Columnist, Queen Anne’s Record Observer

Inducted to MDDC’s Hall of Fame in 2009. This article is based on information submitted at the time.

As the editor of the Queen Anne’s Record Observer for the last nine years, it has been my distinct pleasure to work with someone whom I believe to be the consummate newspaper man – Dan Tabler.

Dan started writing for newspapers when he was 16 years old.

“I walked into the newspaper office, and the editor said, ‘there’s your desk,'” he says often, always with a little chuckle.

He’s been at that desk ever since – which, by the way, has been 65 years. He celebrated his 81st birthday in October.

Over that long career, Dan has been a columnist, a reporter, an editor, a photographer, an ad salesman, and a delivery man. He’ s worked for dailies as well as weeklies, later helping to consolidate two weeklies – the present Times-Record in Caroline County, owned by Chesapeake Publishing. He’s even helped run the presses on occasion (back in the Linotype days).

He’s met movie stars and future presidents (John F. Kennedy in 1960 during a brief stop in Centreville), and others both famous and not so. He’s covered blizzards and floods, fires and explosions, elections and campaigns big and small, as well as writing countless every-day stories about the lives of the residents of Centreville and Queen Anne’s County.

In the late 1940s, Dan met the late sports journalist John Steadman, and began a friendship that only ended at Steadman’s death more than 50 years or so later. Dan’s love of sports includes baseball – he’s devoted many of his columns to remembrances of past glories of the members of Eastern Shore minor leagues and high school teams. So supportive of local teams was he that in the 1950s he was named as a board member of the Bi-State Baseball League. Today, he often writes of the glory days of the Baltimore Colts, and the early days of the Orioles.

In addition to his newspaper work, Dan has been heavily involved in community activities almost his entire life. For more than 50 years, he has been a member of the Centreville Lions Club, the American Legion (he’s a World War II vet), the Kent and Queen Anne’s Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association, and the Goodwill Volunteer Fire Company, even helping form some of them. As a fireman, Dan is often one of the first at the scene of an accident, helping to direct traffic. As a Lion, Dan traveled twice to New York City in 2001 to help with the World Trade Center’s disaster relief.

Dan also served in the 1980s as a councilman on the Centreville Town Council for one three­-year term.

He is an active member of the Centreville United Methodist Church, and he, along with his wife Ruth, volunteers with Queen Anne’s County Hospice. He is a strong supporter of 4-H youth programs in the county, and is a popular speaker at local schools. In addition to his current writing position at the Record Observer, he works at the Queen Anne’s County Library.

In 2002, Dan was named Queen Anne’s County Most Beautiful Volunteer. Dan was nominated by retired Maryland State trooper and Medevac helicopter pilot Bob Middleton. In Dan’s nominating letter, Middleton wrote “Dan’s motto through life is that everyone should give something back to the community they live in. He has certainly succeeded in doing this.” Dan is “a tireless individual who constantly gives freely of his time and efforts for the betterment of the community,” said Middleton.

He’s also given of his time over the years to the predecessors of the MDDC – the Delmarva Press Association and the Maryland Press Association – working as a board member for these organizations in the early years of their operations, as well as with MDDC in the 1970s.

His current column “A Writer’s Notebook” (which he still pounds out on his manual typewriter), as well as his features, continue to delight our readers with his remembrances of things that once were, and his keen observations of things that are today. When a visitor or researcher in town wants to know where someone lived, or what building used to be in a vacant lot, or when something happened, they call Dan. He is known unofficially as the Living Memory of Centerville. That memory is very long, and very sharp – and he has a clip file you just wouldn’t believe. We rely on that memory, and those clips, every week, and are most grateful for them.

I’d like to end this letter with a quote from Dan in a story he wrote for the Star Democrat’s 200-year special keepsake edition in 1999, as he remembered the long years of his career.

“The public’s right to know is still paramount today, but the demands on the media are greater. The communications business is more complex and hi-tech today. It was a different time – nearly 40 years ago – it was a gentler time, a more relaxed time; the weekly deadline not near as demanding as a daily deadline, and we had more time to enjoy life. It was grand! I enjoyed every minute of it.”

I cannot think of anyone more deserving of being honored by the MDDC Hall of Fame. I, along with the staffs at the Record Observer and our sister papers at Chesapeake Publishing, sincerely appreciate your consideration of this man – his lifetime career in journalism and his devotion to his community.

by Janice K. Colvin
Editor, Queen Anne’s Record Observer
2009