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THE UTAH NEWSPAPER HALL OF FAME NORMAN J. FUELLENBACH, Richfield Reaper Born September 24, 1922 - Died November 27, 1977 Installed in Hall of Fame at St. George, 1991 Had Fate not intervened, he would probably have been an attorney. Instead, the tragic death of his two brothers caused him to abandon a lifelong dream and join the staff of his family's Richfield Reaper, where he became a much-honored publisher. Colleagues in journalism knew Norman J. Fuellenbach simply as "Norm." Countless friends in the five-county area served by his paper dubbed him 'the Rat.' The title was bestowed with affection, not disdain; an offshoot of his widely read column, 'Reaper Cussions or the Reaper Rat Race.' He was associated with the newspaper for 31 years, eighteen as its publisher, before his career was cut short by a fatal heart attack at age 55. Under his deft guidance, the Reaper became one of Utah's most-lauded weeklies; an authoritative editorial voice and a staunch proponent of 'Rooster Valley,' a title coined by its publisher to describe the fertile agricultural environs of the Sevier River. While it left the impression that this was a center of the chicken industry, that wasn't the case. Its creator simply felt it described a rather remote and far-flung expanse -- the 'super boonies,' as he termed it ~ and they were 'something to crow about.1 Born September 4, 1922 in Eureka, Utah, he was one of four children of Joseph J. and Rula Johnson Fuellenbach. As a youngster he spent four years in California before returning to his native state in 1934 when his father became publisher of the Richfield paper. Late in 1935 upon the death of Mr. Fuel- 503 |
