Prompted by an obituary in today’s Register-Star, a longtime Hudson resident sent me this remembrance:
I just want to note the passing of one of our great local publishers, Bill Lundquest.
Bill was an old-time publisher, with real ink in his blood, a heart of gold, and a gift for sales. A big man, he had a splendid sense of humor and real sense of the community, even in dark economic days.
I met him when he was still publishing the Register-Star in the late 1980s, and was then trying to save the paper from what became its unfortunate fate: sale to a crummy—and small—conglomerate. (He was also publishing Harold Hanson's antique journal.) His time at the Register is not mentioned in his obit. I’m sure Bill wrote that omission in himself, and I can imagine just what he was muttering!
I would visit him frequently at the paper and would be just as apt to find him laying out pages as sweeping the press room floor, always in a white shirt and tie.
When Bill was driven out of the paper, he didn’t lose a step. He started his two advertising pubs (including the Sampler), and got in his SUV, outfitted with a front-seat computer, phones, etc., and drove and drove and drove and sold and sold and sold.
I kept trying to get him to start a real newspaper, but he just laughed and drove on and sold on. Great guy.
