History of The Tribune

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• Times Past: Transport transformed in 1940s

  Times Past: Transport transformed in 1940s

  ‘Due to wartime priorities, all train travel must be booked five days in advance.”

  This is what was written on the sign in the doorway of San Luis Obispo’s new mission-style railroad depot in 1943.

  Gasoline and tire rationing meant that you had to take the train. The depot was the busiest place in town during World War II.

• Photos from the Vault: The storied life of a Tribune owner

  Photos from the Vault: The storied life of a Tribune owner

  You had to have imagination, optimism and faith to see business opportunity in San Luis Obispo County at the end of the 19th century. Benjamin Brooks saw it in a struggling newspaper printed in a tiny cow town.

  Since it was founded Aug. 7, 1869, The Tribune had a revolving door of almost a dozen investors and editors in a 16-year span. It was hard to find the combination of relentlessly imaginative wordsmith and grounded businessman that would be able to keep the enterprise running. Brooks would become business manager just before he turned 43 in 1885. A year later, he would buy out editor Myron Angel and become the area’s longest tenured editor/owner.

  The county had a population of 3,000 and boasted of a 4-year-old narrow-gauge railroad line from Port Harford to the county seat, but the 1,200-person town was a long way from the hustle and bustle of San Francisco.

• Mary Lee Clark, Arroyo Grande philanthropist, dies at 83

  Mary Lee Clark, Arroyo Grande philanthropist, dies at 83

  Philanthropist, matron of the arts and children’s advocate Mary Lee Clark died Feb. 25. The longtime South County resident was 83.

  Born Feb. 28, 1928, in North Hollywood to William and Theodora Stever, she married Clifford Clark in 1948 and moved to Arroyo Grande a decade later.

  A lifelong lover of the arts, Mary Lee was a dancer, painter and operatic singer in her school days. Her love of the arts continued after she and her husband moved to the county and began a 25-year campaign to build a performing arts center in the South County. The drive culminated with construction of what’s now known as the Clark Center for the Performing Arts , located on the Arroyo Grande High School campus.

• Attack on Pearl Harbor made a splash in SLO

  Attack on Pearl Harbor made a splash in SLO

  At 1:05 p.m., the fire siren shrieked in San Luis Obispo calling all 40th Division soldiers back to Camp San Luis Obispo. The early morning attack over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, plunged the West Coast into a frenzy of activity.

  A second attack was also reported in Manila.

  The Telegram-Tribune published a Sunday Extra, likely the first Sunday edition in decades. When the papers were rivals, the Morning Tribune published on Sunday. However, since it combined with the evening Telegram, Sunday was normally a day of rest.

• The chilling effects of bullying

  The chilling effects of bullying

  I was chattin’ and chewin’ the other night with lifelong friend Jane Maxwell, nee Nettleship (whose father Johnny was the much-beloved sports editor of the Telegram-Tribune for more than 30 years) when the topic turned to bullying.

  As a former principal and school superintendent, Jane’s take on bullying is that it has and will continue to lead to school violence conceivably on the scale of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School that resulted in 13 deaths and 24 students wounded.

  As it turns out, the two students who carried out the attack were gifted students who had been bullied for years. Following that tragedy, the U.S. Secret Service analyzed 37 premeditated school shootings and found that bully victims were involved in more than two-thirds of the attacks.