Bill Hathaway, 67, former Post Register editor, rest in peace, old friend

• Bill Hathaway’s obituary in Idaho Falls Post Register

Occasionally, an obituary about an old friend knocks you sideways. That was the case last night when I read of the death of Bill Hathaway, 67, the former editor of the Idaho Falls Post Register. And a man who shared news editor duties with me 35 years ago at the Lewiston Morning Tribune. I had arrived at the Tribune on Aug. 22, 1982, wondering if I was cut out for the news biz after working for two newspaper chains that viewed journalism as something that you wrapped around the ads. I was disillusioned. But Bill, Editor Paul Emerson, Publisher Butch Alford, editorialists Bill Hall and Jim Fisher and other zany characters in that top-notch newsroom restored my faith in newspapering.

I read with interest the accolades bestowed on Bill in the newspaper obituary of the Post Register. His wife, Faye, called him a “guru of all things newspapers.” Rocky Barker of the Idaho Statesman called him an “intellectual” who laid the ground work for the paper’s “golden age” in the 1990s.  Former Trib Emerson said of him: “He was one of the smartest guys I’ve ever known.”

The Bill Hathaway I knew in the newsroom of the Lewiston Tribune was all of those things. He aslo had a temper as fiery as his red beard and hair. I remember one swing shift in which he and one of our equally fiery rim guys were ready to exchange blows. And another in which he and the high tech guy got into it. In fact, that’s how I became the news editor of the Tribune for a short period. A penitent Hathaway resigned his position after the set-to with the computer guy and swapped positions with me.

I’m sure Bill would laugh at the accolades being poured on him post-mortem. He was as self-deprecating as he was intense. We had contrasting personalities. But got along fine. In a newsroom that once featured a news editor roller skating across the tile, I was considered by one long-timer as “the most boring news editor” that the paper had ever had. On the one night of the week when our shifts overlapped — Saturdays — Bill and I would sit around the newsroom after putting the final edition of the paper to bed (1:30 a.m.) and talk about newspapering until 3 or 4 in the morning. Mel Snow, one of the rim guys, would return from the downtown bars with a six-pack of Millers beer. We’d give him 50 cents for a can. And simply enjoy one another’s company.

Bill had worked at newspapers all over Idaho — Blackfoot News, Idaho Statesman, Rigby Star and Tribune before landing at Idaho Falls. I’d worked at 3 newspapers in northern California before becoming managing editor of the Kalispell (Mont.) Daily Inter Lake. Even in our early 30s, we had broad experience to keep the conversation going. Snow had been at the Trib since the late ‘40s. Rim man Ross Carletta and City Editor Jim Godbold (later to become publisher of the Eugene Register Guard) filled out the post-deadline huddle.

Bill is one of the reasons I’m still newspapering today. He showed me that this profession is a job and a calling. And that I shouldn’t let the bad newspapers and chains out there — and there are plenty of them — get me down. His death saddens me. But I’m delighted that at one point in our long newspaper careers that our paths crossed/ DFO .