With their building in ruin, newspaper staff had to remove nearly every piece of a hand-operated job press to clean the sand, grit and water from the delicate machinery. They likely worked through the night to compile, set the type and print a list of the known dead the day after the 1927 tornado devastated downtown Poplar Bluff and killed approximately 100 people.
More than 45 years later, a photograph published in the Daily American Republic helped solve the homicide of a banker, his wife and daughter that shocked both the community and the nation. Not normally cooperative with the police, the informant was so upset by the photograph, as well as the evidence it contained, that he came forward. Three men were later convicted and at least one is still serving a life sentence at the Potosi Correctional Center.
One Saturday night years later, editor Stan Berry put the front page together three times when an inmate escaped from the Butler County jail.
After staff finished the first write up, Berry was car-jacked by the man just outside the newspaper office. Berry alerted authorities, and immediately returned to the office to re-write the article before it went to press. The story got a third revision after officers ran the suspect off the road near the Sale Barn -- still in Berry's car -- and got into a gun fight before recapturing the man. The suspect survived. The car did not.
For 150 years, the Daily American Republic has offered an unchanging record of the day, imperfect certainly at times, but told in the voices of those who lived it, as it happened.
Newspapers fill many critical roles within the community, according to publisher Don Schrieber, who took the helm of the DAR in 1990. It was Schrieber who in 2004 helped expose evidence that led to the felony forgery convictions of former mayor and chamber of commerce executive Scott Faughn involving public accounts.
The press serves as a watchdog, he said, as well as a key source of information concerning local crime, government, school, politics and events,. The newspaper can also support growth in the community, a vision Schrieber says he has seen become reality with the dedicated work of the DAR's staff.
"A newspaper should be the heart and soul of the community," said Schrieber, who will retire this month after 39 years leading newspapers in the Poplar Bluff area. "The role of the newspaper should be dedicated to objectivity, neutrality, fairness and impartiality."
Berry, the second-longest serving editor in the history of the DAR, also saw the critical impact of the press in his 27 years at the head of the news department before his retirement in April.
"Who is going to be the watchdog for the public? If it wasn't for the newspaper, there would be no watchdog," said Berry, who got his first job at the newspaper in 1964, helping the sports department out before school. He then returned to the DAR after serving in Vietnam.
Berry pointed to the term of former city manager Heath Kaplan and the work of the newspaper to expose no-bid contracts and questionable spending practices officials have said cost taxpayers millions.
"That's where newspapers are really needed. You can't get that perspective and that kind of information anywhere else," he said. "As a former newspaper man, I really appreciate what that does for our community.
"That was always sacrosanct for me, to make sure we did the best job we could of informing the public on issues and events, and what's going on, and to do it fairly."
It can be challenging to make tough decisions about how to report sensitive issues, Berry said.
"Any of us who have been in the newspaper business as reporters know and recognize that," he said. "You get to know and like the people you write about, that you cover. Then there are times when it's inevitable and it's impossible to avoid, that you have to ask those same people some really tough questions that they're not going to like."
Personal feelings have to be set aside, to be professional and do the job, he said.
"I can tell you from having done the same thing myself, that's not always really easy and at times, it's cost me a friend or two, which I hated, but you've got to do what's right," Berry said.
Former editor John Stanard also knows how difficult those decisions can be. It was Stanard who took the photograph in the killings of the banker and his family, while his father, Bob Stanard, was editor. The photograph was graphic, said Stanard. It showed the bodies of the victims, and also a fake bomb used to threaten the banker. The device was later tied to the killer by the informant.
"We talked about it and we debated it," said Stanard. "We finally decided that it was such a horrible event. They didn't have a clue at that moment as to who had done it."
The impact of the press in Butler County has been substantial, believes Stanard, whose grandfather, John H. Wolpers, bought the operation in 1916 that would become the DAR.
Stanard saw it when the newspaper exposed a long ago county commissioner for using county labor and materials to build a subdivision. The man threatened to kill him, Stanard recalled.
His family saw it in the 1920s, when Wolpers wrote editorials against the Ku Klux Klan. Wolpers life was threatened as well. Wolpers believed a free press was important to our democracy, Stanard said.
The DAR has and continues to report on the topics that matter to the community.
Its pages have been filled with the early calls by residents for a four-lane highway to replace a dangerous stretch of two-lane Highway 67, and news of the growth that has continued since, including a nearly 4 percent increase in year-to-date sales tax collections.
It has followed the development of a local hospital from the $50,000 Lucy Lee on Second Street with its 13 private rooms and two wards in 1929, to the $173 million complex on Oak Grove Road with 250 private rooms today.
The newspaper also continues to tell stories like those of World War II veteran Wilbur Schmit, whose home was partially destroyed in a 2017 storm and rebuilt by volunteers, and of neighbors like those on Benton Street, who have banned together to make the lives of youth better.
While the newspaper has reported on and served the community, that could not be possible without the citizens who purchase a copy, take out an advertisement or contribute to its production.
The support of the community has allowed the Daily American Republic to provide these services to the public, Schrieber said. Community is woven into the pages, as important as the ink and paper it has been printed on for 150 years, and counting.
That support continues to be vital to the DAR, just as it is to all the local businesses that call Poplar Bluff home, he said.