HAWAIIAN STYLE
Pressmen's tradition a head liner all by itself

By Wade Kilohana Shirkey

When The Advertiser opens its new printing plant next year in Kapolei, a longtime newspaper tradition as simple as a folded square of leftover newspaper will take its place beside state-of-the art equipment that cost millions of dollars.

Here's a square version of the pressman's hat, made by folding a newspaper page. And that's Wade Shirkey, the author of this article, wearing the simple headgear. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

It fulfilled a simple need: Pressmen wanted to keep press ink out of their hair, said press room manager Wendell Weatherwax, a 43-year Advertiser veteran.

"In the old days, you'd have to crawl between the presses (for adjustments and cleaning). You'd (have) ink in your ears, your nose — if you stuck (in) a finger, it came out black," he said.

Hence the nickname for pressmen — "The Black Gang."

A good old abrasive bar of Lava soap, once a staple in newsroom bathrooms, was their "shampoo" of necessity.

"If you didn't have a cap, you'd lose your hair," joked Advertiser production manager Terrence Derby Sr., a 43-year newspaper veteran. "Just look at Wendell!"

Derby said the little trademark hats were like vitamins: one a day. Soon as workers arrived, they'd fold a hat from a single sheet of leftover newsprint — and toss it at day's end.

Almost a rite of passage, it was one of the first things apprentice pressmen would learn. After a short while, they could whip a pressman's hat together in a couple of minutes.

"I learned from this old guy, Harold Stone," said Derby. "It (became) like putting on your pants."

Each pressman had his favorite style. With an extra fold here or a tug there, the traditional square chapeau about the size of a small

cigar box became a vaulted "Pope's Hat," or elongated "Beetle Bailey" cap with a camel-hump middle. Nips and tucks individualized each cap to its maker — or to the smaller heads of the kids on a tour.

For Jennifer Dang, coordinator of The Advertiser's "Newspaper in Education" program, the hats are still often the highlight of the school tours she leads. Often, a veteran pressman will quickly whip out hats for each child as a souvenir.

Veteran Advertiser editor Wanda Adams remembers the hat as a badge of honor.

"It used to be, if you went (down) into the pressroom, and they made you a hat, it was a form of acceptance, a welcome to 'their territory,'" she said. "They always did it for school kids, but when they did it for one of 'their own,' you had it made."

One of those must have been veteran Advertiser columnist Bob Krauss, for whom pressmen turned out hundreds of the trademark newspaper hats for a Hawai'i Maritime Center exhibit celebrating 150 years of waterfront reporting in Hawai'i.

But the times they are a-changing, and less and less will the visitor see more than the occasional pressman's hat around the modern printing plant. Nowadays, said Derby, "You're lucky if you can find (more than) one." Cleaner ink and better presses have largely eliminated their need.

Mainland newspapers also still call on the old craft to impress touring schoolchildren, for advertising promotions at fairs and such — even for a modern adaption of an old art: folding promotional materials inside the hats for mailing.

Pamela Santos Bermudes, of The Advertiser's production department, isn't sure she's witnessing a disappearing art or a dying tradition, but sees the hats' demise as "the end of one of the nicer of printing traditions. It's kinda neat that we have our own 'little thing' that we do," she said. "Besides, they're cute!"

Cute or not, said Weatherwax, the old pressroom tradition is gradually being replaced industrywide by something more common: the baseball cap.

The Advertiser's Wade Kilohana Shirkey is kumu of Na Hoaloha O Ka Roselani No'eau. He writes on Island life.