Ode to an Older Time: Don Birch

“I started delivering newspapers when I was seven years old,” Don Birch said when recalling his introduction and initiation into a world that foreshadowed his future vocation.  

“I’d get up at 4 every morning, and I had the whole North Hill that I delivered to. I did that until I was a sophomore in high school, then I started at the Statesman-Examiner. Started delivering papers, then went to work for a paper. I have been with newspapers my whole life,” Birch observed.

“I had a double bag, front and back, and I wasn’t very big. We had 116 Sunday [including The Spokesman Review] papers at that time to deliver on the North Hill, from 5^th Ave. on up, past the Hofstetter school. The Sunday papers were too heavy for us to carry all at once, so they would put them on the corner and leave them there for us. And back in the day, rainy days or bad weather, I’d open up the front door and throw the papers inside… You’d probably get shot doing that today,” he continued.

Birch has covered every aspect of newspaper production, and dedicated most of his life to reporting the news for Colville and surrounding areas.  In a recent interview conducted in a room housing antique press equipment at the Stevens County Historical Society Keller Museum, he shared about his life and what it was like to eventually run the Statesman-Examiner.

“I saw things that couldn’t be printed,” Birch remarked while sharing the intricacies of managing a small town paper. “If you like sticking your nose into everybody’s business…It’s an exciting business, it was for me.”  

Birch was recruited by the Statesman-Examiner in 1960. He said, “A person that worked there in the back shop knew me, and he suggested they hire me as a kid to do the odd gofers and whatever else. I would run errands, carry papers to the post office, you name it.” 

It was during that time he learned to operate the Linotype, a machine used to print newspapers at that time. He recounted, “You’d type, just like a typewriter, but those little keys would fall out of that huge machine as you were typing down into a tray…Then you would pick up that tray and put it into another part of the equipment, and hot lead would come against right here (he motioned to a part of the key he held for demonstration) to make the letter and that’s how you set type.”

He emphasized, “In the old days, everything was hand set type – can you imagine?”

Birch graduated from Colville High School in 1962. “I had a chance to go to college,” he said, “Actually, when Bob Haney, who owned Haney Lumber and was good friends with my grandparents, found out that I decided not to go to school, he said he would pay for my college education at the time.”

Still, Birch said he was committed to the paper’s production. He said, “I decided to stay at the Statesman-Examiner, and worked from 1960 on, and knew everything about the back shop; I could run the press. My main job was setting type on the Linotype machine. It’s a big typewriter that we could not fit in this room.” 

He continued, “My senior year, I had community work, so I spent two periods of my time at the Statesman-Examiner; I had enough credits that I could get two free periods. And, you weren’t supposed to get paid for it, yet they paid me, 75 cents an hour. And when minimum wage went up to $1, I had to go to the Grahams and ask for it. I said, ‘isn’t minimum wage $1 now,’” he laughed.

The owners of the paper then were Charles and Rosanna Graham. Birch said, “Charles Graham grew up here; his family homesteaded here in the Northport and Colville area…He moved away and worked for the Oregonian. He decided he wanted to move back home to Colville. So he purchased The Colville Examiner in 1948. Within a year, he also purchased the Statesman Index, and closed it down, so it became The Statesman-Examiner.  That’s how it got its name. It’s been one newspaper ever since.” 

Birch described more of his early work for the Grahams, “Every Saturday, I’d have to mop and wax the floor in the front office. Mrs. Graham would always come and give me a hug for doing such a good job on Mondays.”

Born in 1944 in The Dalles, Ore., Birch grew up in Colville, mainly with his grandparents, Verne and Blanche Slingsby, in a now historic house built in 1882, by the “Father of Colville,” John Hofstetter. Birch added, “That house stayed in the family, until just a few years ago when my aunt died. She bought it from the estate when my grandparents both were gone and lived in it until almost 100 years old. I got a little bit of history that is pretty cool. Especially as the founder of Colville built that house.”

Birch noted about the Hofstetter home, that “his children’s footprints were in concrete outside in the back porch, and when my grandpa bought that house, and moved in, in 1950, he tore that out. Later, in 1952 my brothers and my footprints were put in there when I was eight years old.  They are since gone [though], because they did some more work and added on to that house.  It’s still there, on Birch and Maple.”

He also shared an anecdote about the support he received in childhood, “My mom never missed an event that I was involved in. The only way she could afford to travel is that she would chaperone the cheerleaders on the bus for the out of town games. That’s how she got to go to all the games.” 

Speaking about his wife, Birch said, “My wife was Beverly and she passed away five years ago. She was pretty well-known, too. She grew up just down the street here on the corner of Main and 5^th; the house is still there and it’s one of the older houses in Colville. We went together through high school and married at a very early age: 18 and 19, and were married 57 years.”

The couple had one son, Rob, who currently lives with Don. “He was born in 1972,” “When he completed high school, he found work in Spokane for a while and self-taught himself on computers and ended up getting a job with Sterling Bank as a computer engineer,” Birch said. “He didn’t go to school for it, he learned it himself and was hired by Sterling. Sterling sold to Umpqua Bank and he still works for them for pushing 30 years now. When his mom died, he decided to move in with me. He sold his home in Spokane, and decided to come take care of dad, and he has his own office in my house. He works from home and does quite well,” he emphasized proudly.

