Milus Osgood Gay

 

The News Tribune,

Tacoma, Washington

Sunday February 5, 1995

 

Former Buckley paper publisher Milus Gay, 92, dies

 

Milus Osgood Gay had worked at The Monterey Peninsula Herald only a week in 1924 before his publisher threatened to fire him. 

 

Gay was able to keep his reporting job when he offered to work for free to get the experience.  Forty years later, Gay's work in journalism stretched from Prohibition through the Depression and World War II to the Space Age.

 

Gay, former editor and publisher of The Buckley News-Banner, died Jan. 26 in a Puyallup nursing home.  He was 92.

 

Louis Gage, Gay's son-in-law and his former partner in The News-Banner, said Gay used his journalistic abilities to help those who were downtrodden or had fewer resources.

 

"He use to quote an old maxim that said, "The purpose of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," Gage said.  "He lived that as much as anything else."

 

Gay was born Sept. 5, 1902, in Philadelphia.  He attended school in Philadelphia and graduated from high school in New Jersey.

 

He worked several different jobs, including with a survey crew and as a cook for ranch hands in Wyoming.  He also was a logger in White Salmon and in Northern California.

 

His experiences led him to quit in his senior year at Stanford University and follow his dream of becoming a writer.

 

He worked for several newspapers in Colorado and California before starting his own newspaper, The Monterey Trader, in 1933, with his wife, Antoinette.  They had $46 left from his last paycheck, a typewriter and an orange crate to put it on.

 

The couple kept the paper going by trading advertising space for groceries and services during the Depression. 

 

After World War II, the couple's son, Henry, returned from the Navy and joined the business, as did Gage, who became editor several years later.

 

The three formed a partnership and bought The News-Banner in 1952. 

 

Gage later left the partnership to go into real estate.  Milus and Antoinette sold The News-Banner in 1964 and retired.  The newspaper name lives on the masthead of The Enumclaw Courier-Herald.

 

Henry Gay is now publisher of the Shelton-Mason County Journal.