Country editor won a national following

Lynden Tribune/FILE PHOTO

Sol Lewis, Lynden Tribune editor from 1914 to 1953, also hosted a popular nationally broadcast radio program during World War II.

Sol Lewis, Tribune publisher for 39 years, touched a war-time audience with his rural wit and wisdom.
     Editor's Note: This article draws from Bill Lewis's "70 Years on Front Street" and also uses material written 10 years ago by Shawn Van Dyken for the 100th anniversary celebration of The Lynden Tribune. At the time, Van Dyken was doing a history thesis on Sol Lewis at Western Washington University. Van Dyken is now the owner of Edward's Draperies of Lynden.)
     For 39 years the guiding hand of Sol Lewis fashioned The Lynden Tribune into a newspaper both of local flavor and of high professional quality.
     From 1914 when he bought the paper until his death in 1953, Sol Lewis was the publisher and editor of the paper. But his influence extended far beyond Lynden.
     Actually, Lewis might never have come to the little town he affectionately dubbed "Parsnip Corner" had he not experienced the big city first.
     Born in San Francisco in October 1888 (coincidentally, the same month the first Lynden Pioneer Press was published), Lewis grew up in Seattle and graduated from Broadway High School. He attended the University of Washington as a member of the first journalism class there, became editor of the university's daily newspaper, and was selected for the Sigma Delta Chi national journalism fraternity, of which he later served as national president.
     Following graduation, Lewis taught journalism for two years at the University of Kansas, where he became acquainted with Dr. Jim Naismith, the originator of the game of basketball.
     In 1913 Sol Lewis went to New York City where he joined the reporting staff of the New York World. It didn't take him long, however, to tire of the big city, and he sought out the advice of Frederick "Pa" Kennedy, his UW journalism mentor, and now manager of the new Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.
     Kennedy advised Lewis that Herman Rosenweig was willing to sell The Lynden Tribune in a small hamlet surrounded by dense timber by the Canadian border.
     Sol took a steamer from Seattle to Bellingham and a train to Lynden. He liked what he saw. He borrowed funds to buy the paper from his brothers and sisters. The young bachelor arrived with his baggage on Oct. 14, 1914.
     Besides his evident skill in producing a newspaper, Lewis was an engaging public speaker. With his clever wit and warm congeniality, he was always a hit with audiences as a master of ceremonies.
     Lewis was indeed a man respected by his peers, loved by his family, and appreciated by his community. In addition, this gentleman -- as all who knew him referred to him -- played a remarkable role in state and national affairs during his life.
     Editor Lewis undoubtedly reached the apex of his journalistic career on the evening of August 6, 1942. Lewis had been invited by the Blue Network to participate in the nationally broadcast "America's Town Meeting of the Air." The United States' war effort appeared dismal in August of 1942, and Sol was the only member of the evening's panel to sound a note of confidence in the American people's ability to conquer the Axis powers. Response to Sol's remarks was so overwhelming that the Blue Network -- predecessor to ABC Television -- offered him a contract for a regular radio feature. Each week during the war, Sol Lewis reached into American homes with words of encouragement, humor, and homespun wisdom.
     Between hometown homilies and national broadcasts, Sol Lewis found time to formulate a weekly column for the Seattle Times. Lewis' contribution to Sunday reading was generally a column of witticisms, puns, and humorous analogies concerning both the rural and the national life. Nonetheless, this weekly treasure chest of pithy writings appeared without fail on the opinion/editorial page of the Times. Here again, Sol Lewis was able to offer the war-weary reader a few precious words of hope.
     Although a small-town editor, Sol Lewis had made his presence known during the war. He had made an outstanding contribution to the home-front effort. Undoubtedly, it was with this in mind that a Republican patriarch, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, pleaded with Lewis to run for the United States Senate in the early 1950s. "The Sage of Parsnip Corners" graciously declined, as he was nearing his well-deserved retirement.
     It has puzzled many folks that such a literary luminary as Sol Lewis chose to live out his life in the pastoral Nooksack River Valley. Lewis occasionally answered such queries by saying that he preferred being a big frog in a small pond to being a small frog in a big pond. He most assuredly was a "big frog" in the "small pond" of Lynden, but his influence spread to thousands of other "ponds," both small and large, during his many years in the public arena.
     Sol Lewis died at age 64 in 1953. He was by that time beginning to turn over the operation of the Tribune to sons Bill and Julian Lewis.