by Charlie Mitchell

Lucky people have a teacher, friend, or family member to whom they are grateful for influencing their lives in ways that can't be measured.

I'm really lucky because I have had several, among them Henry Meyer, journalism instructor at Mississippi State University who died in January at the respectable age of 87.

Henry Meyer taught that journalism was serious business, but more importantly that a person who couldn't laugh long, hard and deep at himself, herself or all of humanity at least once a day needed to find something else to do.

Henry F. Meyer

The perpetually dour seem to go crazy in this business, making everyone else miserable in the process.

I can still see Meyer standing there in front of the fairly few of us who were learning newspapering at a school much better known for turning out farmers, foresters, and engineers.

It was a long time ago, but he was already well into his 60s, so I worried when he got "tickled out" in class as he often would. He'd shake from the top of his head to the tips of his toes (not a very great distance) when reading a pearl he'd found in a Mississippi newspaper or one that had been brought to him by a student trying to earn some points. Obituaries were always his favorite, and when he read one aloud reporting that the deceased "had gone to bed feeling fine and woke up dead," his mirth erupted, leaving him gasping for breath and us hoping he'd forget to take up our assignments. (He never did.)

Meyer loved words. Most of us who use them as the tools of our trade do. But they are fragile, and despite our best efforts we will misuse or arrange them to say something we didn't quite mean every once in a while-usually at the least opportune time, often in the biggest print in the paper.

Henry F. Meyer was a native of Selma, Ala., and earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In making a comment or two at his 1991 induction into the Mississippi Press Association Hall of Fame, I noted that he had followed the "Go west, young man" advice of Horace Greeley, but had only made it the 80 or so miles to Starkville.

The year was 1932 and he went to work for the Starkville News, then a weekly paper. Fourteen years later, he and his brother, Morris, bought the paper and operated it until selling and "retiring" in 1965.

Meyer then accepted a part-time, temporary assignment as a fill-in instructor at MSU. After more than one act of the Legislature, required for those who want to earn a state paycheck beyond the age of 70, Meyer's last retirement party was less than a year ago. Graduates from around the nation and university officials gathered to say thanks. Meyer accepted their praise with his usual humility-and, no doubt, with his trademark laughter which, as I recall, was pretty much identical to Barney Rubble's on "The Flintstones." Ah hee. Ah hee hee. Ah hee hee hee.

Meyer had a spell of feeling bad last fall, and then on a Monday night in late January, I'm told that Mildred, his wife of 62 years, walked to a back room of their home in Starkville not long after he did and found him unconscious. Paramedics were summoned, but in accordance with Meyer's instructions, there were no heroics.

A hero to others, but no heroics for himself.

This state has produced some tremendous journalists, among them Turner Catledge, who went from errand boy at the Neshoba Democrat to managing editor of The New York Times during the 1960s. Meyer and Catledge were friends and although every university in America would have liked to have him visit, Catledge kept a yearly appointment only with MSU.

A lot of people outside newspapering don't understand a real journalist's passionate belief in the value of communicating accurate information to people. They give little thought to what their lives would be like if they didn't or couldn't know what was going around them. Meyer knew, and it didn't really bother him that our trade is trashed far more often than not. He just liked life. He liked people. He liked words. And he spread that joy to anyone who would give him a chance.

by Sid Salter

Mississippi State University, the City of Starkville, and all those who bleed Maroon and White lost a friend recently and many simply may not associate the name-or more appropriately, the voice-with the Bulldog family.

His story is worth telling.

For this writer, he was a mentor, a friend, and a trusted advisor. Henry Fried Meyer claims a legion of Mississippi young people as his protegees in journalism across America.

I found a certain symmetry in the fact that my old friend and teacher will spend his rest in the afternoon shade of a huge magnolia tree in Oddfellows Cemetery here in the city he loved. After 87 productive, introspective, and demanding years on this earth, it is a well-earned rest in the most appropriate of environs.

A native of Selma, Ala., who came to Starkville with his family in the Blumenfeld & Fried wholesale grocery business, Meyer was that rarest of birds in the rural Deep South in the turbulent 1950s-the editor/publisher of a small community newspaper who just happened to be a proud and devout Jew.

Couple that with the fact that Meyer was a small man in stature and that the redneck racists of that era usually came in two sizes-big and dumb-and you see the paradox that was his life as editor of The Starkville News (predecessor of today's Starkville Daily News) and later as the backbone of the print journalism education program in the Department of Communication at Mississippi State University.

Mr. Meyer didn't wear his religion on his sleeve, but he never hid it, either. Consider the trouble he faced as a newspaper editor in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Mississippi-he was a small Jewish Democrat with moderate to liberal political views and a strong sense of decency, fairness, and respect for the law.

He didn't abide bullies and-this is the nicest way I can say it-he didn't take any crap off anyone, either.

He won the town of Starkville over on the strength of his work ethic, his commitment to public service, his dedication to developing substantial community programs to benefit young people, and his personal integrity.

Yet when he and his brother Morris sold the paper to the Harris family in the 1960s, Henry Meyer had yet to come into his own personally, professionally, and philosophically. For it was in his guise as a journalism teacher at Mississippi State University that he found his true calling-and there are generations of MSU graduates who will attest to the influence he had on their lives.

I am one of those lucky students. Mr. Meyer and his student editor Hayes Johnson hired me as a summer editorial columnist for the The Reflector when I was 19 years old. I've made a living as a journalist ever since-a fact in which he took pride in mentioning in frequent letters of encouragement over the years. Getting a letter from Henry Meyer was like winning the sweepstakes-it made you feel good all day.

Many MSU fans heard his voice over the years, but likely didn't know his name. Mr. Meyer was the pioneer radio and public address announcer for Bulldog football, basketball, and baseball games-but he was best known as the Bulldog P.A. announcer. That job is now performed in such a reliable, entertaining manner by MSU's rock-solid communications professor Hank Flick-who served as one of Mr. Meyer's pallbearers.

Mr. Meyer gave so many young journalists in Mississippi their first jobs, their first encouragement, their first courage to stand up for their convictions in the face of criticism or intimidation and their first taste of journalism as an exercise in public service-which is what he believed journalism to be when it was done correctly.

Mr. Meyer was also a great writer. In writing his last editorial at The Starkville News, he set his philosophy of community journalism in indelible ink:

"As we begin this last paragraph, a flood of memories dims the page. We shall cherish each and every one. We hope that our readers will remember us for we shall never forget them.

"So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend," Meyer concluded.

I shall miss Henry Meyer's encouragement, his infectious giggling at the absurd or bizarre, and his wise counsel in terms of uncertainty and self-doubt. Most of all, I shall miss seeing him in the lobby of Mississippi Press Association convention hotels-holding court with those who simply wanted one more opportunity to thank him.

He was a great Mississippian, one who deserved to sleep under the shade of an old magnolia in the town and near the university he loved.