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The Victoria GAZETTE |
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Victoria’s Corner Bar. Nightly Specials and Menus. 952-443-9944 |
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by Sue Orsen The Victoria Gazette
Milestones In recognizing previous milestones of the Victoria Gazette over these past 40 years, I featured on my front pages a detailed history of the paper's first ten years ("My Baby is Ten" in 1989), people who print the Gazette and prepare it for mailing ("A Pressing Occasion" in 2004), and the Gazette's regular columnists and contributors ("With Heart and Soul, Thanks for Thirty" in 2009). Not long ago, as I celebrated the completion of my project to scan every issue of the Victoria Gazette into searchable pdf's (beginning with Issue #1 in June 1979), I wrote an encompassing history of the paper for the December 2015 issue. I entitled that feature story "A Christmas Gift from Sue@VictoriaGazette.com." That gift to the public has not materialized, however, as I continue to vacillate on just what to do with those precious pdf files. Indeed, I could publish them today in the archive section of my website as a gift to any and all, but for now they remain in my personal care. I suspect one day I'll give them to the Carver County Library System, the Carver County Historical Society Museum, the Minnesota Historical Society Museum, the U.S. Library of Congress, maybe others. I suggest there is not another history like it because there's not another newspaper like the Victoria Gazette. At least that's what people tell me. The Gazette is both big and little, you see. It's a microcosm of life and yet larger than life.
An Historical Index In the meantime, those pdf's are of immense value to me as I work on this newspaper every day. I can easily search 40 years' worth of the Gazette's written record of Victoria and find anything or anyone that's ever appeared on any of its thousands of printed pages. It's quite remarkable. To explain a bit further, a "Portable Document Format" looks just like the paper you're holding. Many of pdf's look better than the original publication because they're not dependent on paper or ink quality or the workings of a physical printing press. The pdf pages don't get worn or torn from turning them. They don't get yellowed from sunlight or develop creases and folds from storage in a file cabinet. And they're "portable." It doesn't take a semi-truck to move them from here to there. My pdf's all fit onto one big little thumb drive. They are like an elaborate index at my fingertips. They give me a convenient and ready access to details and facts that might otherwise escape me in my workaday world. This amazing historical index includes personal front page stories about the first residents dating back to Victoria's earliest days of the 1850's, since I've interviewed many of their children and grandchildren. I've personally interviewed and written the life stories of Victoria people who were born in the late 1800's plus several others who were born at the turn of that century. Life stories of Victoria residents continue to be featured in the Gazette to this day, although folks with historical lineage in the community are now in the minority. So many old-timers have passed on, yet live forever in the pages of the Gazette. I believe it's mainly these personal front page stories that differentiate the Victoria Gazette from other papers. Over these 40 years, the Gazette tells the story of the Victoria community through the very words and memories of its generations, who speak of their lives, in detail. I fold it together for them and for you, the reader.
The Centennial Year The Gazette's written and published history of Victoria also relates the story of a pioneer settlement that became a village that became an incorporated city. As part of the City of Victoria's Centennial Celebration, each 2015 Gazette feature began: "In This Centennial Year." When I use the word feature, I mean the panoramic narrative on my front pages. As such, one month in 2015, I visited, interviewed, and featured Victoria's very first city administrator. It revealed a chapter of this community through the voice of a resident who also sat at the city desk. In that centennial year, I featured and found photos and wrote about the tenure of all the mayors of Victoria, from the beginning. A list of the mayors wasn't elsewhere available, and people's memories weren't conclusive or chronological, and so it meant time perusing the miserable microfiche files at the Carver County Historical Museum and researching original City of Victoria records that I found at the Minnesota Historical Museum. In addition, I combed through the few old documents that were available at Victoria City Hall.
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Sue’s Album A symphony of photos and fewer than a thousand words at www.VictoriaGazette.com |
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June 2019 |
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40 |