Stan Abbott was a terrific editor with a keen news sense who elicited great stories. His temperament withstood the patience-testing antics of a squadron of oddball off-center reporters. What I remember most about his wide array of talents was his exceptional skill as a layout man and designer of newspapers who produced an extraordinarily clean and sharp graphic style for The Anchorage Daily News. He also had a wry sense of humor. He was at his best with his uncanny touch at enhancing storytelling with illustrations and pictures.
Back in the early 1970s when I worked there, the Anchorage Daily News was the scrappy liberal second newspaper in town battling the much larger and richer and reactionary Anchorage Times. If my memory serves me correctly, every night the newspaper went to bed -- that is, locked up the final stories -- by 11:30 p.m. and the press run began around 1 a.m. The press was so old that it took four hours to print 13,000 copies, and correcting errors was an arduous process.
Between the lock-up and the press run, one of us would hang around the newspaper until the first copies rolled and then run them to the nearby Club China Doll, where almost inevitably the rest of the staff was drinking and waiting to read their stories in the nearly dark bar. If one of us caught an egregious error, a call would be made back to the paper to stop the press. Then Stan or managing editor Tom Gibboney would go back to oversee the fix, which often was done by removing the offending line. It would be hammered flat on the lead cylinder to leave a clean white blank space on the page where the mistake had been.
The China Doll at the time was what we regarded as the leading adult entertainment venue and the reporters all were allowed to run bar tabs. We had an informal deal that we would begin tipping the waitresses (as opposed to the dancers) heavily, once one of us made more money than any of them did. One night in the dim light, Stan seemed particularly occupied for nearly an hour, doodling on a cocktail napkin. Then, as another round of drinks came around, the regular waitress who was an avid reader, Loma Bording, reached down and said in a loud mocking voice something like, "Oh my God, a tip from the Daily News boys." After reaching down to pick it up, she began laughing and so did we all. Stan's impeccable doodle was three quarters: two tails and one heads up. It was a great gag by a great graphics man. She took it as a souvenir, but it is long gone now. She should have framed it.
Allan Dodds Frank worked for the Anchorage Daily News from 1970 to 1973. In a career that spans 45 years, he has been a correspondent for news outlets such as The Washington Star, Forbes magazine, ABC News, CNN and Bloomberg. He freelances now and is working on a book. Stan Abbott, former executive editor of the Anchorage Daily News, died last week at 73.
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