File Photo The newspaper began its modern existence in 1942 as the "First Call," and spent many years as "The Fort Dix Post" before finally becoming known as just "the Post."

This issue of the Post is the last and the end of a 67-year run reporting on the Soldiers, civilians and families who have populated the Home of the Ultimate Weapon.

The Post was first launched in 1942 after the installation’s earlier publication, First Call, was put to rest that same year. Military newspapers of that era were either mimeographed by an Army service unit similar to today’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation Office, or printed off post in neighboring Wrightstown. The earliest of our newspapers were printed by the Trenton Times, and today’s issue by the Burlington County Times, which ends its 40-year run of supporting an Army civilian enterprise publication.

No matter what the decade, putting a military newspaper on the street requires writers, editors and photographers putting together a command information product. As the staff does this for the last time, it’s realized there isn’t a great deal of information on the Internet or in regulations how to retire an historic award-winning newspaper.

The staff conversation for putting together this last paper was often a difficult and emotional one – and one was hoped would never come. But, it did, so this issue began in earnest a month ago. The decision, in short, was to run the installation news of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst with a focus on the Army Support Activity, including the military training on the ranges, the deployments of all uniformed services for war zones, and robust community activities. The Post would go out faithfully serving its community as it had always set as its goal.

But, the last four pages of this weekly publication focus on the history of local military installations since their beginnings. A project of this dimension has taken a lot of digging into stored boxes, memories of past staff members, and Internet searches. What was found and now reprinted starts in 1917 with a military post that was originally constructed in three months, and traces the events that have shaped the lives of those who lived and served here or spent time here before serving the nation around the world. As each newspaper’s deadline approached for the staff, it’s like the old silent movie of a car racing down railroad tracks against an oncoming locomotive. Doom is evident. The face of the driver shows fear in the wake of chaos, hoping that the car and occupants veer off for safety at the last possible moment.

Before e-mail, Army and civilian writers would traverse the installation with pen and notebook in hand meticulously getting the words from the commander or the GI on the street, then bang out stories on a typewriter. Until the 1990s, photographers carried film cameras, and their canisters had to be opened in a chemical processing darkroom either at the post’s Training Support Center or the Arts and Craft Center. Before computers, editors used lingo such as picas and points to measure a story and how it would fit into the product, and "pass me a new dummy" to ask for a blank page where he or she could scrawl in story slugs and mark off each empty column. Proportion or "whiz" wheels were used to scale the image to fit and combine story and photograph for the paper.

An office runner took the planned dummies, photographs, and stories to the printer where it would be typeset or half-toned and placed on grid paper on a paste-up board. As columns of print descended on a glossy paper from a Velox machine, it would be "waxed" and then pasted on to the grid paper by the printer’s composing room paste-up person.

Back in those days, layout and design was not as technically exact as it is today with computers. With a deadline looming and the public affairs staff member in a panic, telephone calls were made back and forth between the printer and Fort Dix office about what to do when the last pasted column flowed beyond the grid page. Ultimately, the decision would be made by the editor. The runner grabbing his or her own exacto knife would cut away excess copy until the article fit for the newspaper and the article made sense.

Bringing a military newspaper to life is no different than a civilian weekly publication, with the exception that there is no advertising department; the contractor takes care of that. Many times throughout the history of the post, staff members said it felt more like a daily newspaper as they finished writing two and three stories in a day to meet a deadline.

At times, writers just covering the return of a unit from overseas raced to the PAO in the middle of the night thinking if they finish the story it will have their byline and photograph above the fold of the Post. The writers and photographers were as competitive as their civilian counterparts who all vie for the big page-one story.

The orchestra of drama and emotion by writers, photographers and editors has often been colorful. When the Fort Dix Public Affairs Office relocated from Texas Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue, the paper’s then-editor and later public affairs officer, Carolee Nisbet, worked without furniture and was reported to be sitting on the floor with nothing but a computer and old school journalism tools. The deadline was made.

Similarly in 1996, when the federal government was furloughed due to a federal budget impasse and no civilian employees were supposed to be on post, the newspaper was built in the back room of the public affairs office and writers filed stories and images using e-mail. While no one at the Fort Dix Public Affairs Office had the authority to say "Stop the Press," there were many times when our civilian and military staff pushed their deadlines late into the night to make sure the latest news made it into the weekly paper.

The responsibility in providing news over the years went beyond simply giving all the news that fits. People living and working on the installation could always count on the newspaper being delivered to post buildings and housing areas each Friday, 50 times a year. If they didn’t receive their copy, a call to the Public Affairs Office would ensure the newspaper racks were refilled. The staff always knew that as soon as readers turned the first page, work would be critiqued; the calls and e-mails would come in, the same way an avid sports fan critiques his or her team the day after the big game.

As this last issue is "put to bed," the words of the Greek general Pericles who said, "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others," come to mind. Hopefully, faithfully providing information to the community weekly can be measured in more than the thousands of past pages; instead, it is measured in the lives enriched.

Read the Post Online for Nov. 25, 2009.