The Echoes-Sentinel, the weekly newspaper that covers Warren as well as Watchung, North Plainfield and Long Hill, is celebrating its 46th anniversary this year. The paper began life on November 1, l950, as the Mountain Echoes, a four-page effort published by Harry Goss of Division St., Millington, his wife, Mary, and their son, Robert. In the beginning the paper, printed by an outside firm, was addressed and mailed to subscribers from the Goss' dining room table. Originally given away free, and then put on the newsstands for a nickel, the Mountain Echoes answered a need for news of local events that the dailies published in Morristown and Plainfield were not filling. By the time Goss bought his own press and moved his publishing operation to a store front on Main Ave. in Stirling, circulation had climbed to 400 a week. One of the most popular columns was "By Gosh," authored by the publisher. It was packed full of homespun news, and the people of Long Hill loved it. On December 31, l955, Goss began publishing the Watchung Hills News, serving the borough of Watchung. Early in l956 he founded the Warren Township Sentinel and, in l957, when it became apparent Warren and Watchung could not each sustain its own paper, he merged the two as the Warren Township Sentinel and Watchung Hills News. Later the paper became known simply as the Warren and Watchung Sentinel. In mid-l956 Florence Higgins, then a young housewife with an itch for writing, joined Goss' small staff, covering meetings in Warren and Watchung. Her column, "Ima Snoop," was a popular feature of the weeklies until she left in early l960. By l960 Goss' publishing empire had grown beyond what the family could manage. "It started as a hobby but it got to be just one big headache," said Mrs. Goss in l971. "The papers started to grow like Topsy, it just grew and grew. But staying up night after night, week after week, living, breathing newspapers, was too much." On August 31, l960, the Goss' sold their two papers to The Recorder Press, publishers of the Bernardsville News, Mendham-Chester Tribune and Morris Observer. Cortlandt Parker, Jr., owner of The Recorder Publishing Co., as the company is known today, had purchased The Recorder Press in l957 after a stint as a copy boy for the old New York Sun and seven years as a reporter with the Newark Evening News. One of Parker's first moves was to rehire Flo Higgins as a reporter for the Warren and Watchung areas. Mrs. Norma Morris was named editor. When the Goss' first began publishing in l950, the family explained their policy: "We will write no editorials and will depend solely upon the news you send in to the Mountain Echoes.... Our slogan, 'Every Reader a Reporter,' aptly expresses our policy." Parker soon changed that: Mrs. Morris developed a strong editorial policy, supporting issues and candidates at election time, a policy that continues to this day. On March 7, l968, the Mountain Echoes and the Warren and Watchung Sentinel, essentially the same newspaper except for the masthead, were officially merged as the Echoes-Sentinel, the paper we know today. By l970, circulation had reached 3,000. Before her retirement in November l987, Flo Higgins had come to symbolize the Echoes-Sentinel to Warren readers. As reporter and editor for 27 years, Mrs. Higgins won numerous awards for her journalism, ranging from news and editorial writing to a l970s feature story about a Long Hill Township resident with a pet elephant living in her home. Named editor of the paper in l966, Higgins gained a reputation as a thorough and provocative writer who took an avid interest in area politics. She was, she said, "never afraid of controversy." Her weekly column, "On the Scene," was often the first part of the paper her loyal readers turned to. "There will never be another one like Flo Higgins," said Mayor Frank Salvato when she retired. "We're going to miss her. She's grown up with the town. I remember when she was a reporter writing the news in her kitchen." Higgins' kitchen was the paper's newsroom for over a decade. "The history of this newspaper could not be written without thoughts of the years spent writing and editing the Echoes-Sentinel in Flo's kitchen at 52 Stiles Rd. in Warren," wrote the paper in l971. "Of the midnight visits by politicians, of the controversy and the deadlines. Kids running in and out and dishes done. The meetings night after night with only two reporters covering three towns. The all- night writing of editorials and the coffee consumed." In l970 Flo's famous kitchen gave way to a new office opened by the publishing company on Mercer St., Stirling. Flo Higgins' final "On the Scene" column was a fond farewell to her thousands of readers: "As I reflect on my newspaper career, it is with joy. It was, without a doubt, controversial, challenging and rewarding. "As a woman in the 60s I was liberated before it was fashionable. And I worked mostly in a man's world of