Charles Rodenbough

Gene Pepper, Printer's Devil of Danbury Charles Rodenbough

Gene Pepper was owner and Editor of the Danbury Reporter, a family owned weekly, begun by his grandfather in 1872. This book gathers some representative portions of Editorials he wrote between 1930 and 1950 for rural Stokes County, NC. He was the informational source for this rural community made up mostly of tenant farmers. He never preached or spoke down to them but lifted them up to classic poetry, world events, and the glories of nature in all seasons. He could make everything, from a snake sunning himself on a rock, to Huey Long, to the death of Smith Reynolds, to the attack on Pearl Harbor, alive and poignant. He avoided the razor sharp sarcasm of H. L. Mencken, which his readers would have found hard to follow, but he gives them Chaucer and Shakespeare with casual application to the word and the idea.