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UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION Born March 4, 1917 in Paris, Idaho, he was a son of Earl Bird and Catherine Wright Innes. There in his hometown at the age of nine his newspaper career began when he became a printer's devil at the weekly Paris Post, published by John A. Wallis. An oft-told family story relates that his duties included arriving early at the plant to build a fire in the wood-burning heating stove. A Paris citizen protested loudly when pickets began to disappear from his fence and the loss was traced to young Innes, who collected one or two enroute to work each day because they burned well as tinder for the fire. Early in his teens he began to operate the Linotype and continued to polish his printing skills while attending the area's Fielding High School. After graduating in 1935, he remained with the Post four years until, as a journeyman typesetter, he followed John Wallis to the Wasatch Wave in Heber City. After the Wave changed ownership in 1942, Russ joined a commercial printing firm in Salt Lake City - but on December 9, 1943, with the nation engulfed in World War II, he was inducted into the Army. There he became T/Sgt. E. R. Innes and spent 28 months on active duty with the 566th Quartermaster Corps. He saw overseas service in the Rhineland and Central Europe and then, in a relocation which involved only a small percentage of the armed forces, was assigned to the Asiatic Pacific Theatre and served with occupation forces in Japan. He was discharged on April 18, 1946. Russ and Phebe Weston of Laketown, Utah had married on August 18, 1940. A loan from her father, John H. Weston, added to his son-in-law's mustering out pay, provided the capital needed to purchase a half-interest in the Free Press on July 1, 1946. At that time Lehi's newspapers were involved in heated competition - as they frequently had been during the previous three decades. In 1946 the rivals were the Free Press and the Sun. Earlier, the Sun, the Banner and the Rustler had all been adversaries. In that prior journalistic duelling, the Banner had eliminated the Rustler and the Sun, in turn, had acquired the 562 |
