60 years in retrospect

Set aside 30 minutes to talk newspaper with Billy Wood, and three hours later he still will not have run out of stories about his days working for Wheeler Mayo then Jim Mayo and Richard Mayo then Jeff Mayo. He’ll recall names of past Your TIMES employees who most have long forgotten, and he’ll harken back to conversations that either played an integral part in his career or wax poetic about what he learned along the way.

Billy Wood

And if you just let Billy spin a yarn about his early days when he worked at Your TIMES after school and on Saturdays as a 10- or 12-year-old — who remembers exactly how old he was? — he’ll include not only his recollections about when Linotype was the standard for newspapers and how much technology has changed, but he’ll also take you on a whirlwind tour to Germany and Virginia’s Fort Belvoir when he served in the Army for a dozen years.

And as Billy regales you for as long as you’ll listen, you’ll find as you think back on what he’s shared, there are many gems in what he has imparted. Bits and pieces of advice and wisdom too often lost on the younger generation, but to which his contemporaries can attest.

“The last is that for which the first is made,” he’ll offer, paraphrasing scripture.

“If you don’t smell the roses along the way, they’re not gonna be there at the end,” he counsels, foretelling the regret too many endure when their days are short.

And then he pulls from the air what seems to be an arbitrary cinematic reference he attributes to Burgess Meredith — “It’s a good day on the green side” — which Billy then simplifies: “If you’re on the green side, you’re living. If you’re not on the green side, you’re in the grave.”

Billy Wood, who celebrated his 71st birthday Sunday and, it would seem, has smelled his share of roses while standing on the green side, is marking the end of a very long career as a printer, in general, and his many roles at Your TIMES, in particular, with a retirement luncheon today, capping almost 60 years of doing what he loved.

If he has regrets, he’ll probably never dwell on them. He prefers to look on the bright side of his life. He prefers to see the good in others. He prefers a philosophical avenue, one of pragmatism, one where any regrets are too few to mention.

“I’ve always been lucky. I was either treated right, or I made the best of the situation,” Wood says. “It’s all about attitude. It’s all about trying to think, ‘Why would a person do that?’ When you don’t understand, when it wants to make you angry, I say, ‘Why be angry? It’s not hurting them, it’s only hurting me’.”

He’ll tell you how his life didn’t quite unfold as he had imagined.

“When I was a young kid, I decided I was gonna be well off by 45. I start saving money. Forty-five came and went, and I was living hand to mouth. About 55 or 56 years old, I finally decided I was robbing from Peter to pay Paul.

“For the first time it hit me what the answer was to the $64,000 question: No,” he cautions when talking about irresponsible financial ventures and forsaking the road less traveled.

“I see people who are really sad about being old, and I say, ‘No, there are a lot of people who don’t get the privilege of being old. If you’re old and you have to take it a little slow, best slow than not at all,” he says looking back on his life.

And while his counsel may be dismissed as a life lived viewing his world through rose-colored glasses, Benjamin Franklin’s observation in “Poor Richard’s Almanac” may provide a more fitting alternative: “Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other.”

When it started

Wood was born in Spokane, Wash., in 1952. He moved four times in his first 10 years before settling in Sallisaw in 1962, and almost immediately began working at Your TIMES. Depending on how long his story has become — 30 minutes or three hours — Wood’s recollection fudges a bit on when he started working. He was 10 years old in 1962 — or maybe it was 1964 when he was 12 years old — when he started working after school and Saturdays until noon. “I always tell everybody I was actually doing it by 1964. I was helping with it from ’62 on.”

Billy Wood started his career at Your TIMES in 1964, at after serving as lead pressman along with a variety of other titles, he’s retiring at age 71. “It’s been a ride. It’s been fun,” he says.

When he was featured in Your TIMES’ weekly feature “Just Folks” 10 years ago, the date Oct. 23, 1964, was given when he started as a printer’s devil — “It’s the guy who fills the inks and cleans up the messes,” Wood explains. “The poetic description would be a utility person.”

As he looks back on his formative years, Wood gives his grandmother credit for advice that served him well.

