Clarence DeWayne Fletcher:
CLASS OF 1959
Tahlequah High SchoolClass of 1959
Tahlequah, OK
Southwestern Assemblies of God UniversityClass of 1969
Waxahachie, TX
Arlington StateClass of 1966
Arlington, TX
Dallas Community CollegeClass of 1964
Dallas, TX
Northeastern State UniversityClass of 1963
Tahlequah, OK
Clarence DeWayne's Story
Life
I attended Tahlequah grade and high schools, and lived 3 miles east of town on 5 acres, across from famous Indian Treasury Department officer, Houston Benge Teehee, until we lost the farm.
I attended North Eastern State Teachers College, in Tahlequah, before going to Dallas Fort Worth area, continued my college education, and working for The Dallas Times Herald as eventual Production Director before its closure, after 32 years.
I now live in beautiful Highlands Ranch Colorado, and worked for The Denver Newspaper Agency that is the publisher of two great newspapers, The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News as Output / Plateroom Mgr. I retired October 15, 2007.
I love riding in the mountains, with my beautiful wife Barbara, on my motorcycle cruiser, and enjoy my networked computers at home and produce 3-D animations, video editing, music productions, and involve myself, as a hobby, computer software and hardware maintenance, and electronic and T.V. repair.
My son, Eric, and I produced computer game graphics, Tom Landry Strategy Football, for the legendary great football coach, Tom Landry, after he was fired by the shameful Jerry Jones of The Dallas Cowboys. I saw the Dallas Texans leave Dallas, and later saw all of the Cowboy NFL and Super Bowl championships.
Several of my paintings and pen drawings and accomplishments are on my personal web sites, along with my family's art work:
After arriving in Denver we enjoyed several Stanley Cup winners by The Avalanche hockey team, and several more Super Bowls by The Denver Broncos, thus I have been blessed to be from two great football cities. Now The Colorado Rockies went to the 2007 Baseball World Series, but lost ... this time.
I attend church regularly at Cherry Hills with my wife and enjoy having my two, of three sons, living with me and my wife in Highlands Ranch where we are doing web site design and promoting my son and his band, with full video lighting, green screen, and the full works.
My son, Eric, has married to Jamie Futrell. Eric has one son, Dylon, and Jamie has one daughter, Whitney. The new business venture that I am supporting is my Son's new music magazine, Colorado Music Buzz, in Denver.
Workplace
I worked at Tahlequah Oklahoma's local weekly newspaper, The Tahlequah Times, with my boss Mr. Dale Gaston.
I left Tahlequah and arrived in Texas and began a six year apprenticeship at The Dallas Times Herald. At the age of 19 I met the infamous Jack Ruby, of Oswald connection, and visited his strip club in Dallas Texas, and watched Bubbles Cash, his exotic dancer.
Jack Ruby attempted to bribe me in removing the "pasties" from his dancers body, of his advertising ads in our paper. We never gave in to his temptations of promised friendship with these beauties. Blessed being married to a beautiful Barbara Owen I am pleased with my earlier decision.
I was promoted up through the production ranks to become the production director of all operations, including all technical production computers, prepress and printing departments.
I was in charge of the 32-million dollar building and press equipment expansion, that included two new nine-unit offset presses and conversion of two existing letterpress to offset, and new remote junk mail inserting operation.
After 32 years of employment the newspaper publication was suspended, for good. The Dallas Morning News, bought us out and closed us down ... it is a parking lot today.
I was on national television, holding my beloved newspaper, with the headlines of "Goodby Dallas!" broadcasting our closure. I was among a handful of employees that stayed on for several months after the closure, because I knew "where the bodies were buried".
I helped establish JPEG as the graphic technical standard that it is today. I was working with only five daily newspapers in the nation on this experiment.
I also have the distinction of being the inventor of OPI (Open Prepress Interface) technology, by producing this type of desk-top-publishing with Commodore's Amiga, and Professional Page's program and its plug-in Re-Sep, long before it became fashionable by Adobe, or anyone else, for that m...Expand for more
atter.
I personally headed up the production of a 70-color picture tabloid of Hot Air Balloons, with off-the-shelf PC's, the first in the industry, with RIPS and new Linotronic 300's and Burmy Setter film imagers. I also was the first to transmit live pictures from a remote site to our downtown newsroom location, and included these pictures in a special tabloid honoring this event.
After another great daily newspaper closure in Texas, The Houston Post, again national television replayed my picture holding The Dallas Times Herald's paper, showing last papers going up the stream conveyors and out to distribution.
My employment ended in Dallas, December 7, 1991, (50 years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor) thus I moved to Denver Colorado, with my wife Barbara to obtain the employment with The Denver Post.
After we won this newspaper war, our owner, Mr. Dean Singleton, promoted a joint operation agreement between The Post and The Rocky Mountain News, which became The Denver Newspaper Agency (DNA).
I was with this newspaper since 1993, of which my position was Output / Platemaking Manager. I was in charge of all operations of computer systems that collect advertising and newsroom data, from both newspaper locations downtown, and sending through RIPS, transferring to two daily newspaper printing locations for film imaging, now discontinued, and press plate operations, which is the new Direct To Plate operations with pages being sent from Prepress through Platemaking, without the touch of human hands, and delivered print-ready plates direct to Pressroom. I retired from the DNA October 15, 2007, and am now fishing, motorcycle riding, and woodworking in my wood shop.
Military
My military friends indicated that they were in desperate need to have another band member.
I was in the army band, to play my trombone, which I played first chair for many years at Tahlequah High School, in Tahlequah Oklahoma. I also played in Tahlequah's North Eastern State College band.
Our army band was invited to play at the opening day at the first shopping mall in Mesquite Texas. This mall has since been vacated after fourty four years.
Other support of the army, and my newspaper, using my personal video equipment and special video capturing hardware I obtained rare pictures from CNN television the shameful parading in front of TV the three captured Americans and other countries soldiers.
These pictures from my special single-frame video editors / players allowed me to capture the best possible pictures, from video, and published on the front page of The Dallas Times Herald, the only pictures of this quality in any newspaper of the world.
I desire to provide copies of this rare newspaper and give these copies to these soldiers in the Iraqi war, or their families. I have attempted, with the help of Denver Colorado's veterans, to contact these individuals, with little success.
A long story short, is when I was 18 years old I wanted to join the "real army", but had a deaf right ear and was not allowed to join. The famous nationally known ear doctor, of Baylor Hospital, said that I had a nerve deafness, and could not be repaired.
I became very angry at him, and said "I will get another opinion, and maybe someone with more experience!" Little did I know, until after the blazing headlines on The Dallas Times Herald, where I was employed, that my so-called inexperienced doctor, was killed in the airline crash, along with our Congressman Mr. Locke.
The headlines proclaimed "World Renown Ear Doctor Killed". I was very ashamed to have treated him in the manner that I did, but you see, I wanted to join the army and have the government help me with my ear situation and maybe have an operation to fix my busted ear drum. The ailment was a nerve, and was not capable of being repaired.
I attended the first year's showing of the Vietnam's memorial in Washington D.C., with my wife, Barbara, and son Dana Owen, which was very emotional to us and especially my son.
He was visibly shaken when we viewed the Marine Corpse memorial statue of the raising of the flag over Iwo Jima. My son has not forgotten this, to this day.
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