Fired for Valor

Under Managing Editor Herbert Edward Hames Jr., Illinois' Ottawa Republican-Times has earned a reputation as one of the Midwest's spunkiest small dailies (circ. 13,225). In six years on the job, outspoken Editor Hames tromped on many high-placed toes. Yet, when word got out last week that Herb Hames was being fired, Ottawa's church and community leaders spontaneously banded together to protest the Hames dismissal.

Honored. A wartime Navyman with a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University, handsome, whippet-trim '(5 ft. 10 in., 140 lbs.) Herb Hames, 35, helped close down Ottawa's wide-open gambling joints with stories that played up their owners' political connections. He flailed away at thimblerigging in La Salle County's tax assessments, flayed the city government for lax enforcement of liquor laws. Bucking opposition from tax-conscious merchants, Editor Hames also swung the paper behind such long-needed improvements as sewer and school construction. For three straight years after Editor Hames took over in 1951, the Republican-Times walked off with the 16-state Inland Daily Press Association's award for coverage of local government.

Herb Hames's winning streak started petering out in mid-1955, after the death of longtime Publisher Fred A. Sapp. The paper was sold (for $750,000) to the late Leslie Small, son of Illinois' longtime scandal-tainted Republican Governor (1921-29) Lennington Small, and his sons, Len and Burrell, who also publish the nearby Kankakee Journal (circ. 24,960). Since the new publishers frowned on controversial stories and insisted that all editorials on local topics be cleared with the business office, Herb Hames buttoned his typewriter on local issues. But last November, after radio station WCMY's Newscaster Ron Wilson reported that trustees of Ottawa's mismanaged municipal hospital had fired a newly hired $12,000-a-year administrator with $8,000 severance pay, Newsman Hames wrote an editorial analyzing the hospital's chronic troubles with the board of trustees, showed it to the front office only after the editorial had been locked up. Reason: Mrs. Edward Kelly, wife of the Republican-Times's general manager, was a member of the hospital board. Two weeks later the entire board resigned under pressure from the city council.

Ousted. To Ottawans, it was plain that Editor (and Rotary Club President) Hames had been fired over the hospital issue. Packing into Ottawa's Heinz Cafe, a committee of 61 business and professional leaders held two protest meetings to urge Hames's reinstatement. Said one committee member: "If Herb Hames is fired, freedom of the press is dead in Ottawa." When the Republican-Times lamely announced the editor's "severance in the near future," Ottawa's Protestant Ministerial Association expressed to the publishers its support of Roman Catholic Hames. Said the resolution: "We feel that he has rendered a valiant service to the community. If the reason for his dismissal was his frank discussion and presentation of public issues, we deplore this kind of censorship."

At week's end Herb Hames was job-hunting between editions. Said General Manager Kelly: "This is a world of competition. We've got an internal problem of our own. We have a right to release a man if we want to." But the citizens' committee was still standing by to see that the editor gets "a fair deal." Said Bookstore Owner (and Committee Spokesman) Herbert W. Kanthak: "We are like a panther sitting in a tree."

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