KOSCIUSKO — Editor’s Note: Long-time Star-Herald employee William L. “Cooter Bill” Thompson died Sunday morning at the age of 71. The following are memories expressed by current and former staff members of the newspaper.



For more than 50 years William Lamar Thompson, better known as “Cooter Bill”, was a vital part of The Star-Herald.

When he retired two years ago we felt a loss. We missed him and often shared our stories and remembrances as we put the paper together. We marveled at his devotion and dedication, but we all knew that ill health forced his leaving the job he loved.

Today we feel a greater loss following his death early Sunday morning. The memories are vivid and foremost in the minds of all The Star-Herald staff today. We all have our favorites.

He leaves a legacy in this office.

He was involved in the stages of putting the paper together including typesetting, make up of pages, and printing. Not only did he put it together, he delivered it. He was a master at sorting according to routes, bagging, and unloading on the post office dock. On Wednesday, Cooter was a familiar sight around town and surrounding counties as he made the rounds in the company van delivering  papers to vendors.

During his 53 years on the staff, he experienced a complete revolution in the newspaper world. He and I could carry on conversations about hot metal, cut and paste, linotype, scan-o-gravers, letter press, type sizes, en, em, and thin spaces, and other details only to leave many of our co-workers with puzzled looks.

With arrival of computers, he welcomed an easier way of getting the job done. He was quick to learn the electronic way, and often was the one I turned to with questions. He tolerated my lack of comprehension with computers -- most of the time. I struggled long (and still do) after he had mastered the very latest method in newspaper production.

I don’t recall Cooter ever talking about having another job. He came to The Star-Herald while still a student at Kosciusko High School through the Diversified Occupation (DO) program, going to school in the morning and working in the afternoon. School officials emphasized being prompt  and dependable on the job. Those traits stuck with Cooter. He was faithful.

Since his retirement he periodically came by to check us out. He was quick to point out something in the paper that was “not the way I did it.” With a shake of his head, and a slight smirk, we knew he was emphasizing his disapproval.

My last visit with him came about two weeks ago when he came in and took his seat in the newsroom. After usual chit chat,  I asked, “How’re you doing, Cooter?” referring to his health.

His reply, “purty good.”

We miss his presence. We have our memories and we’re thankful he was a part of our lives.

Nancy Green

People & Events Editor

The Star-Herald



He came to work as a high school student, participating in a program of that time which allowed a student to leave the classroom shortly after noon of each day and work as an on-the-job trainee in a business or industry toward a skill with the idea that it could set a direction designed to last throughout his or her working career.

His goal was to learn the printing skills necessary in the industry to help in the assembly of the pages and in the related production of The Star-Herald each week.

His name was William L. Thompson but almost everyone knew him as Kooter Bill, KB for short. Retired Kosciusko schools superintendent A.D. McBeath recalled this week that he adorned him with the name KB. He did not relate the circumstances of the designation.

The Star-Herald was located in those early days on North Madison St., just north of the Strand Theater. Office areas were on the ground floor and the production department was in the basement.

Pages were created by using machines and melted lead to create each line of type. The machine which assembled the lines was called the Linotype. Type was accumulated into pages about 21 inches deep and 15 inches wide. Strips of lead were used to fill spaces between paragraphs to solidify each page.

The pages were assembled on flat topped metal tables, then carried by hand to the press about 50 feet away.

Oldtimers remember once when KB tripped on the floor as he carried a 60 pound page to the press. They said he lay of his back, holding the undamaged page above him until help came to assist him in getting it to the press.

After the paper was published the lead which had been used to make the pages was melted at temperatures above 300 degrees and reformed into “pigs”, which were long metal bars which were fed again into the printing machines to make next week’s edition.

KB helped with all that, both as a student and later as a fulltime staff member. He probably still bears burn scars on his arms and hands created by drops of hot lead.

He mastered the system and worked at it fulltime until 1969 when that method was replaced by “offset” which used photo sensitive paper to create the type which became pages.

He had a role in designing that system for Kosciusko and worked over the years in perfecting new ways of creating the pages for the paper, going all the way to computers and the internet.

Sometimes, in his spare time or while off duty, he would take a camera and get pictures of news events for the paper.

He spent a career of more than 50 years in the skill he learned as a high school student.

At the same time he was a responsible leader in his family and his community. Two of his sisters worked for a while at The Star-Herald. His brother spent his career at the Commonwealth in Greenwood.

KB was active in his church and his community. He was a regular in First United Methodist Church, helping with several programs within the church. The family home on Brantley St., where he lived most of his life was and is one of the stand-out sites of the neighborhood.

Oldtimers won’t forget the joy he was at the Christmas dinners attended years ago by personnel of The Star-Herald.

