As we get ready to begin our 101st year as a community newspaper, let’s take time to look back and reflect on how we came to be.
What began as an amusing tabloid in November of 1924 grew into a significant newspaper venture that has now spanned over a century.
Ain’t We Got Fun the paper was called and the initial publication stated, “This is our first issue and it may be our last so read every word of it.”
Started by three men with a yen for sarcastic humor, the paper was actually an attempt in editorial form to present the other side of a campaign being formed to have the Kedzie Avenue streetcar line go right through the middle of Marquette Park.
The paper was published by the self-proclaimed Three Musketeers of Chicago Lawn. The opinions of the editors were formed and printed in the real estate office of Julius Maier at 3209 W. 63rd Street with co-editors Paul Dougherty and Henry Sweetman.
While they initially poked a bit of fun at themselves and their style, getting deeper into the paper, it was clear their purpose was to address an issue they deemed quite serious.
First asserting they were all residents of Chicago Lawn, not running for political office, and had no advertisers, they stated, “We feel we have a perfect right to object to any paper which misconstrues the facts and if that right costs us money, we are perfectly willing to take our loss until we get it all out of our system.”
The other paper they referred to was the Advocate Review, published down the street at 3415 W. 63rd, which contended the streetcar line should go through the park.
Ain’t We Got Fun, holding the opposing view, went so far as to suggest that if the Kedzie line went through then why not the 69th Street line and other car lines through all parks in other parts of the city.
While the editors didn’t win their fight, they didn’t actually lose either. In the end, although the city allowed Kedzie Avenue to cut through the park, it was only for auto and bus traffic. The streetcar line stopped at 67th Street.
This new newspaper was so well-received by the community that it continued on and by the third issue changed its name to The Liberty Bell.
By 1930, the editors found the newspaper had become a bigger enterprise than they dreamed, so much so that it was interfering with their real estate business. So, in July of 1930, they sold the paper to Joseph Miller and Wallace Welch who changed the name to the South Side News and then in January of 1935 changed it again to Southwest News.
While all of this was going on, a young man named Edward Vondrak graduated from Lindblom High School and began working as a soda jerk in his family’s candy store on 53rd Street and Kedzie. But the literary field called to him and in April of 1935 he went to work as a script writer for WLS radio. In December of that same year, Ed joined the Brighton Park Life as editor making $6.50 a week.
Ten years later, Ed and his wife Daisy bought a small monthly publication called the Gage Park Herald from Jerry Pech, renaming it the Southwest Herald. Under their ownership, circulation almost tripled the first year and then they set their sights on purchasing the Southwest News.
Daisy remembered that after borrowing all they could from friends and relatives, they found themselves still $500 short with two hours to their purchase deadline of the Southwest News.
“The hardware store man came in. After we told him the story, he told us to wait a while. He came back with the rest of the money,” she recalled. “We were just a couple of punk kids starting out.”
When the purchase was complete, the Vondraks rechristened the new publication as the Southwest News-Herald.
More recently, the paper, after becoming part of the Southwest Regional Publishing, changed its name to the Greater Southwest News-Herald.
The tagline above the name on the masthead now says, “Voice of the Archer Corridor” which it is, but for so many loyal readers remembering its former decades-old tagline, it will always be “A Friend of the Family since 1924.