Carl Stender uncovers history in old Olney Enterprise Newspapers

“Pretty tight knit little community,” Carl Stender said as he has worked on the archives for the Olney Enterprise for three months from January through March, spending his time 0rganizing Olney Enterprise papers from the 1908 to the present day.

Olney Enterprise, in partnership with Olney Community Library director Lori Cox, was awarded a grant from the Tocker Foundation in 2018 to assist with preserving newspaper history.

Carl was able to share some of his most interesting findings to us, as well as some of the things he learned about Olney during his short stint in the town. “One of the most interesting stories I came across was about a man named Leland Snow, who started Air Tractor as well as plane design,” Stender said. “There were many businesses in Olney several years ago that are no longer here as well as several houses in the area that have been torn down. Olney has a true sense of spirit, [especially considering] the different parades around town throughout the year like the Fourth of July parade, Christmas parade, back to school parade,” Carl added. He said that businesses used to pay for decorations for downtown, and there always seemed to be a big sense of community in Olney,” Stender concluded.

“I’m grateful to Shirley Pippin, branch manager at Elwood Staffing in Graham, TX. Shirley introduced me to Carl and allowed him to help us out with our newspaper archival project. After receiving the grant award for the University of North Texas (UNT) news paper digitization project; We did not have adequate staffing to meet our objectives in a timely manner. When Carl arrived, he was focused solely on the archives and was able to breeze through years of old papers efficiently. Because of his efforts, we have organized the papers that we can deliver to UNT for digitization. History preservation is important and we at Olney Enterprise and Olney Heritage Museum are working to ensure that the future generations can refer to the archives to answer questions that may arise about this town,” said Ronni Walker, publisher of Olney Enterprise.

Residents can access the archives paper digitally at the Olney Community Library. Additional archived papers will be available once the papers are digitized.