During that 30-year period, The Daily Reflector was buffeted by economic downturns and depressions and by World War II.

David J. Whichard recalled in 1984 that, as a young man in pre-World War I times, the local and national economies experienced serious fluctuations not unlike the earlier Panic of 1907, and a downturn in the economy took place in 1920 that foreshadowed the Great Depression of the early 1930s.

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DAVID JULIAN WHICHARD, pictured above at the paper in 1949, purchased The Reflector from his father at age 24 after returning home from World War I. Known as 'Big Dave' to many, he was a presence in the business until he died in 1993 at age 98.

The local agricultural community — especially tobacco farmers — was hit especially hard in 1920, with prices falling to half their levels of just a year earlier. One result of these conditions during both economic downturns was a decline in advertising revenues and subscriptions for The Daily Reflector and other newspapers.

"During the Depression years, I went to bed many a night and did not know whether I'd come to work the next morning," Whichard recalled in 1984. "There were times when I wished I could pull the sheet over my head and not have to get up."

The business of publishing a newspaper required unusual strategies to keep going, and Whichard said bartering became one way of satisfying debts. "We traded (advertising) space for goods with a lot of our advertisers."

The Daily Reflector faced difficulties of a different kind when World War II began: Readers demanded more news about the war, but restrictions on manufacturing curtailed the newspaper's ability to obtain replacement parts for machinery. Whichard had a group of good mechanics who occasionally had to resort to using such materials as chicken wire to keep machinery going and the presses running.

The newspaper survived the economic downturns and the wartime economy and its aftermath. "Newspapers, especially smaller ones, did not begin to come into their own until after World War II," Whichard recalled in 1984. "Then we began to make some money."

The Daily Reflector also benefited in post-war times from the fact that both of David Julian Whichard's sons were interested in getting into the family business.

David J. Whichard II, born in 1927, says he was "tagging along" after his father at the paper when he was 4 or 5 years old. In high school, he inserted papers together and he collected subscription money.

He later earned a journalism degree at the University of North Carolina, as did his brother John Suther "Jack" Whichard, born in 1928, and both began working at the paper on a regular basis shortly after the war.

David Julian Whichard recalled in 1984 that his sons worked during the summers in the composing room where the newspaper was produced; they were paid partly in cash and partly in company stock.

"I always wanted to be in the newspaper business," David J. Whichard II said. He went into the newsroom in 1948, when the circulation of the paper was about 3,000, and Jack Whichard went into the business side of the paper in 1950.

Former managing editor Alvin Taylor says David Whichard helped him get his start at the paper.

As a young teenager in Greenville, Taylor was a newspaper boy delivering The Daily Reflector. This was 1943. The nation was at war. Pitt County's population was fewer than 65,000; the circulation of the paper was not yet 3,000.

The 13-year-old boy "was fascinated by the printing end of the newspaper business." He also thought about becoming a newspaper reporter.

At the time, The Daily Reflector had one reporter, Chester Walsh, "and he did everything," Taylor recalled.

Taylor stayed close to the local newspaper, working there through his high school years and while he studied history at East Carolina Teachers College. After serving two years in the U.S. Army during the Korean conflict, he received a call from David Whichard, who had started working at the paper only a few years earlier.

Whichard asked Taylor if he wanted to be a reporter. The reporting staff had grown to four.

Taylor said yes, and after a year, in 1954, he became city editor. He stayed at The Daily Reflector for almost 40 more years.

"I found the right business, and I found the right people," he said.