Schumann Family Newspaper Clippings

  I don't think this was John F.'s first trip to Florida, but I became curious about his Uncle John. 

  August 7, 2023 Daddy and I talked about the newspaper, and the hat, and the salaries --- I was clarifying what I thought he had told me, which was that during the crash, at the end of the week, Granddad would put the money they had collected and put it in a hat, and everyone got a share. Daddy said that a man from John's Island, Mr. Dobbs, was the son of the man who started Dobb's catering business, which catered to the airlines. This man was in his early 30's when the business became his and he grew it into one of the biggest catering businesses in the country. He sold it and then bought an auto dealership, which he and his nephews grew into a nationwide operation.  This Dobbs (John?) said that the most important part of entrepreneurship was the start, meaning the start that his father had give him. Daddy said, "I got a start, and to some extent, Dad did." He wasn't sure how much Granddad's father was actually able to help him. He said, "We don'

 August 29, 2023 Daddy said that he remembered that Graddad had loaned them money for a house, but did not remember he had loaned them money to move back to Vero. He said linotype operation was a specialized skill, and you could take your linotype machine to any newspaer and work. He said that Granddad must have seen something in Mr. Kauffman, and also believe it would be good for the paper to have a linotype operator they could depend on.  ~  Raymond Kauffmann's obituary, June 1986, says that he had lived in Vero Beach for 34 years, and was a retired linotype operator.  ~

  August 27, 2023 Daddy and I talked about this article a couple of weeks ago. The article mentions a man named "Perk," who Daddy said was in advertising.  Bill Wodtke, the author the letter, owned the department store in Vero Beach. Daddy said that Mr. Wodtke was always kind to him. "He was the father of a lot of little Wodtkeys." Daddy and Kay Wodtke were in the same class, and she married his good friend, Eddie Trent, so they were all very close.  Daddy said he was assigned to advertising without a whole lot of experience in it and that Bill Wodtke helped him in advertising. One day, Mr. Wodtke handed him a bunch of product descriptions and pictures and said, "Lay me out a full page ad," and that Mr. Wodtkey's confidence in him had meant a lot to him. 

  August 27, 2023 When Daddy and I talked about this article, the first thing he said was how pleased he was that she had noted that pay was much higher than for many newspapers of the same size. We just talked back and forth --- I told him how much I had enjoyed reading about the thank you notes he wrote the reporters, and that he had personally typed the notes that accompanied their pay raises. He seemed heart-warmed by her positive memories, and noted that she was no longer working at the Press-Journal when she wrote this, and so did not have to be positive. He talked a little bit about the IBM typewriters, and my notes are kind of sketchy, but he said that the IBM typewriters had a red symbol underneath the letter, and that symbol was read by the offset machine. He said the retraining for the linotype operators wasn't easy because the keyboards they used for linotype were set up differently