Dear Editor:

I am sure many people have stories relating to The Advertiser and Emory Melton. It was a sad day when Emory was gone and no longer in charge.

Though born and raised here, I was in other states working from early 1070’s until I retired in 2006. As I am wont to do, I occasionally wrote letters to the editor and submitted them to The Advertiser and the Democrat, which was under different management at that time. 

One time I submitted a letter that was in conflict with the editor’s opinion and was told that it wouldn’t be printed because of that fact. Finding this unacceptable censorship, I wrote directly to Emory. I received a letter in return from him saying that he would not allow a letter to be rejected for that reason and it was in the paper the next week. 

Most memorably, was a time when letters were flying into the paper on a topic related to the city government. Several of mine were printed. One day I received a call from Emory’s office. I was told that he would like to speak to me if I would drop by. Which of course I did, as I couldn’t imagine why he would want to talk to me. 

To my absolute surprise, he told me that I was on the right track with my criticism of the city government and suggested I request a specific set of documents from the city. Unfortunately I found out it was quite expensive to obtain that information. 

Next thing I knew, after informing him of the expense, he obtained the documents and provided them to me, which I used to write a few more letters giving more information to anyone who happened to be interested in the subject. 

That is something I shall never forget, and something I suspect would only happen with a small town paper with a long time resident and local owner. 

A shame it couldn’t make it without him.

Kathy Casey

Cassville