Sonny's Story: A Journalist's Memoir by Rollan Melton

238 Pages·1999·6.4 MB·English

by  University of Nevada Oral History Program

Sonny’s Story

Rollan Melton: A Journalist’s Memoir
Interviewee: Rollan Melton

Interviewed: 1996-1997

Published: 1999

Interviewer: Jeanne Harrah

UNOHP Catalog #182

Description

In popular myth, anyone can make it to the top in America, no matter how humble his or her origins. That may be
true, but few have faced greater challenges along the way than did Rollan Melton.
Sonny, as he was called when he was young, was born into a dysfunctional family in Boise, Idaho, at the beginning
of the Great Depression. His parents divorced when he was six years old. His mother, Rusty, had no skills and
practically no education and found it hard to care for both of her children. For years young Sonny drifted from
home to home, from town to town, living sometimes with his mother, sometimes with his father, and sometimes
with relatives. Before his fifteenth birthday, he had attended eighteen schools in Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada. He
was a very poor student and essentially without friends. When he dropped out of school in the ninth grade, a dim
future seemed assured.
In 1946 Sonny at last found himself in a stable situation, and his life began to change for the better. His mother
alighted in Fallon, Nevada, where she found work at the Owl Cafe-Casino. She sent for her son and enrolled him
in Fallon High School. There he was taken under wing by the school’s football coach, who introduced him to the
joys of athletic achievement, competitive sports, and teamwork.
Sonny also found after-school employment as a printer’s devil with the Fallon Standard, a weekly newspaper.
Without realizing it, he soon was taking his first halting steps along a path that would lead to the top of the American
newspaper business. Taking into account his great need and his improving grades and attitude, the high school
faculty voted to award him a Harolds Club scholarship to the University of Nevada. There he majored in journalism
and played football. Following a stint in the army, he became a sportswriter for a Reno newspaper.
Melton was a tireless worker who made the most of every opportunity that came his way. He also benefitted from
an astonishing chain of circumstances and from the mentoring and support of others. At the age of thirty-two, he
was named the editor of the Reno Gazette-Journal; at thirty-five, he was the paper’s publisher; and two years later
he became the vice president of the Speidel newspaper group. He went on to become president of Speidel and a
vice president and director of Gannett. In 1978, when he was forty-seven years old, Rollan Melton resigned his vice
presidency to return to Reno and to writing. Today he is a widely read columnist for the Gazette-Journal.
Rollan Melton’s memoir is an unflinching examination that does not shrink from discussing the emotional pain
and deprivation of his youth. It is also an American success story of almost mythic proportions.

Sonny’s Story

Sonny’s Story

A Journalist’s Memoir

by Rollan Melton
University of Nevada
Oral History Program
1999
Mail Stop 324 Publication of Sonny’s Story was made
University of Nevada possible in part by gifts from:
Reno, NV 89557-0099
Carl and Bette Dodge
775/784-6932
Link Piazzo
[email protected]
Dean C. Smith
Editor and Publisher: The Gannett Foundation
R. T. King
The John Ben Snow Trust
General Manager and
Associate Publisher:
Mary Larson
Production Manager: Copyright 1999
Kathleen Coles
University of Nevada Oral History Program
Production Associates: Reno, Nevada 89557
Linda Sommer
Kathryn Wright-Ross
All rights reserved. Published 1999
Production Assistants:
Kevin Kolkoski Second Printing
Beth Opperman Printed in the United States of America
Contributors:
Ken Adams
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Victoria Ford
Mark Gandolfo
Michael Green Melton, Rollan, 1931­
Susan Imswiler
Sonny’s story : a journalist’s memoir / by Rollan Melton.
Dwayne Kling
p. cm.
Nina Koch
Brad Lucas Includes index.
JoAnne Peden ISBN 1-56475-376-x
Meredith Rucks
1. Melton, Rollan, 1931- 2. Journalists—United
Bill Stobb
States—Biography. I. Title.
Consulting Designer:
Robert E. Blesse PN4874.M486 A3 1999
070'.92—dc21
A department of the
[B]
College of Arts and Science
University of Nevada, Reno 99-054890