“Young life was good, but I don’t think I’d want to do it again. But I learned a lot,” he says. “I thank my grandmother, she used to say, ‘Keep your mouth shut and listen to what’s going on.’ That was good advice.”

Wood worked at Your TIMES until he completed the 11th grade at Sallisaw High School. In September 1969, he enlisted in the Army. It was then that a military aptitude test showed that Wood was best suited for printing, which he pursued for the next 12 years with Uncle Sam. “The Army noticed the pre-existing talent that I had.”

Wood was in Germany until the early 1970s, then returned to the U.S. where he received training in topography (making maps). He was sent back to Germany for another year or so, then to Fort Bragg, N.C., where he was assigned to the John F. Kennedy Center for Military Assistance, “which at that time was the code name for Special Forces,” Wood says clandestinely, “but we weren’t allowed to say we were Special Forces.”

When his stint in the Army ended in July 1981, Wood returned to Sallisaw. One of his first stops was Jim Mayo’s office, and within a few months, Wood was back at Your TIMES as a press operator, and then lead pressman.

“Billy has run the gamut of working for my grandfather, father and me. He has seen multiple technology revolutions in the printing industry, and found a way to be a huge asset to Your TIMES along the way,” says Jeff Mayo, Your TIMES publisher. “One of my first jobs in middle school was cleaning the press and working in the mailroom, at Billy’s direction.

“His ingenuity and ability to solve machine problems helped keep our small business above water. Once, my dad estimated that we have had eight different printing presses in our business going back to 1932,” Jeff recalls. “Billy cleaned or ran most of them.”

“I’ve been back working at Your TIMES for 20 years, and Billy was a huge help transitioning back to the business I grew up in and then taking over when my father retired,” Jeff says.

And it was Wood’s work ethic that set him apart from others.

“I didn’t take vacation here for years and years and years. People would ask me if it bothered me. I said, ‘No, because when I’m sitting at home, I’m thinking about what I’m gonna do the next day here.’ When I’m done with one day, I’m planning the next,” Wood remembers. “You have to train yourself to shut it off, but you only do it after you think you’ve got a handle on what you’ve got going the next day.”

When Wood was in his late 50s, he admits “the younger guys were a little faster than me,” and he was moved to pre-press (making printing plates) and the mailroom (inserting). He eventually became mailroom supervisor, print coordinator and pressman consultant.

“I just tried to make it more human,” he says of his leadership style in the mailroom. “I always tried to be a people person, because I always looked at it that it wasn’t the machines doing the work, it was the people doing the work.”

A time that stands out in his mind came as the 20th century was becoming the 21st.

In 2000, he recalls, the idea was floated to print a millennium edition, a single edition of 200 pages. But when the calculations were scrutinized, the time it would take to print that many pages for 7,000 subscribers as well as the 3.5 lbs. each edition would weigh — more than 12 tons overall — and the increased cost to mail such an edition, the idea remained just an idea.

What has changed

Wood has been in the printing business 59 years — 47 years at Your TIMES plus 12 years in the Army. “They always say 50 years, because they count my military time because I was in printing,” he says. “So I had that much time in printing.”

After 47 years serving as lead pressman along with a variety of other titles, Billy Wood is retiring at age 71.

Whether his years at Your TIMES is rounded up to the half-century mark or rounded down from his time in the service, Wood is a witness to how things have changed since 1964.

“I think the business has changed the most. It went from a very small family business — all we did back then was print the Sequoyah County Times and commercial jobs from the courthouse — to a very big family business,” he said when featured in 2013.

Now he looks back at how producing Your TIMES has changed.

“The technology has changed, that’s the main thing. Most of the time, the people were happy when everything stayed the same. The only thing that really rocked the boat was when technology would change,” Wood decides.

“When I first got here, they had Linotype. Then they started into the photo offset. They had a machine, and instead of the girls typing it into the big machine spitting out lead, they’d type into this machine and it spit out a little piece of paper. They took one of the areas where they were putting pages together and made it into a camera room.

