Continuing the legacy of a publication like the “Paolite” is a task nothing short of daunting. Hundreds of our staff members throughout the past century have put immense effort into building something they can be proud of. However, this has not simply been 100 years of the same old things. Our goals have changed, our skills have changed, and our ideas have changed, and yet the core values of thorough and accurate journalism have never shifted.
Our current and past staff members share pride in such a longstanding legacy. Regardless of the individual, we share the common idea that having the privilege of saying we were a small part of something bigger than ourselves is nothing short of amazing. We recognize that although every individual member of staff, from 1925 to now, is different, we all share a common interest in the pursuit of excellent journalism. The work we have put in was never easy, but we always fought to the end to get the job done, and we are proud to serve our community. We thank the “Paolite” for the legacy it has developed for our generations of staff.
The most fulfilling part of this job is the lessons we have all learned through the successes, hardships, and failures. We have learned to work together selflessly and put the task at hand above other personal issues. We learned the importance of deadlines and would be lying if we said we had not missed a few. We learned to manage our time, as none of us wanted to disappoint the ones who counted on us, whether our adviser, fellow staff, or community. A century of pride will always be met with a century of mistakes, yet we are proud of those, too. Our mistakes taught us these lessons from staff to staff, and every misstep was met with another step in the right direction. These lessons can not be taught in any ordinary classroom, yet they are some of the most vital lessons we have learned. We thank the “Paolite” for every mistake, which made every success all the more satisfying.
In the very first issue of this paper, the founding staff left a message that has stood the test of time to represent our values for a century now. We must remind ourselves and our readers that we are here for the same reasons as those who came 100 years before us. The message is addressed to “our friends and readers.”
“Some people impress you very strongly at the first introduction. You are struck perhaps by their unusual personality or unique appearance. But how often does the force of this first impression recede and welt away after further acquaintance and more intimate contact?
On the other hand, there are individuals of the ‘pure gold’ type, not so spellbinding at first but full of hidden goodness that asserts itself as time goes on. They ‘wear’ well, so well that they are the truest of friends.
This is your introduction to the “Paolite,” the paper of your hometown high school. Our first effort at journalism is in your hands. We are proud of it and hope you will be. The “Paolite” is making a bid for your friendship. It expects to be a friend to you, not a friend of the veneered and polished type but one which will improve with age.
We, the students of Paoli High School, offer to you our first product in the journalistic field. We thank you for your support and will always welcome constructive criticism, with the view of constant improvement of our paper, school and community.”
With that message in mind, we are grateful to all of our staff, supporters, and readers for being a part of our history, and we simply can not wait to provide this publication, the “Paolite,” for many more centuries to come.

Letter to the Editor

I was on the Paolite staff during my junior and senior year (1974-75). I earned a journalism degree from Indiana University Southeast and then spent 40 years in newspapering, with 30 of those as a reporter and columnist for the Times Mail in Bedford. I was on the Paolite during Ruth Uyesugi’s time as sponsor. Did I ever learn from her?
Her influence stayed with me through the years. On occasion, I would suddenly see in my mind a vivid image of her penmanship on the top of a ruled sheet of notebook paper she once handed back to me in class. She wrote, “You have simply regurgitated the facts. You have to play with them.” When I would recall that image, I would know it was to go back to the drawing board and improve on the story I was writing. Here is some of what I said when I devoted my final Times-Mail column to her in 2018:
I still have the faded notebook in which I kept notes from Mrs. U’s lectures in first-year journalism. Between such “Ruthisms” as telling her students to “get back to your houses” and characterizing situations as “asinine,” Mrs. U taught me how to write in inverted pyramid style and how to keep news stories active versus passive. She instructed me to use the now-outdated practice of typing -30- to sign off at the end of every story.
Mrs. U taught this one-time high school junior a life lesson that has carried me through more than 40 years. I used any thin excuse I could find to miss a day of school. But it made an impression on me when Mrs. U took this then-17-year-old aside at the end of the school year and told me the reason I didn’t get invited back for second-year journalism was that my attendance had been too irregular. I remember the conversation very well. From that time forward, I knew if I wasn’t going to show up for school or work, I better have a good reason.
• Roger Moon, Paolite Staff 1974-1975