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THE UTAH NEWSPAPER HALL OF FAME Reaper called 'thirty' for him at his home yesterday morning shortly before 8 o'clock and he dropped peacefully to sleep. For several days his attending physicians had given up all hope of his recovery..." His widow, Florence Leonard Littlefield, followed him in death in December, 1928. (The foregoing material was compiled and written by Murray M. Moler, Ogden Standard-Examiner, and presented before the Utah Press Association, in convention assembled, on February 14, 1976.) BURKE McARTHUR, Mt. Pleasant Pyramid Born March 2,1884 - Died March 15,1959 Installed in Hall of Fame at Salt Lake City, 1975 Files of the Mt. Pleasant Pyramid reflect Burke McArthur as an even-tempered, seldom riled small-town newspaperman. His contemporaries, however, frequently referred to him as "the fighting editor," a descriptive phrase coined by his community's Mayor, John Gunderson, who praised the Pyramid's publisher for "sticking with his convictions once he'd made up his mind on any matter." Burke McArthur was, to begin with, a somewhat unusual newspaperman. He was a native son of Mt. Pleasant whose career disproved Matthew's Biblical admonition, "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country." He "cut his teeth" on the Pyramid while working from 1908 until 1911 for publisher J. M. Boyden. At that time the newspaper had had a succession of ownerships, changing hands in full or in part seven times during the first 12 years of its existence. When it was sold to McArthur in 1911, the switches in proprietorship halted. For the next 36 years, through two world con- 581 |