“It got to where they were doing more photographic and less hand, and they had to let the girls go. Then it got down to two or three people in composing, two or three people in the press room, four or five people inserting, four or five people writing,” he says.

Then Wood transitions into a constant in the newspaper business: Deadlines.

“I’ve always believed in production deadlines. I think they are necessary in order to get the paper into the people’s hands. The most major complaint that I ever heard in my whole entire newspaper career was, ‘The paper was late.’ That is people’s number one complaint. If a person’s getting a subscription at home and they miss getting the newspaper the day they’re supposed to, they’re not happy,” he says.

“Newspapers are important because people want to read the news. They want to read about their parents, their children and their family, both good and bad. The community relies on the newspaper for accurate stories rather than quick interpersonal communications. Most importantly, I think the newspaper also serves the men and women of the armed forces with news from home.”

Recalling his career

“It’s been a ride. It’s been fun,” Wood says, settling into retirement. “A lot of people who thought they liked this job, didn’t really know what it was. I had been doing this job man and boy since 1964.”

Your TIMES columnist (“My Two Scents Worth”) and former production manager Dick Mayo and lead pressman Billy Wood in March 2011 discuss the history of buying ink at Your TIMES, since consumption of ink is a good indication of a newspaper’s growth.

When Jeff Mayo succeeded his father as publisher, Billy was straightforward with his new boss. “I walked into his office. I said, ‘Jeff, I’m here, I wanna work with you, and I’ll support you as long as you want me to’.”

While reporters have their name atop their stories, advertising representatives are immediately recognized when they call on a business and those in the front office are a smiling face that welcomes visitors to Your TIMES, Wood carved out his niche in virtual anonymity, tending the press while shielded from the public eye.

“Billy had no byline for stories or his name in every paper, but his work made sure our community was informed every week,” Jeff praises. “We are so lucky to have had him working at the paper for all these years.”

Then as the years passed, Wood knew his time was short.

“I said I would stay until I didn’t feel like I was contributing anymore, when I felt like I wasn’t being as productive as I need to be. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do the work, but I felt like I was too tired at the end of the day,” Wood says of the inevitable. “I had seen friends who literally worked until the day they dropped dead. They didn’t get any satisfaction out of life.”

Wood was determined not to let his life be summed up in such a fashion.

Through the years, as he recalls so much of what he has experienced, he cites those instances when he’s been part of and has witnessed examples of paying it forward.

One was when he was in the Army and went to a nearby grocery store. As he recalls, a customer was supposed to pick up a gallon of milk, but did not show. The proprietor was going to discard the milk, when Wood offered to take it. On his way back to the base, he saw a man in tears on the porch of his home. When Wood inquired, the man told him he didn’t have any money to buy his child milk. Wood just happened to have a gallon he didn’t need.

Another was a woman with children in the checkout line at Dollar Tree who insisted on paying for Wood’s purchase, which he vigorously rejected until finally relenting. He later found out that the store manager heard of the kindness, and the next time the woman appeared at the cash register with a cart filled with 144 items, the manager interceded and informed her there would be no charge for her items.

“I’ve always known that ‘the milk of kindness is good.’ Some people say I’m a little bit of a sucker, but I tried not to be,” Wood says.

“I still run into people all over town who come up and say ‘Billy, how you doing? What’s going on at the newspaper?’,” a question that inevitably initiates an hour-long conversation.

“In the service, they always told us everybody has 15 minutes of fame. Throughout my life, I’ve had more than my share. I always tried to stay out of the limelight, ’cause that’s where you get picked on the most,” Wood says. “I figure this [story] and my obituary is probably the last of what’s coming up, because I’m one of those people that I just don’t do anything I don’t have to do.”

In the front yard of Wood’s Sallisaw home are four rose bushes. He’s surely smelled them throughout the years. Now in retirement he’ll have plenty of time to enjoy them.

As his duties at Your TIMES transitioned over the years, it was from this desk that Billy Wood discerned the paperwork and made phone calls to suppliers for more than 20 years. That workspace now sits empty with his retirement.