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THE UTAH NEWSPAPER HALL OF FAME Hotel Utah convention of Utah Press Association. It would, for the first time, involve the T-I's editor with his journalistic peers, an affiliation he then maintained for the next half-century. He became the association's president in 1932-33 and in 1961 was honored with its highest individual accolade, the Master Editor and Publisher Award. Its implications for him probably went unnoticed in 1962 when 'Bish' served with four newspaper contemporaries on the formation committee of the Utah Newspaper Hall of Fame. Today he becomes the first of those five Beehive State journalistic notables to be given this ultimate recognition. The Times-Independent suffered, but didn't die, during the Great Depression. Taylor, though, often found it necessary to trade advertising space and subscriptions for life's necessities during the bleak 30's. No one can be certain the story was originally his, but in print he recounted the day a farmer proposed a 'swap' of his products for a T-I subscription. "I suggested he give me a load of cobs for it," said 'Bish.' The farmer responded, "Shucks, Mr. Taylor, if I had a load of cobs I wouldn't need your paper." In 1953, Charles A. Steen struck the fabled MiVida uranium deposit, which made him a millionaire several times over - and Moab's boom was on. The population catapulted from a 1950 level of 1,200 to over 6,000 in 1954. Hurriedly, new trailer parks, subdivisions, roads and bridges were built. City planning literally 'went out the window' as the town converted from a quiet agricultural economy to a mushrooming industrial one. When 'Bish' returned home in 1959, he found a bustling community nearly five times larger than the one he'd left. Somehow it seemed unjust that he'd waged a 40-year campaign for industrial growth, but wasn't there to see his dreams come true. During the first few years of his retirement, he was somewhat active in the publication of the paper. But failing health caused him to give up that role in the early 1960's, when he was nearing 70 years of age. His name appeared on the 633 |