Birch also said he has two grandkids, who visit regularly.

When asked why he stayed in Colville his whole life, Birch shared, “I like the small town… and I fell in love with my job; I got better as I got older and didn’t want to leave. My wife didn’t want to live anywhere else, either. She enjoyed it here, she was close to her parents. And I was close to my mom and my grandparents, and it’s a great place to raise kids. Colville was the only place I really ever wanted to be.”

Birch said he quickly progressed at the Statesman-Examiner. He shared, “The Statesman-Examiner didn’t have anyone to cover sports.  I went to every game, home and away, because no one was writing it up, so I decided I’d do it. The owners let me do it, because I was doing it for free.” He continued, celebrating, “The class of 1965, which was the football season of 1964, was probably the best football season to go through Colville High School to this day, because I still go to games and watch and enjoy that kind of thing. They went undefeated, which has been done before – but, they were only scored on one time, all year! And that’s amazing…several went on to play Division-1 ball; they were that good.”

After proving himself as a sports writer, he persisted, “Then in 1972, they needed an editor and they saw that I could put a sentence together. So, they asked me if I wanted to become editor, and I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s a pretty good move up. Sure why not?’ So in 1972, I moved to the front office, until retiring in 2005. I became the publisher in 1992.”

He professed, “I wasn’t great at writing, but I was good enough to get by, I guess you could say.

“I loved what I did,” he affirmed, “Because I saw so many different things, so many things in the community, whether it was good or bad. You had to be on top of it. I know that I could’ve gone elsewhere to make more, financially, but I was happy with what I did get I guess I felt it was more rewarding.”

During his time at the Statesman-Examiner, he experienced many peaks, including covering the time President Bush Sr. came to Colville in 1992. “I got to be part of the Washington Press Corps for the day, and I was backstage with the president,” he remembered.

Birch was also the unofficial photographer for years for the state patrol and sheriff’s department. He explained, “I had a good connection with both. I had to go to crime scenes and film all that, which was sometimes not a very good job to have. I went to probably every fatality wreck. They’d call me, ‘Hey Birch, coming by to pick you up.’ I rode with the sheriff and the sergeant of the state patrol a lot. Because I would shoot everything, in case they had a court case. And I would sell pictures to attorneys; I got paid that way. I gave some to the Statesman-Examiner, but it was more to get the story. And, there were obviously a lot of pictures that I couldn’t use: homicides and things like that. It was exciting and scary sometimes – going down the road, 100 miles an hour. On your way there, you get nervous and think, ‘Oh boy, do I really want to see this?’

“I’ve pretty well done it all,” he said. Yet, he still did more, after 45 years of working at the Statesman-Examiner.  “I was out of work for two days. I had a friend, [Tony Booth] who was half-owner of the Chevrolet dealership come to me and say, ‘How would you like coming to work for us [as a car salesman]?’ I did that for a year and hated it.”

Then, according to Birch, Booth said, “‘Don’t leave, I got a plan for you. Why don’t you start a newspaper?’ I said, ‘I could still be at a newspaper, why would I want to start one?’”

Birch said he eventually decided to start the newspaper as a monthly, calling it The Silverado Express, which is still in print today. Birch retired from that venture after six years. He said, “The older generation really liked it. It’s a little different now than when I ran it. I did a lot of feature stories on older folks around here. It was a lot of fun,” he said.

Birch has stayed active, most recently retiring from the Stevens County Historical Society as president of the board for eight years. He said, “I wish I’d started here [at the Stevens County Historical Society] earlier, but I was always too busy…I spend every day here now, not on weekends, but weekdays.”  

Looking back over his life, he shared that he really enjoyed little league. “I just loved coaching kids,” Birch said. “I was 12 years old when they started little league here, so I had one year of little league here in Colville. And I never got away from it. I coached little league for 18 years and I live right across the street from where I played baseball as a little kid. I can watch ballgames right off my front porch.”  

Reflecting on his life, Birch said, “If I had to do it over, I think I’d have done the same thing. I really and truly loved the Statesman-Examiner. Yeah, I could’ve had a higher paying job somewhere else, probably, but I loved what I did. And I met a lot of people, saw a lot of things, got to travel a lot, and just did a lot of things that I might not have done otherwise. Back in the day, I knew everything that went on in this community.  Luckily, I got to hire a few more people before I took over as publisher. There were three people in the news department, three in the sales department; we had 16 full-time people. You can’t imagine that today. I did all the darkroom work at one time, while I was editor. Gabe [Gabriel Cruden, current Statesman-Examiner publisher] actually started in the darkroom. I did everything and I enjoyed doing it.”  

In considering the future for newspapers, he stated, “I always said that ‘small community newspapers would last longer than the big ones’ – but I am not so sure of that now. I think it helps now that it is back to a community-owned paper.” His advice is to “stay neutral.”