the time for the last ten months.

Mr. Hale in company with Mrs. Hale and his mother-in-law, Mrs. J. C. Allen went to Tucson on Nov. 22. It was believed that the warmer climate of Arizona might prove beneficial. For a time it appeared that his health was improving but about a month ago he suffered a relapse. A consultation of doctors was called Friday and at the conclusion of the season it was announced that there was no hope for his recovery.

Mr. Hale came to The Evening Tribune as city editor eleven years ago from the News, a paper merged in 1925 with The Evening Tribune.

Funeral plans await direction from Mrs. Hale, who was at her husband's bedside at the time of his death. Funeral services and burial will be in Des Moines, probably Tuesday.

Returned to Work.

Last March on advice of physicians Mr. Hale entered Iowa Lutheran hospital to take a considerable rest. It was believed that a few weeks of inactivity would aid nature in correcting high blood pressure and other conditions that had troubled him in recent years. The rest wrought an improvement in his condition and he returned to his home there to continue the treatment which physicians had prescribed.

In August his condition had apparently improved to such an extent that he felt able to return to his desk at The Evening Tribune.

After several weeks at the office, however, he suffered a relapse and again took up the rest treatment at his house and in November went to Tucson where he remained until his death. His passing is attributed to high blook pressure and a complication of other ailments.

For nearly thirty years Mr. Hale was employed on Des Moines newspapers and for the greater part of the time in an executive capacity. He was editor for many years of the Des Moines News, pioneer 1 cent paper in the Mississippi valley. While there he developed the policy of making stories appearing in his paper models of brightness and brevity. The sentence paragraph, simplified spelling, the generous use of pictures--ideas later used by the giant tabloid papers in metropoli-
(Continued on Page 10, Col. 1)

tan cities--were given early expression by him.

Born in Iowa.

William G. Hale was born March 13, 1874, in Belknap, Davis county, Ia., the youngest child of the late Dr. and Mrs. A. J. Hale, who came to Iowa from Indiana.

As a boy he attended Creston High school, paying his own way, and as soon as he possibly could, he left school to enter the profession which fascinated him all his life, and in which he was to prove so able.

Beginning as a very young and very green "cub" on the Creston paper, he went from there to Moulton, Ia., and then to Omaha, working on newspaper in both places.

It has been about twenty-nine years since he first came to Des Moines to go to work on the old Des Moines Leader, as telegraph editor. He had taken the job mostly on "nerve" and without any particular experience in that phase of newspaper work, and probably without any great love for it, preferring to deal with the news of his own city.

When the opportunity came to go over to the Capital he took it, though it meant "going back in the street." From the Capital he went to the News, then owned by John J. Hamilton, as city hall and courthouse reporter.

Of those who worked with him at that day, only one man now remains in newspaper work in Des Moines, Dan Powers, a compositor for The Register and Tribune.

Many Liked His Work.

"He was instantly like in Des Moines, made many and lifelong friends through his work and its associations, and his writing was well liked," Mr. Powers says of him.

So quickly was his worth recognized that he was soon made city editor of the News, and when the paper passed from Hamilton's control into the hands of what was then known as the Cripps-MacRae league of newspapper, Hale was made editor-in-chief.

He continued in this capacity during the time the News became one of the Cloverleaf newspapers, a branch of the Cripps organization, and later when Scripps-MacRae took it back.

Eleven years ago Feb. 1 he came to The Evening Tribune as city editor, and later became associate managing editor, his position at the time of his death.

During those years he trained a number of newspaper men and women who later distinguished themselves in the craft, including Walter Howie, later publisher of the Chicago Herald-Examiner from which he went to New York to become managing editor of the Hearst tabloid, the Mirror, Howie is now a high executive with the Hearst organization.

Westerbrook Pegler, once a cub under Hale's city editorship, a few years ago became a featured writer for the United News, and recently signed a contract with the Chicago Tribune press service, to do one feature a day on major sports events on a sort of "roving commission."

Trained Many Beginners.

Jackson Elliott, assistant general manager of The Associated Press, was an early associate of Hale's on the Des Moines News. Susan Glaspell and Rose Henderson, well known writers, were also members of the staff of the paper during the Hale regime.

Virginia Swain, staff serial and feature writer of Newspaper Enterprise association in New York City, formerly worked under him on The Evening Tribune, as did Milton MacKaye of the New York Evening Post, Beatrice Blackman of the New York World and Warren Bassett, associate editor of Editor and Publisher magazine.

Other active newspaper men who got their early training under Hale include: Neal Jones, editor of the Omaha News; B. F. Sylvester, city editor of the Omaha World-Herald; Maj. Oliver P. Newman of Washington, D. C.; James E. Day, managing editor of a string of Texax newspapers; Frank G. Moorhead, editor of the Iowa Homestead, and Robert Armstrong, political writer of Washington, D. C.

Others who have been members of his staffs include Sam Israel and Ben Marksen of the Los Angeles Times; Donna Risher, editor of the Boardwalk News in Atlantic City; Frank Jeffries, former city clerk; Paul Hester and Fred Gaston, news writers; Fred Buchanan of Robbins Brothers circus; Sam Abramson, Des Moines attorney; Sue McNamara, Omaha feature writer, and the late Maj. Frank Lyman.

Mr. Hale is survived by his widow, Florence Allen Hale, two sisters, Mrs. Minnie Wales of Powell, Wyo. and Mrs. Carrie Schneider of St. Louis, Mo.

======================

The Des Moines Register, February 1, 1927, pg. 18, col. 2:

HALE'S BODY TO ARRIVE TONIGHT; RITES THURSDAY
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Wife Accompanies Body From Arizona.

Accompanied by Mrs. Hale and her mother, Mrs. J. C. Allen, the body of William G. Hale, associate managing editor of The Register and Tribune, is expected to arrive here from Tucson, Ariz. tonight.

Funeral services for the late editor will be held Thursday, according to information received yesterday by relatives, probably at Dunn's funeral establishment, where the body will be taken after arrival.

Mrs. H. H. Teachout, Mrs. Hale's sister, will leave this morning to meet Mrs. Hale and their mother in Kansas City. She will return with them to Des Moines tonight.

Complete arrangements for the funeral will not be announced until Mrs. Hale arrives. It was thought by relatives last night, but the Rev. Elmer Nelson Owen of St. Paul's Episcopal church was expected to preach the funeral sermon.

Mr. Hale died Saturday at Tucson, where he had gone to repair his broken health. He had been ill for ten months.


 

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