LOCAL Houston | The City Guide JULY 2015 | Page 42

LOCAL ICON

LEON HALE

AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST
FOR THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

What was your first job?
Out of college in 1946, I wrote press releases for the Texas A&M
Agricultural Extension Service quoting A&M experts on how to kill
boll weevils, doctor sick pigs and make the grass grow taller.
After a year and a half of that, I became farm and ranch editor
of The Houston Post. I didn’t really edit anything there but I wrote
a ton of stories about rural Texas and this got me the roving columnist
job I really wanted.
Do you remember the first piece you wrote?
It was for a contest, when I was a sophomore in high school (1937). I won
third place. The experience was significant because up to that time, I had considered that writing was nothing but drudgery. And now I had produced two
pages of sentences that brought me recognition. I’d never before ranked as
high as third place in anything I tried. The first piece I wrote for pay, after I
came out of college, couldn’t possibly be worth remembering, and I don’t.
What about the one when you realized you might be able to make writing
a career?
This one I wrote in 1941 (I think) for the Texas Tech student newspaper, The
Toreador. It was an opinion piece calling for co-ed dormitories on the Tech
campus. At the time this was a concept so far from serious consideration that
the piece was written, and published, as college humor. What I liked most
was the byline – my name on Page One, in 10-point Bodoni bold type.
When I returned to Tech after World War II I started doing a regular column for The
Toreador. That’s how I got hooked on column writing and I never wanted to do anything else, except maybe write a couple of books.
What do you love about newspapers and how have you seen the industry evolve?
During a career of close to 60 years I worked for only two newspapers, the Post and
the Houston Chronicle. I did essentially the same job for both, staff columnist. To me,
this was a dream job. Both papers let me go where I wanted to go (within reason),
and write what I wanted to write, in the style that suited me best. What’s not to love
about that?
The change in the newspaper business that had the most severe effect on me personally is that we quit putting out the paper with typewriters and Linotype machines and
started doing it with computers. I entered this digital age kicking and screaming, and
when I retired I had not yet become fully comfortable writing stories on a computer.
I still consider the IBM Selectric typewriter a splendid machine, and I have one resting in peace in our little barn at Winedale, TX.
Do you have a phrase, song, quote or something that has become a recurring
mantra in your life?
Yes, and here it is: “Next to love, the greatest of all things is an original thought, an
idea.” For me, read that “column idea.” What I have done in this life, more than
anything else, is look almost constantly for column ideas.

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L O C A L

| july 15

Is there anything you haven’t done yet?
Are you talking about a bucket list? Maybe the thing I would like most to do that I
haven’t yet done is sit in the shade and watch a movie being made from one of my
novels. Then I hope there’ll be time to complete the writing projects I’m working on.
One is a stage play, and the other is a screenplay I’m wri [