politics, government, deadlines and hard, tough work. Back then most women were home taking care of the children. "I was home taking care of the children but I was also at meetings night after night and there was a typewriter in my kitchen. My kids knew all the local politicians. "Looking back at the Watchung Hills and the changes I've seen, the most significant change has to be Interstate Route 78. We moved to a house at the end of Stiles Rd., Warren, in the late l950s. The house is still there today at the very edge of Route 78. "When we first found our home in Warren it was set in the middle of tall oak trees and dogwood. The house looked as if it had been dropped from the sky into the forest. My husband used to go out the back door and go hunting. "Then the highway cut through the woods and changed our lives forever just as it changed the rest of the area. There could be no other happening during the last three decades that so changed the area. "The Watchung Hills had been a no-man's land of farms and dirt roads, of large estates, tiny summer homes and a few of the early housing developments. Now we have industry, housing developments on every tract of land and the last working dairy farm, Wagner's Dairy, just closed. "Now we have traffic on roads that were built to serve another era. We have Chubb & Sons at the end of Mountain View Road. Three decades ago Mountain View Road was a bumpy country lane. Today expensive homes line both sides of the roadway and one office complex after another is being built around the Route 78 interchanges. "Mountain Boulevard in Warren has also changed and is still changing. It seems it was just yesterday when trees lined the Mountain Boulevard and Mount Bethel Road intersection. "There was a long driveway that led up to a huge Victorian house at the end of the drive. Now the Bardy Farms shopping center graces the lands and across the street, where there used to be a greenhouse and a few shops, there is a second shopping center, Pheasant Run.... "The area has grown with super highways, housing developments and condos but the politics have calmed down. We are more sophisticated, few people make it to town hall to yell about taxes or anything else compared to the mid-60s.... "When we moved into Warren Township Clarence Duderstadt was mayor, the late Walter Jannelli and the late Earle B. Pierson Jr. were members of the committee. The three-man committee, an ancient form of government, bit the dust in the early l960s and the committee was expanded to a five-man committee. It was the same year when three Democrats, Albin Ehrhardt, Robert Murray and the late Robert Harrold were elected to the Warren Committee and for the first time in the history of this Republican community the Democrats controlled the government. "That lasted a year and then the GOP majority in the township turned the Democrats out one at a time, and the Republicans with the late Ernie Gardner at the helm took over. "In the late l950s there was plenty of debate concerning the purchase of the municipal building for a mere $56,000. In those days that was a lot of money and the building was labelled a white elephant. It was Jannelli, Pierson and Duderstadt who voted to buy the place. It was a wise move obviously but then few people realized how wise it was. Today that very same building and the land is worth millions of dollars. "In Warren Township, there were the days of Al Pearson. Pearson made plenty of headlines in those days and although he is still around he seldom gets his name in print. As I said, times have changed. "Also, I can vividly remember sitting at Planning Board meetings on the second floor of the Municipal Building in Warren, with everyone jammed into the tiny meeting room deciding the future of the township. Now planning must be taken much more seriously and no one is jammed in the meeting rooms.... "It has been a fantastic career. I've gone from my little portable typewriter perched on the kitchen counter to working on a state of the art computer.... It is difficult to say good-bye to an entire area, to hundreds of friends made during a career which spans 27 years.... The Echoes-Sentinel has won numerous national journalism awards. In l992 the paper took first and second place awards for its news and lifestyle sections in judging by the Suburban Newspapers of America, a national newspaper organization. The year before that Cort Parker, Jr., the paper's current editor, won second place in the competition for editorial writing. The Echoes-Sentinel had the field to itself until December 11, l991, when Forbes Newspapers in Somerville put out the first edition of its newspaper, the Warren-Watchung Journal. Today both the Echoes-Sentinel and Warren-Watchung Journal report the events in Warren Township, still filling the public's seemingly insatiable desire for the news of local happenings. [Ref: Mountain Echoes, 8/25/1960; Echoes-Sentinel, 2/11/1971, 11/12/1987] |