Register-Guard mourns loss of its two pillars

Debris litters the street around damaged cars by University of Oregon’s Amazon student housing on Patterson Street across the street from Roosevelt Middle School. Marks on the print indicate a Register-Guard copy editor’s cropping instructions. (The Register-Guard)

1957-1967

Don Bishoff, born and raised in Richmond, Va., with undergraduate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism, was 23 when he was hired as a reporter at the Eugene Register-Guard in July 1960.

He had never been west of the Mississippi River.

The Eugene Register-Guard from 1960.

“And it was the most marvelous thing that ever happened to me,” Bishoff, now 80 and still in Eugene, recalls. “I fell into this wonderful town and this wonderful newspaper, and I never wanted to leave.”

And, two months later, when an unusual interview opportunity presented itself, he really knew he’d lucked into a great gig.

“I was thinking that for many reasons, but that was just a bonus,” he says with a chuckle.

He was referring to the chance to interview a glamourous movie star who had come to Eugene to, of all things, well … let’s have the Sept. 2, 1960, front-page headline tell it: “Actress Jayne Mansfield Due Here for Lane Natural Gas Celebration.”

For some reason never fully explained, Mansfield was to appear with muscleman husband Mickey Hargitay at the Eugene Hotel to help promote the extension of a Northwest Natural Gas pipeline from Camas, Wash., to Eugene.

And City Editor Donn Bonham couldn’t decide which reporter from a still-all-male newsroom to send to interview her, so he made what was a very popular decision.

“When virtually every member of the newsgathering staff volunteers to interview a celebrity, what do you do?” Bonham wrote in his editor’s note when the lighthearted story that would likely never see the light of day in 2017 ran on Sept. 12, 1960. (The first question was, “What are your exact measurements?) “Flip a coin? Draw straws? Cut cards? When it’s Jayne Mansfield, you send them all.”

The story contained nine bylines, all men, including that of Bonham, who was a highly regarded newsman known for his sense of humor, and who died young, at age 43 in 1968, following heart surgery. (Many Eugene residents might recognize the name of his daughter, 1985 South Eugene graduate Tracy Bonham, a Grammy nominated singer.)

Jayne Mansfield in Eugene in 1960.

Alas, there were much more important stories to cover than Jayne Mansfield during this time, from the Oct. 12, 1962, Columbus Day Storm that killed five in Eugene and 46 total in the Northwest; to the beginning of a 33-year separation-of-church-and-state ordeal when the latest wooden cross on Skinner Butte was replaced on Nov. 28, 1964, with a 51-foot steel cross; to the July 6, 1965, murder of a Lane County sheriff’s deputy, Carlton Smith, during his first day on the job.

But in between the Mansfield amusement and those later, more serious stories, came sadness:

Register-Guard Editor Bill Tugman.

On May 6, 1961, Bill Tugman suffered a severe heart attack, his third, at his home in Gardiner, near Reedsport, where he had owned and operated the weekly Post Umpqua Courier from 1954 to 1960. Three days later, he was dead at 67, the same age as Alton Baker Sr.

“Bill Tugman had a rare gift for people,” Baker said in a statement that he wired from Switzerland, where he was on vacation. “As editor of the Eugene Register-Guard for nearly 30 years, he became one of the great editorial forces in the state. The newspaper staff mourns his passing and sympathizes with his family.”

Register-Guard Publisher Alton F. Baker

Five months later, Tugman’s family and all who had ever been associated with the Register-Guard would mourn the death of Alton Baker Sr., who also died of a heart attack – not his first, either – in his sleep on Oct. 27, 1961, in a hotel room in Yakima, Wash.

He had been there with his wife, Mildred, son Ted Baker and his wife, Pat, to attend a Boy Scouts conference.

“Dad and I sat in the room that night, had a bourbon,” recalls Ted Baker, “and we talked about a lot of things, but mostly just family and what was going on (at the paper). And he went to bed that night, and he didn’t wake up.”

The New York Times ran an 8-inch obituary on the death of Alton Baker Sr., and The Register-Guard ran a front page story on Oct. 27, as well as a front-page editorial by associate editors Robert Frazier and Al Currey.

“It is a sad day here at the Register-Guard,” they wrote. “Employees know that men like Alton F. Baker don’t come along every day. This newspaper, put out today by people with heavy hearts, is a monument to Mr. Baker, a quiet man who stayed in the wings, who never intruded himself on the work of his staff but who set the tone for the kind of newspaper we have sought, day by day, to bring our readers.”

Eight months before his death, Alton Baker Sr. had named his two eldest sons, Bunky and Ted, as editor and publisher and general manager, respectively, on March 1, 1961, 34 years to the day after he bought the Eugene Guard.

“It was difficult to accept,” Ted Baker says. “It seemed odd that it happened (eight months) after we’d been named in our positions. But we buckled down and went to work; did the job. It was hard to get too emotional, you had to go to work.”

With the two men who had built the modern Register-Guard gone in the same year, both dying at the same age, it was time to build on the foundation they had established.

The paper’s circulation was now more than 40,000, and would top 50,000 by the time its 100th anniversary rolled around in 1967.

In 1966, the Register-Guard’s reputation for first-class journalism was recognized when it was awarded the prestigious University of Missouri’s Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism.

The Eugene Register-Guard, at the time, was the first small-city paper outside Missouri to win the honor, joining past organizations such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Oregonian and Life magazine.

Bunky Baker accepted the award in Columbia, Mo., on behalf of his late father.

“I’m sorry to say this, but I believe the most glaring weakness on too many newspapers is the abdication of editorial responsibility,” he said. “The easy way is to sit back and not take sides – not ruffle feathers. There is no anonymity in the smaller community. It is hard to kick hell out of an acquaintance in the paper one day and then hobnob with him at a social function that evening. I know from experience. But then, no one ever told me that journalism was going to be easy.

“I submit that if any publisher who is taking the easy way out would hire a good editorial writer and give him a free hand to express himself, his newspaper would gain not only more respect and more readers but would prosper in a business way as well.”

Mark Baker, who researched and wrote the stories for this special section, is a former Register-Guard reporter and a member of the third generation of the Baker family.


Mark Baker has been a journalist for the past 25 years. He’s currently the sports editor at The Jackson Hole News & Guide in Jackson, Wyo.