I was thrilled to honor a friend last week at the Texas Press Association Convention and Trade Show in College Station.
The TPA is the professional trade group for newspapers across the state. They meet annually to celebrate their members, give awards and network.
One of the awards they present each year is the “Golden 50” award that recognizes 50 years (or more) of service to the newspaper industry.
I nominated former News-Record staffer Dan Eakin for this year’s award and was thrilled when the TPA agreed with my nomination.
Dan surpassed the 50-year mark years ago. He has logged 68 years in the newspaper business. He is a lifelong newspaper man.
Dan began his career at the DeQueen Bee in his hometown of DeQueen, Arkansas when he was still in high school. He was a copy boy and typesetter. Dan graduated high school in 1957. He has been an ordained minister about as long as he has been a newspaperman and has devoted his life to working at community newspapers and preaching at small rural churches— predominately in north and east Texas.
Some of you remember Dan’s more-than-a-decade of service to the Collinsville Bible Baptist Church.
“I’ve always kept a job at a small church and a community newspaper,” Dan once told me. “I’ve probably pastored at 30 different churches and worked at just as many different newspapers over the years. But I have always been intentional to keep the church and newspaper separate. I’m not Brother Dan at the office. I’m just Dan.”
He has performed more than 400 weddings and 300 baptisms during his time as a minister. He is currently the pastor at Woodrow Baptist Church in Silsbee, Texas.
Dan’s newspaper career is equally as prolific. It has included stints in Texarkana, Lufkin, Tyler, Wichita Falls, the Dallas Morning News, Pilot Point, Polk County, Carrolton, Red Oak, Coppell and Canton, to name a few.
Dan left the News-Record last year after almost a decade here. He turns 85 this month and is currently working fulltime as the editor of the Silsbee Bee in Southeast Texas.
Dan was at the Lufkin News when it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977. He covered the State Legislature for the Tyler Morning Telegraph in the 1970s and was dispatched to Washington D.C. to cover Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. To date, Dan has either photographed or interviewed every Texas governor since John Connally.
He owned and published East Texas Senior in the 1980s and early 90s— a niche publication that covered a dozen counties in the Piney Woods.
I have always been amazed by Dan’s stamina and zeal to keep working. He is more than twice my age and there were times I felt like he was working me in the ground. He once told me his secret.
“You just have to do something,” he said. “This is a tough business. The work stacks up. Sometimes you get buried in it, but the only way to get it all done is to do something. Anything, but just do something. It really doesn’t matter where you start. Just do something. Always be doing something.”
Dan has it figured out. The key to success is to “do something.” The key to longevity is to “do something.” At the end of the day, the two words that can save humanity are “do something.”
I am blessed to have Dan Eakin as a friend. I am proud of his achievement and am humbled to have been the one to present him with the award.
More than anything his longevity in our business, and the ministry, inspires me to continue to “do something.” Always do something.
