Dan Niday: A veteran newspaper man

Linda Geist of Monroe City shared the news with me this week that Dan Niday passed away on Dec. 11. Dan was a production manager for the Hannibal Courier-Post, working there for 36 years following his service during World War II.

He played a big role in the production of the newspaper, supervising typesetting and page pasteup for the first dozen or so years that I worked at the newspaper. He contributed to building a daily newspaper, destined to record and preserve each day's happenings for posterity.

For example, he would have supervised production of the newspaper 50 years ago, when the trade embargo was originally enacted between the U.S. and Cuba. He would have been at work, exacto knife in hand, pasting together news of President Kennedy's death in Dallas.

Linda and I were young women working in the newsroom when we first met Dan. News and production always worked hand in hand, one couldn't function without the other. We were all cogs in a wheel.

Dan lived a long and presumably happy life. Today, instead of mourning his passing, I celebrate his life, well lived.