Contact: Sammy McDavid
The office complex housing student publications at Mississippi State now is a memorial to former university newspaper adviser Henry F. Meyer.
Past students of the late Starkville resident joined his faculty colleagues and friends, university officials, and currently enrolled students Friday morning to officially designate the Meyer Student Media Center. The University Drive facility has for many years housed offices and operations of The Reflector, the campus newspaper, and The Reveille yearbook.
Meyer died in early 2000 at age 87. He was Reflector adviser for nearly 30 years, a decade of which he also taught in MSU's communication department. Before coming to campus, he co-owned the Starkville Publishing Co., which printed the then-weekly Starkville News and, for many years, the Reflector.
Charlie Mitchell and Sid Salter, MSU graduates and former Meyer students, were featured speakers for the event. Mitchell is managing editor of the Vicksburg Post; Salter, "Perspective" editor of the Clarion-Ledger.
"While the tools of journalism change, the rules of journalism don't," Mitchell said. "When people enter this student media center five or 10 years from now, I hope they won't see the same equipment that's in there today. They should see a name on the door, however, that stands for the time-tested principles good journalists follow."
Mitchell urged audience members to help keep Meyer's memory alive, especially to future generations of students who will work at the center. "They will need to know who Henry Meyer was. If they are good journalism students, they will see his name as they enter this building and they will ask about him. I hope you will tell them what a great person he was to journalism in Mississippi and what a great friend he was to all of us lucky enough to have been his students."
Salter praised Meyer for having "taught a brand of journalism bounded in service."
"He was the prototype community journalist who believed journalists didn't leave any kind of baggage at the doorstep," Salter said. "He believed that, while a journalist is an observer of the community and someone who makes comments, sometimes unpleasant, about the community, he or she also is someone who has a responsibility to roll up their sleeves, put their shoulders to the wheel and try to make the community better."
Meyer's daughter, Marjorie M. Goldner of Huntington, N.Y., represented her mother Mildred, who now lives in Florida, and her brother Melvin, a California resident.
"Those who knew my dad or who will know of him because of what's done here today will know of enthusiasm, integrity, the First Amendment, a passion for the truth, the ability to communicate, and always remembering to say 'thank you,'" Goldner said. "Those are some of the things that never will be forgotten."