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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Letter: One picture was worth 1,000 words

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Over 40 years ago as a high school student, I worked for The Columbian weekend mornings and evenings answering calls for the circulation department. The job was mainly to help people who didn’t receive their paper but I could also write up subscriptions and cancellations. Therefore, during my 6 to 10 a.m. Sunday shift, I was the person who took the first wave of calls on the “Daisy Lady” photograph. The Oct. 4 story reported that “Flowers still surround Daisy Lady.”

Some folks must have made a beeline to the phone as soon as they got their paper because the lines lit up early. Some callers were pretty fired up and a few canceled their service. Of course, some men called to say how much they liked that morning’s front page. One guy who seemed overly enthusiastic about the picture asked me if I knew whether the lady was only topless or fully nude under those flowers.

For the next couple weeks, cancellations trickled in and there was a section on the form to explain why the customer was quitting. I got long-winded speeches about why they were offended or something sarcastic (“I didn’t think I was subscribing to Playboy”), and at first I tried to squeeze as much detail as possible in the allotted space. Before long, the manager called me into his office and told me from now on, simply write “The Picture.”

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