The Daily Reflector often positioned itself squarely in the midst of important local issues. In the 1960s, for example, the newspaper tried to move ahead of the community in its attitudes toward racial desegregation.

"In the '60s, Greenville was about 38 percent black and 62 percent white, though the county had a more equal ratio," David J. Whichard II said. "My younger daughter was in the first first-grade of an integrated school, and my older daughter was in the first integrated group at high school. There was much popular opposition to integration. But for a local issue like this, we thought, 'We've got to make this work.'"

(ENLARGE)

ADVANCEMENTS in printing replaced setting lead type with a paste-up process utilizing paper, wax and cutting tools. Photo processors burned alumnium printing plates for offset presses.

D.D. Garrett, a longtime business leader in Greenville, remembers when David Whichard II "was instrumental in working on a strategy" for desegregating some of Greenville's public facilities and institutions-starting with lunch counters.

"It was basically a strategy of consent. Merchants were notified that we were coming to lunch counters to be served, and we would go."

Garrett, who was active in the Good Neighbor Council and in the NAACP, and Whichard, publisher of the paper, went to a lunch counter at Evans and Third streets across from the courthouse.

"I remember ordering a glass of milk. Someone told me later that I ordered milk but left with a milkshake, because my hands were shaking so much," Garrett said.

He called the newspaper's position during that era a plus for Greenville, although he also remembers earlier times when the Daily Reflector was "a highly segregated paper" with separate sections for "colored news."

But there were community racial issues that needed fixing, including housing, public accommodations and treatment of blacks by police.

At one time, Greenville had "very little rental property for blacks with indoor plumbing," Garrett said. "The paper was instrumental in pushing for an ordinance mandating indoor plumbing."

Former managing editor Alvin Taylor says this was an example of the role a paper can play in the community.

"I felt like, and I still feel like, the paper should throw support behind local issues. It should always be doing something to make a better town."

In the 1970s, The Daily Reflector drew sharp criticism from other newspapers in the state for strongly favoring a medical school at East Carolina University.

This was the third time the newspaper boosted local higher education, often in the face of substantial opposition. The first time was calling for creation of a teacher training school in Greenville in 1907; the second was calling for establishment of a school of nursing at East Carolina College in the late 1950s.

"The Daily Reflector was much involved in pushing the message that the college could develop a school of nursing to serve this region," said Dr. Edwin W. Monroe, who became associate vice chancellor of health sciences and later executive dean of The Brody School of Medicine.

In 1957, and again in 1959, Whichard and the newspaper expressed strong support in editorials for the nursing school. In 1957, for instance, an editorial asked: "If the legislature has to choose, wouldn't the school of nursing be of much greater value to the people of the state than (a) private plane (for the governor)?"

Several years later, the newspaper joined with Dr. Leo Jenkins, chancellor of East Carolina, in a tireless push for creation of a medical school in Greenville.

"The local newspaper was one of the key elements in helping get the medical school started," Monroe said, "and David Whichard was one of the key players."

Monroe says The Daily Reflector's support was disseminated "to more than Greenville and Pitt County. A number of Eastern North Carolina editors jumped on the bandwagon and stayed there."

In 1974, the North Carolina General Assembly approved a two-year medical school. In 1977, the first four-year students entered the Brody School of Medicine, and they graduated in 1981.

Jack Whichard recalls that The Daily Reflector's position was opposed by many fellow newspaper executives around the state, perhaps reflecting the long-standing division between those in central and western North Carolina and those in the east.

He said he was attending a newspaper conference at the time, and the Raleigh newspaper had published an editorial criticizing The Daily Reflector for "shoddy journalism" in supporting the medical school without telling readers the true costs of such a project.

"I found the editor at the meeting, and we had some pretty heated words," Jack Whichard said.

Retired managing editor Alvin Taylor put it this way:

"There was an all-out war between us and newspapers in other regions of the state" over the medical school.

In the 1980s, The Daily Reflector joined the call for combining city and county school systems, a highly emotional issue that had growth, tax base and racial mixing implications.

Mary Schulken covered education for the paper at the time and recalls that there was "much public outcry" over the idea. "The very rural schools on the outskirts had supporters who worried that their building needs would be forgotten," she said. "There were battles over athletics and losing prominence in athletics."

Schulken, now an editorial writer for The Charlotte Observer, said The Daily Reflector "actively promoted the merger," and so intense were the feelings that at one local school board meeting she was covering, "a school board member threw a rolled up paper at me."

D. Jordan Whichard III, the fourth generation of Whichards to head The Daily Reflector, said the issue of financing educational needs with the growth of the county was a key part of the issue, "and that battle remains today."

At the time D. Jordan Whichard III became president and publisher in 1991, three of the four generations were active in Greenville: David Julian Whichard was chairman emeritus and his sons, David J. Whichard II and John S. Whichard, were publishers emeritus. The company consisted of The Daily Reflector and nine nondaily newspapers.

The year 1991 marked the second significant change in publication schedules, as The Daily Reflector became a seven-day-a-week newspaper, with the resumption of a Saturday paper, and distribution shifted from afternoon to morning.

D. Jordan Whichard III says the afternoon newspaper in Greenville, like many in towns and cities around the country, was experiencing a decline in readership because of changing reading habits. As a result, the trend among publishers was to convert afternoon papers to morning papers or combine separate papers into one morning paper.

"We felt there would be a need for advertisers to get their message out to a growing population and customer base at the start of the day. We believed an a.m. cycle was exactly the right time for this," he said.