And he enjoyed his life. He was a leader in his career of more than 50 years and in his community activities.



W.C. “Dub” Shoemaker

Former Owner/Editor/Publisher

The Star-Herald



I first walked in the door as editor of The Star-Herald 14 years ago. I remember being warmly welcomed by most of the staff and the entire community. But not necessarily by K.B. He was a bit stand-offish at first, preferring, I assume, to size up the newcomer and my prospects for being a worthy member of the team.

It didn't take long.

I think we broke the ice on that first Tuesday night deadline when we were all under tremendous pressure to deliver 32 pages of copy to Meridian for printing. Back in the day before email. Back in the day before computerized pagination had even debuted at The Star-Herald, one of Mississippi's best weekly newspapers.

Begrudgingly, I think K.B. acknowledged my capability – if not immediately as an editor at the tender age of 23, then at least as a tenable newspaper guy who could keep up the pace with him.

I've never seen anyone assemble -- in the traditional, cut-and-paste sense -- a newspaper page faster. He truly was a master craftsman of that lost trade.

One of the greatest satisfactions of my career was working with K.B. as we gradually converted to desktop publishing, leading up to the premiere of the first completely digitally-produced edition of The Star-Herald in the summer of 2001. He trusted me enough to go along for the ride, and he became as adept at computer production as he had been at the old school ways.

He had a tremendous, non-stop work ethic: Pulling long nights in composing and then double duty the next day on a delivery route filling newsracks across three counties with copies of the newspaper.

My fondest memory, though, despite his occasional lapses of curmudgeonly behavior, was his ultimate answer to any issue we threw at him: "No problem!"

Layne Bruce

Mississippi Press Association President and former publisher and editor of The Star-Herald



Two decades ago, if someone had told me that I would one day eulogize Cooter Bill Thompson, I would have said, “Impossible.” That’s because, after working beside him my first few weeks on the job, I was certain he was going to kill me.    

    I’d heard the stories about near-misses with hammers and pica poles being flung during fits of rage over the years, and I was afraid he’d been working on his aim — just in case I pushed him over the edge. And really, I couldn’t have blamed him. I wasn’t much of a co-worker; I was more like someone he had to baby-sit. After all, when I arrived, he had been working at The Star-Herald twice as long as I’d been alive. All I knew were words; he knew everything else about the newspaper business, and to him, words were almost as much of a nuisance as the people who wrote them. If you pointed out a typo in a sentence, even in a 72-point headline, he would say something like, “It’s just one word” before begrudgingly stripping off the offending type and pasting on the corrected version.

    Cooter didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he really couldn’t bear people who didn’t work hard. But if you earned his respect, he would answer requests by saying, “You da docta” or “it not gone worch.”

    Once, when a corporate consultant came down and evaluated the SH staff and the overall operation, he asked what everyone did. It took at least three breaths to give Cooter’s job description ... paginates pages, builds ads, sets type, fixes computers, photographer, office handyman, handles most of the circulation duties, from delivering the papers to the post offices and stores to repairing newspaper machines and servicing vendors, counting quarters and keeping accounts up to date ... It would take three people to replace him, I told the consultant.

Because of Cooter’s speech impediment, some people thought there was something wrong with his mind. But after becoming fluent in “Cooterese,” it didn’t take me long to learn that he was sharper than most folks. During my times at The Star-Herald, he was, without a doubt, the staff MVP. He was the best at the precision work of page-making, and he was the best at the back-breaking work of delivering the papers, too, whether it was in the suffocating summer heat, torrential rain or icy cold.

    Cooter never would tell any of us if something was ailing him, and we only learned of illnesses — minor or severe — through discreet family members. When he could, he scheduled treatments and appointments around his duties. But I can remember some times when he was out for health reasons and I had to make the deliveries for him. After working late into the night to get the paper out, then loading up to make the 50 or so stops on the 300-mile route, I expected a hero’s welcome when I arrived at each store. Instead, everywhere I went, there were disappointed looks and the same question: “Where’s Cooter Bill?!”

    He was loved and he will be missed. It’s impossible to know just how many lives he touched in 50-plus years at the same community newspaper in which hundreds of the higher-profile workers have come and gone over the years. Every strong organization needs a backbone like Cooter Bill. But with declining work forces — and even more rapidly declining work ethics — don’t count on it. The kind of loyalty, dedication and sense of responsibility he showed over the last half-century is something that will, unfortunately, be buried alongside him. And when those of his generation are gone, we too will ask, “Where is Cooter Bill?”

    Rest in peace, my friend. You earned it.

Mark Thornton, editor/publisher of The ReView of Jones County, was editor of The Star-Herald 2002-2007 and sports editor 1992-1996.