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D-DAY 75: Wilkes-Barre native remembers horrors of war

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Our View: D-Day taught us much about leadership, valor

<p>Today&#8217;s front page might look completely alien to many of you, but for readers of a certain age it should bring back some memories.</p><p>For the 75th anniversary of D-Day, we wanted to give younger generations a sense of how news about the Normandy landings would have been delivered to people in Wilkes-Barre and Luzerne County.</p><p>Of course there was radio, but for much of the population broadsheet newspapers crammed with pages of close-set, tiny type were still the primary source of information about the war, not to mention daily news and events closer to home.</p><p>Then, as now, the Times Leader was serving Wyoming Valley readers. I set out to see if we could present contemporary readers with the front page from Tuesday evening, June 6, 1944, to show how the breaking news from Europe had been presented at the time.</p><p>Our first challenge? The only available images of that page were relatively low-resolution scans taken from years-old microfilm. There was no way these would blow up big enough to run on the front page.</p><p>So we set out to design a recreation that would capture the feel of that day&#8217;s front page using modern computerized pagination software, together with the original stories and some elements scanned from the old page, which was located by reporter Ed Lewis.</p><p>We were able to create a modified version of the nameplate &#8212; that&#8217;s what we call the paper&#8217;s name and logo &#8212; using scans of a nearly identical version from a 1945 paper we had on hand. The classic design, which incorporated the city&#8217;s original name of Wilkes-Barr&#233; and its beehive logo, was familiar to decades of readers, surviving into the 1970s at least. Reporters Mary Therese Biebel and Mark Guydish worked on that aspect.</p><p>Unfortunately, we were not able to scan the text into a word document, so reporter Jennifer Learn-Andes gladly volunteered to type in more than 60 inches of copy from the scanned front page.</p><p>Paginator Toni Pennello helped transform this collection of items into what started to look like an actual 1940s newspaper, aided by Executive Editor Joe Soprano.</p><p>The stories you will read on that page are mostly from the Associated Press, and mostly as they appeared on the June 6, 1944 edition &#8212; except, of course, we couldn&#8217;t fit everything out there, so we focused on the most important news.</p><p>Anyone who has looked at those old newspapers in the flesh knows they were considerably wider than today&#8217;s versions. Where we have six columns today, for example, the 1944 papers had eight. It boggles the mind to imagine readers poring over every tiny word, often under incandescent light bulbs that were less bright than what we are used to today.</p><p>The bulletins on the left side and the overview on the right give a sense of what readers were being told about the action in France and how it was being received in the capitals of Europe. Notice the particularly chilling warning from Vichy French leader Marshal Philippe P&#233;tain to his people, warning them &#8220;to refrain from actions which would call down upon you tragic reprisals.&#8221;</p><p>There are two items from closer to home that bear mentioning.</p><p>Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Martin proclaimed the opening of the Allied &#8220;Drive for the Liberation of the World as a Day of Work and Prayer for the citizens of Pennsylvania,&#8221; asking that all places of worship be open throughout the day and that bells be rung at 6 p.m. to call people to worship.</p><p>It&#8217;s spine-tingling to imagine the sound of church bells pealing across the Commonwealth, and what significance that would have had for war-weary families longing for loved ones far away.</p><p>On a similar note, a Times Leader feature called &#8220;Little Studies&#8221; presented an anecdote about a Jewish couple who surprised the members of Holy Saviour Church in Wilkes-Barre with a Mass request for the six deceased servicemen of the parish.</p><p>&#8220;I knew them all,&#8221; Sam Stern explained, &#8220;and one used to work for me. I couldn&#8217;t send them flowers and, anyway, I wanted to do something more for them.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;You can say we appreciate it,&#8221; the Rev. John O&#8217;Donnell, Holy Saviour pastor, speaking for the parish, replied with understatement.</p><p>It&#8217;s hard not to choke up reading things like that.</p><p>We also were able to reproduce a map of the invasion from the original front page. The only original content we couldn&#8217;t duplicate exactly were the photos, try as we might to find them. In their place, we used similar Associated Press images from the landings which seemed appropriate.</p><p>Thanks to all in the newsroom and at the paper who made this special project possible, including Times Leader Media Group Publisher Mike Murray and Kerry Miscavage, Times Leader Media Group vice president of sales and marketing, who were enthusiastic supporters of the idea.</p><p>I hope readers will enjoy this historical tribute to members of our Greatest Generation, whose selfless sacrifices preserved liberty and democracy and returned freedom to millions.</p><p>May God bless them all, and God bless America.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">This is a microfilmed reproduction of the Times Leader front page from Tuesday evening, June 6, 1944. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/web1_original_dday_page-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>This is a microfilmed reproduction of the Times Leader front page from Tuesday evening, June 6, 1944. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Roger DuPuis</p><p>Editor&#8217;s Notes</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Roger DuPuis is news editor of the Times Leader.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

D-DAY 75: How today’s Times Leader front page came about