If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

He showed up in team photos in the Tiger Lily editions in some of the 1940s. It wasn’t that he was so athletic. But he was a great fan, a supporter of Port High’s jocks, so he would be the team manager.

Definitely college bound, Chuck Boller would be stepping into the family business, newspaper publishing, and would be trained accordingly. But, being college bound, he was in the Academic program, and Academic students did not take typing. So he did not learn to type.

Well, he did not learn touch typing. That was before Personal Typing was offered to PAHS Academic Course students. But Chuck did learn to use a typewriter quite efficiently.

It was a marvel that he could even write by hand. At least, it looked as if it was difficult, what with his lefty writing posture, which appeared awkward and cramped. Yet he could produce a legible “backhand” script, fairly rapidly.

Much of Chuck’s news coverage was not bylined. Readers could take it for granted he covered a lot of what happened in the community, and rewrote the various items and press releases that were mailed to or dropped off at or phoned in to the Reporter Argus.

There was one standing feature that we knew for sure was Chuck’s: “Ramblin’s.” His weekly column on the op-ed conveyed a playful folksiness. All present participles lacked their g’s. I took him a box of them, on the pretended assumption that he wrote that way because of a short supply of the seventh letter.

That was back before I worked for that or any paper, back when I was a young single gal with a local store and studio, playing in a band and taking in ironings and doing some math at another business and operating what was then a busy Western Union tieline agency. (Pre-fax days, we had lots of “traffic” from local industry.)

I took ads over to the paper, where the Port Allegany Music Center’s grand piano logo “slug” was kept at the ready. The place smelled wonderful. Even the hot lead thrown by the Linotype contributed to the special scent of news. That olfactory memory is still strong.

Chuck often stood at a long shelf by the windows facing Maple Street, hand setting type into wooden forms, selecting rapidly and lining it up and whacking it into alignment with practiced ease. Nearby Jim Lovell would be toiling, and Dan Shalkowski would be showing a press who was boss.

Years later Chuck was a colleague of mine. I worked for the Olean Times Herald, George Petrisek wrote for the Bradford Era and Chuck covered almost everything for the RA.

We were the press corps. I referred to us as the Three Wise Monkeys. It seemed to me that there was a Fourth, which we were supposed to embody: Write No Evil.

There were some years that all I did for the RA was contribute two columns every week, the same two I still do. All the newsing I did was for the Times Herald, for which I also wrote a weekly column, “Portside.” Later I signed on as a reporter.

At some point Dan and Nancy Shalkowski bought the RA. Like a slave in the old days, I was acquired with the rest of the property. Similarly I was transferred to the Majots, and to Tioga Publishing and Community Media.

I think Chuck missed doing news. He still helped out in the print shop, for years, getting his fix of printers’ ink and doing something he enjoyed. He definitely kept track of what was going on in the community.

One of the print shop’s major clients was the McKean County Board of Elections. The RA and later Danncy Graphcs printed ballot strips, paper ballots, sample ballots and voting instructions for every election.

Chuck was politically active, too, as a Republican committeeman in Liberty Township for years and years. I don’t recall whether JoAnn was a committeewoman, but she was a member of the township elections team—Judge of Elections, seems to me—for many terms.

One paper or another, or several, would assign me to ”round up” election results after polls closed every primary or fall election. I would arrange with some local election official to phone me the results as soon as possible, each time.

Chuck was my never failing source of Liberty Township election results, for many years. He was always at the polls, and interested in the outcome, and his news reflexes reminded him that a reporter was anxious for the official results.

There was the year Judge William F. Potter was up for a retention vote. Both political parties and the county bar complained bitterly that the man had to go, but none dared take up the cudgels against him. Only my ragtag McKean County Citizens for Good Government did! We hosted forums, and we sprang for 100 posters, which I designed. “NOT WANTED, William F. Potter,” post office art, with a front view and a profile, “No on 7” under the photos, and a list of aliases. The other design said “End Pottergate in McKean County. Vote NO on 7.”

I took my originals in and Chuck printed the posters for me, and wrapped them in Kraft paper and brought them to my side door after dark, not wanting the word to get out that he had collaborated—but seemingly delighted with the conspiracy.

Those posters, placed properly, with the permission of the property owners, on the Friday before the election, had the sheriff’s crew out ripping them down all weekend and Monday. It was the first time a judge had lost a retention vote in Pennsylvania. Chuck called the results to me, sounding pleased.

I can remember Chuck’s genial manner, the Chuck chuckle, his appreciation of jokes and word play. As detached as a reporter or editor must be, he covered the school board story straight down the middle when the board RIFed his stepdaughter, in a controversial calculation of LIFO standings.

At the choir festival I thought how odd it was not to see the Bollers there. And I remembered Chuck’s penetrating vibrato in the United Methodist and Passion Play choirs. I can’t think of any vocal effect like it, except maybe Eartha Kitt’s singing.

They moved from Port a little while ago, but I have found myself looking around for the Bollers at many events. They were such a good part of the community!

Editor, publisher, reporter, columnist, printer—Chuck could do it all. And we will miss him.

Peace.