Part one: Mim Welton & Dateline Brandon
BY GEORGE FJELD
BRANDON–The Reporter would like to celebrate the wonderful newspapers which have preceded us. There have been many dating back to the 1800s and we’ll attempt to review a few of them over the coming weeks.
First up is Dateline Brandon (1972- 1996), a masterful product of a woman driven to be the local news outlet for her town. It was a one-woman show: editor, publisher, reporter, photographer, and printer. She had help typing and with layout, but the rest of it was all Mim Welton. The cartoon on the nameplate on the front page was drawn by Warren Kimble. Mim had found him refinishing furniture in his backyard and asked for a drawing about the town. Kimble said of Mim and the Dateline “ it’s a history of all of us” and “[Mim] taught us all to see and like each other through words and pictures.”
Her office and printing press were long housed in a building that now is part of Brandon Lumber. She could be found there Wednesday through Thursday night, getting the paper ready and then printing the whole thing. She was assisted by Irene Lee, who typed her handwritten stories for 17 years. Anne Mitchel pasted the paper up. And Mim cranked up the press.
I first met Mim when I moved to Brandon in 1972, when finishing high school at Otter Valley. To a teenager raised on Long Island, she was an unforgettable character with hair up in crossed braids and a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. She always wore a plaid shirt and blue jeans. She rode a motorcycle with a basket and a dog. Her camera was around her neck. She took my picture many times, as she did for all my newborn children (4), and published them in the Dateline. I still have a few of those pictures hanging around. I’m sure a lot of other folks do as well.
Here’s a few tributes to Mim and her paper:
Her friend and former RNESU superintendent, Bill Mathis, said of her, “she had her own sense of how things ought to be. No issue was considered of public interest until Mim had her say in the Dateline. No other person could reach across all lines, groups, political parties, or factions like Mim.” Mathis recalls Governors Madeleine Kunin and Jim Douglas asking about her while riding in the back of his convertible Camaro in Brandon’s annual Fourth of July parade.
She had a sharp wit as well, and would voice her opinions in her publication. Mathis said, “her editorials had the punch of undiluted sulfuric acid.” Her printing press was a behemoth, “3,000 pounds of cantankerous machine that only Mim knew how to run,” Mathis added. “She published the pictures of every newborn child, deer harvested, educational achievement, civic accomplishment, fire, wreck, baby shower, rare bird, errant moose or otter, obituary, or other event of general interest.”
Yvonne Daley, who contributed to The Rutland Herald and many other publications, wrote in the final edition of Dateline Brandon, “Mim didn’t go to journalism school, but her newspaper represented journalism at the most essential level. It was the journal of her community. Its format was like her: no nonsense. With Mim, you always got what you saw.”
The Dateline “was one of the most completely informative news media that any village area ever had,” per Tom P. Whittaker. Also, “she had an ability to arrange words for interesting reading. If a picture would make a news item more interesting, she was not bound by commonly practiced rules…”
Former First Brandon National Bank President Terry H. Kline said that Mim “was the eyes and ears of our community, and when need be, the voice, the prod, the messenger. Like it or not, she forced us to think and act; to question when necessary, and most importantly, to compliment when deserved. Accomplishments and pictures always took priority over advertising.”
Obviously, The Reporter has a lot to live up to.
