Fuhrmann leaves lasting impression
By John Faucher
On May 16, longtime Clintonville resident Bernice Fuhrmann could be seen tending to a row of freshly planted hibiscus.
Fuhrmann loves flowers, birds and working on projects without deadlines.
May 16 was her first official day of retirement after a 50-year career in newspapers.
Forty-six of those years were with the Clintonville-Tribune Gazette.
How it began
In 1972, Fuhrmann was hired at WTCH Radio in Shawano, which at the time shared its ownership and office with the Shawano Leader.
Bernice worked for both, helping in whatever tasks were at hand, from selling radio ad to proofing and pasting up newspaper pages.
In 1973, her husband Gene took a job at FWD in Clintonville. The couple soon moved to Clintonville and started a family there.
In 1974, their daughter Rachel was born.
In 1976 the economy stalled and Gene was laid off. Bernice, who had stayed home briefly after Rachel’s birth, was hired at the Clintonville-Tribune Gazette by owners Walt and Arleen Gleason.
The Gleasons purchased the paper in 1951 with partners and acquired full ownership of the T-G in 1953.
They owned the paper until their retirement in January 1994.
Bernice remembers an interview with Walter Gleason in 1991 on his 40th anniversary of owning the T-G.
In the interview Gleason explained that the paper plays many roles in the community.
“We have to be part cheerleaders, part critic, part advocate, and, of course, fundamentally an information center,” Gleason said.
Fuhrmann recalls the dedication it took to publish a paper each week in the old days.
The equipment used and the physical process of publishing have changed.
Equipment changes
When she started at the T-G, some of the original equipment in the back was still in use from the paper’s beginning in 1879.
“We had a little hand press from way back in the 1800s. Our paper cutter was from the 1800s. We called it the guillotine,” she said with a laugh. “It still worked.”
They had a linotype machine and did a significant amount of job printing on various presses in the back of the building. She recalls they printed everything from business cards and posters to phone books.
“The telephone book was a big one for us,” said Fuhrmann.
By 1976 the actual printing of the broadsheet newspaper was contracted out to an offsite web press. However, they continued doing all the typesetting, layout, film developing, paste up, and plate making in-house.
“I probably did everything except run the press,” said Fuhrmann. “Back in the day, I changed departments back and forth a lot.”
She worked in the darkroom for a while, shooting the completed pages and developing them to make the plates.
When needed, she’d grab the camera and take photos, cover news events and run the addressgraph machine labeling papers.
“Sometimes I even ended up driving the van with the plates to the printer. And you’d wait for them to get printed, bring them back for mailing or newsstand distribution,” she said.
“When we would run short in certain departments, everyone did whatever it took,” Fuhrmann said. “Somebody had to do it.”
Newspaper publishing equipment has experienced major changes.
“Back in the days the linotype machine was the big revolution. Prior to that, it had been lead type and individual letters that were set in there with tweezers. With the linotype you could set a whole line of type at one time, a whole slug. After that they went to the photoelectric and then they went to actual computers like we have now where it prints out onto just ordinary paper,” said Fuhrmann.
“Now it goes actually right to the plate process, you don’t actually print it out and you don’t have to send somebody with a van and bunch of layouts, pages or plates. Everything goes electronically.”
Jeff Hoffman, an advertising sales executive with Multi-Media Channels, the current owner of the Tribune Gazette along with publications and newspapers across Wisconsin, said he first began working with Bernice on March 6, 1989.
Hoffman was hired by the Gleasons to help sell advertising at the T-G and eventually became editor and publisher of the paper under GateHouse Media ownership.
After the Gleasons retired in 1994, Hoffman and Fuhrmann both stayed with the paper and underwent four ownership changes over the next 28 years working together.
Hoffman recalls Fuhrmann was always willing to learn.
“Bernice was particularly adept at picking up new skills. She saw it all at the T-G,” said Hoffman.
“She’s seen as many changes in this industry as anyone. From lead type to digital everything, she has kept right up with the quantum leaps in how things are done at a newspaper.”
Fuhrmann has served a number of different roles in the past 10 years with Multi-Media Channel’s family of newspapers. Among other things, she became well versed in the laws and complexities of legal notices and oversaw that department for multiple MMC papers, including the Waupaca County Post, Clintonville Tribune-Gazette and New London Press Star.
General Manager Dave Wood said he was thankful for her knowledge and hard work over the past 10 years with MMC.
“She was a consummate professional in everything that she did for the paper. We are grateful for the time she spent with us and will miss her presence in our Clintonville office,” said Wood.
The next volume
Fuhrmann’s official last day at the office was May 13.
She said she plans to stay near Clintonville in her retirement.
Fuhrman has a long list of things to do around the home and garden.
She plans to keep up on local affairs and says she’ll always have a deep interest for community issues, something that naturally came with the job for 50 years.
“I’ll miss the people the most,” she said. “The people I worked with and the people in the community that would come in all the time,” she said. “That was the best part about the job.”