April 13, 1977
Picture: Picture of Stanton Carle used in Report.
Fostoria stockholders of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. will be surprised when they scan the company’s annual report for this year to find a photo of a former Fostorian, Stanton Carle, at his desk in the office of the Wyoming Post-Herald, Wyoming, Illinois.
Here’s how it happened. The theme of the 1976 annual AT&T report is “The Telephone in America.” The theme is carried out pictorially at intervals throughout the report. The cover shows a Bell Telephone truck on the square in Covington, Ga. Other photos show pay-telephone booths in New York City, a repair truck in San Francisco, repairmen at work on cable strung through the rain-forest near Mt. Hood, Washington, a vacant apartment in Boston overlooking Beacon Hill, and still other typical scenes about the telephone in America.
A great amount or time and expense was expended in selecting the photos. For the typical weekly newspaper, they looked for one in the Illinois area, with the name on the front window. There were several other prospects in the weekly newspaper category, but in the end, after taking about 400 photos of the Post-Herald alone, it was the winner. AT&T must have liked what they saw at the Post-Herald.
The brief descriptive text about the AT&T report says: “The telephone in America. Over the course of a hundred years, the telephone …almost without our noticing it…has become an integral part of our society, a pervasive factor in our daily lives. Throughout America…in big cities, in country town, in big business and small…the telephone has become an indispensable, If taken-for-granted, element in the way we work and the way we live”.
The Post-Herald had this to say about the selection: “Naturally, we’re proud to be singled out as a typical weekly paper and to be able to carry some note of Wyoming, Illinois, throughout the world. After all, the AT&T company has about 2,950,000 stockholders and that picture of Wyoming will be going into at least that many homes, many of them in foreign countries.”
Fostoria stockholders of AT&T will, of course, feel gratified that Stanton Carle, who grew up in Fostoria, and was associated with his father’s newspaper The Fostoria Times, should be so honored.
In a recent POTLUCK column, there appeared a story about The Fostoria Times, in which it was reported that Stanton Carle published two weeklies at his Wyoming Post-Herald.
Prior to his unexpected death last Thursday, I had received a letter from Stanton, informing me that he had sold the newspaper in 1976 and was serving the new owner as editor only.
The sale of the newspaper came too late to allow Stanton and his wife Margaret to enjoy well-earned retirement. In addition to managing the paper, Stanton contributed a weekly column to the paper, as did his wife.
The Carles were making plans, enthusiastically, to return to Fostoria this spring to attend high school class reunions, according to information received here by friends. Both of them enjoyed meeting old Fostoria friends whenever they returned in past years.