Don Craig worked as a linotype operator for the Hannibal Courier-Post

As my retirement date of Dec. 31 nears, I have become quite nostalgic about all the people who worked at the Hannibal Courier-Post and retired before me.

I wrote a "Who we are" profile on Don Craig back in 1982.

"Don Craig knows through experience that things don't stay the same. He has watched the operation of the Hannibal Courier-Post change drastically during the last 20 years.

"When he began working in the composing room, the entire newspaper was set on Linotype machines. Within four years, the newspaper converted to photo composition.

"Now I mainly set type for display ads, but I have worked at all the jobs in the composing room at one time or another," he said.

A snippet on his life follows, reprinted

from his death notice, published in the Hannibal Courier-Post March 8, 2011:

Don retired from the Hannibal Courier-Post in 1989 where he began working as a linotype operator in 1961. Don , who was known as "Shorty," had earlier worked at the Courier-Post for several years beginning in 1951. After graduation from Bevier High School he served in the U.S. Army with the 421st Engineer Dump Truck Company in Guadalcanal, Philippines, and Japan from 1943 to 1945, receiving an Asiatic-Pacific Theatre Ribbon with one Battle Star; Philippine Liberation Ribbon; American Theatre Service Medal; and World War II Victory Medal. Don 's career in the newspaper field began when he attended the first 421st reunion in Kearney, Neb., in 1946 and learned the local newspaper was looking for help. Don later worked as a linotype operator for papers in Hannibal, and Atchison, Kan., before returning to the Hannibal Courier-Post in 1961, where he worked until his retirement in December, 1989.