Sarah L. Greene
Sarah L. Greene, publisher of The Gilmer Mirror from 1974 to 2006 and president of the Texas Press Association, 1995-96, is a third-generation newspaperwoman, following her parents, the late Georgia and Russell H. Laschinger, and grandfather, George Tucker, as publisher of The Gilmer Mirror. George Tucker purchased the newspaper in 1915. The fourth generation is Sarah Greene’s son William R. “Russ” Greene, publisher of The Gilmer Mirror since 2006.
Long before high school, Sarah Greene got experience in such jobs as collecting for subscriptions door-to-door, distributing funeral notices to stores and running election results. During World War II, when the absence of advertising lead to cutting back The Gilmer Mirror from a daily to weekly publication, the staff dwindled down to a basic two - her parents, Russell and Georgia Laschinger. These were Greene’s high school years and she remembers telling her mother that she would never go into the newspaper business for she never meant to work that hard.
Greene went to Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., for two years. It was not until her junior year at the University of Texas that she capitulated into the journalism news sequence. She worked for the Daily Texan, making many late night trips to the campus press as news editor to put the paper to bed and reporting experiences that proved invaluable when she hit the job market. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1949.
In June following graduation, she joined The Dallas Morning News and worked for three years as a city staff reporter. She left for Fort Worth after her marriage in 1952 to Ray H. Greene, then a Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter. In 1953 they accepted an invitation to move to Gilmer and join the family business. While the Greene children, Sally and Russ, were small she worked mostly as a reporter, feature writer and proof reader, gradually taking on more duties as they grew up. She became co-publisher after the death of her father in 1974. Daughter Sally is vice resident of the family corporation. She lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., with her husband, Paul Jones, and son, Tucker.
Greene twice received the Anson Jones Award of the Texas Medical Association for outstanding reporting of medical news. She received Texas Press Association’s Golden 50 Award in 1999 for her five decades of service in the newspaper industry in Texas. The Gilmer native is the second woman elected to serve as TPA president. She was president of North and East Texas Press Association in 1989-90. In 1996 the Association for Women Journalists, at a banquet in Dallas, honored her and 89 other “trailblazers” with a “Woman of Courage” award for showing “leadership, tenacity and integrity in working to improve conditions for women both in and out of the profession.” The Mirror is the oldest business institution in Upshur County, so Greene has naturally had an interest in local history and folklore. She has presented papers for the Texas Folklore Society, of which she served as president in 1985, the Texas State Historical Association and the East Texas Historical Association.
Greene attended her first Texas Press Association convention in 1949. Dinner at the Balinese Room, reached by walking through a casino, is her most lasting memory. But before another decade had passed, she had learned how essential the association would be in keeping her abreast of the always-changing newspaper industry.
Regular attendance at the North and East Texas Press Association conventions lead to her being a director and, in 1986, president. She served on the board and the ladder of offices before becoming TPA president in 1986. She was the TPA representative to the National Newspaper Association for three years, ending with the 1997 Fort Worth convention when Roy Eaton, then owner and publisher of the Wise County Messenger in Decatur, was NNA president.