Hale, WIlliam G. "Billy" Funeral & Burial (1927)

HALE, ALLEN

Posted By: County Coordinator (email)
Date: 11/17/2022 at 13:16:16

The Des Moines Register, February 4, 1927, pg. 1, col. 7 and pg. 2, cols. 2-4:

BILLY HALE LAID TO REST IN WOODLAND
By Wayne Weishaar.

At 3 o'clock yesterday, the hour which in life he used to make up the last edition of his paper, friends went with William G. Hale to his final deadline.

To Dunn's funeral home friends who had known him in the vigorous years came to say farewell to him whose editorial eloquence death last Saturday had stilled. A little later the hands of those his leadership had thrilled carried him to a plot in Woodland cemetery, a few blocks from where he once had lived.

Before the funeral hour had come the chapel was filled with persons from the Iowa business, political, social and journalistic worlds. A scattering group for whom there was no space in the room lingered in the patio outside as Dean Holmes Cowper sang softly "Beautiful Isle of Somewhere."

Owen Reads Scripture.

The the Rev. Elmer Nelson Owen read the scripture text which begins:

"I am the resurrection and the life." A quartet, Dean Cowper, Ernest Harwood, Daisy Eleanor Hinkley and Mrs. Genevieve Wheat Rasl (?) sang "Tarry With Me O My Savior" and "The Strife Is Over," and the Rev. Mr. Owen proceeded with the simple and dignified Episcopal ceremony. The Rev. Charles S. Medbury of University Church of Christ offered prayer.

Quietly when the service was over, the hundreds moved outward past the bank of flowers where lay the man they had come to honor. Editors, Lafayette Young, jr., Dante Pierce, Frank Moorhead, E. N. Hopkins were in the procession that followed--men large in the political life of the city, Mayor Fred Hunter, John MacVicar, Howard Webster Byers and Edwin Hunter.

Fellow Workers There.

Then came those with whom he had worked--compositors, men proud of their craft who had given their skill to achieve the miracle of the modern newspaper as Hale made it. Then the reporters, usually facile and devil may care fellows, now tense of throat, speechless. These were the men who had labored with him through the years in the race to crowd into that last edition the latest possible atom of news--men who under the spur of those fleeting 3 o'clock minutes used to force into being accurate, unbiased stories, that a nation might read as it runs.

These reporters and printers were those who had been his allies in this heroic but unheralded daily battle to swiftly press miles of deeds done into inches of type. They looked at the quiet face of the man whose eyes had scanned the notices of the passing of tens of thousands of others and who, now himself had come down to death.

Stamped there was weariness, not alone of body but of spirit--the weariness of one who has watched long the procession of life--the weariness of one who in decades has seen centuries of existence. It is tat afatigue [sic that fatigue] that his world's sleep does not cure.

Covered by His Paper.

But now peace had come. Stretched over the heart of him who had thrilled and been thrilled by a city's triumph was a reproduction in flowers of the paper he loved--the Final Edition
(Continued on Page 2 Col. 2)

BILLY HALE LAID TO REST IN WOODLAND
(Continued From Page One.)
of The Tribune. On it were inscribed the words, "Carry On Old Timer." It was the last message from the staff to "the Boss."

The chapel was vacated save for Mrs. Hale and the relatives while attendants waited in the patio. Then preceded by the honorary pallbearers, the active pallbearers carried the body from its bank of flowers to the motor hearse.

Six of his close associates, John Cowles, associate publisher; Harry T. Watts, business manager; George D. Riggs, mechanical superintendent; John J. Ottinger, telegraph editor of The Tribune; Paul Prugh, city editor of The Tribune and Wayne Weishaar, city editor of The Register, served as active pallbearers. The honorary list included H. W. Byers, John MacVicar, Charles Schramm, Fred Graham, Dan Powers, Ed Hunter, Dante Pierce, Harvey Ingham, W. W. Waymack, Jay N. Darling, Forrest Geneva and W. A. Cordingley.

The funeral party moved to Woodland cemetery. There on a sunny hillside after the Rev. Mr. Owen had spoken the brief words of the burial ritual, his friends and relatives left him who had come from the press of life to the quiet of eternity.