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  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis Constant checking: Tribune-Star pressman John Hoff checks for proper registration during a recent printing run. Hoff retires today after 43 years on the job.

    MET062512hoff3.jpg

  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis Familiar setting: John Hoff (right) has been a Tribune-Star pressman for 43 years. Today is his last day on the job.

    MET062512hoff2.jpg

  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis Details: Jim Lowe and John Hoff look over copies of the latest REX brochure to check for proper registration. Hoff is retiring from the Tribune-Star pressroom after 43 years on the job.

    MET062512hoff lowe.jpg

  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis On the job: John Hoff collects part of the early run of the latest Terre Haute REX brochure as it comes off the press. Hoff said one of the biggest changes he’s seen in his 40-plus years at the Tribune-Star is the switch from letterpress to offset.

    MET062512hoff 1.jpg

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June 28, 2012

95 Years of News

Tribune-Star pressman retiring after 43 years, ending nearly a century of his family’s work in print

Brian Boyce The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — One family’s near-century of work has seen the printing of this  newspaper through decades of changing technology — and breaking news. Now, a third-generation pressman from that family prepares for his final edition.

John Hoff unloaded rolls of paper early Tuesday afternoon, as he and others readied for that night’s press runs at the Tribune-Star’s production plant on Margaret Avenue near Indiana 46. The dark smell of ink hung heavy in the air amid barrels full of cyan, yellow and magenta, near bales of shredded paper.

“I started part-time as a floor-boy on Saturday nights in February of 1969,” Hoff, 62, recalled.

In June of that year, a journeyman pressman died and a full-time spot opened up. Hoff, then a 19-year-old Honey Creek High School graduate, was offered the position and accepted immediately.

“I said ‘yes,’ and I’ve been here ever since,” he chuckled.

The Tribune-Star’s “hot metal” printing process had been long familiar to Hoff.

The press was in the basement of the Tribune building at 721 Wabash Ave., a building that has been renovated to house Candlewood Suites.

John’s grandfather, Carl, began work as a pressman there in 1917, interrupting his career briefly to serve in the U.S. Army during World War I.

When John’s father Maurice and uncle Paul returned from service in World War II, they likewise went to work on the presses, he said.

All three retired from their positions with the same newspaper, his grandfather in 1967, leaving as the supervisor.

“It’s been kind of a family tradition,” he said Tuesday afternoon, noting today will be the last in his own 43-year stretch, part of a 95-year chain of Hoff service.

Brian Lane, Tribune-Star production director, recalled that when he came aboard in 1994, Hoff was already a seasoned veteran of 25 years.

“He was proud to point out that he was from a long line of Tribune-Star pressmen. It’s amazing to me that for almost 100 years, there has been a Hoff in the pressroom,” Lane said.

“I think about the major world, national and local events that have occurred during those years and am amazed when I realize that a member of the Hoff family had a hand in producing the newspapers that covered these events.”

To find three generations of a family at one company is rare enough, and Hoff remarked it’s no longer the norm for people to remain with the same employer 43 years. But if they did, they too might recall the kinds of changes a century makes.

“When I first started, they were using hot type and the plates were made of lead,” he said, recalling those plates weighed about 50 pounds each and were carried from one end of the plant to another.

Those individual letters of metal, once used to strike wet ink imprints onto paper, have long given way to digital files that are  electronically sent to machines that produce printing plates. The plates themselves also have switched to lightweight aluminum in what is called the offset printing process.

Hundreds of reporters’ bylines have come and gone since, as have dozens of editors and publishers. “It’s just been such a vast change from the machine into the digital age, I guess you’d say.”

Still a journeyman pressman, Hoff said he entered the trade as a member of the Printing Pressman and Assistants Union. He is now a Teamster, as the pressmen switched representation a few years ago.

But good friends and good times have remained the same, he said, adding he’ll miss coming to work each day.

Lane remarked that the feeling is mutual.

“With John’s retirement, the ‘Hoff era’ comes to a close, and while we will miss John in the pressroom, we wish him all the best in retirement,” he said.

Likewise, B.J. Riley, publisher of the Tribune-Star and senior vice president of the Sunbelt Division of CNHI, said Hoff’s experience will be missed.

“John has been a part of the Tribune-Star for 43 years and has seen many changes over his career,” Riley said. “He has been a great part of this newspaper printing operation, and we will miss him in many ways. We all wish him the best in his retirement.”

But the newspaper’s loss will be gain for others, including John’s wife, Joann, daughters Anna Rees and Laura Hoff, and grandson Jacob Rees.

And while he might not wear the dark blue workshirt of a pressman after today, he said he is certain there will be enough projects to keep him busy in coming years.

“Oh, my wife’s got a lot of plans for me,” he said with a grin.

Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.

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