| In
August of 1945, when the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Charlie Kimble of Lufkin
was part of the American landing party that toured Japan’s shambles and helped
free 4,500 Korean prisoners of war.
Charlie drove around Japan in a jeep
with a machine gun mounted on the vehicle. “Never in my lifetime have I seen such
destruction,” he recalled.
Charlie is also one of the few living men who
worked on the paper machine that in 1940 made the world’s first newsprint from
Southern pine trees at Southland
Paper Mills in Lufkin.
The
paper came off the mill’s No. 1 paper machine in the early morning hours of Wednesday,
January 17. Charlie went to work at the mill in 1939.
At 21, he had no earlier papermaking experience, but his boss called him “a naturally
born papermaker.” He started on the paper machine as a “sixth hand” making fifty
cents an hour. “And that was good money in those days,” he recalled.
The
Lufkin Daily News’ edition on Tuesday, January 23, took note of the weather with
a front page, eight column headline of the bold and black type usually reserved
for wars and disasters: “MERCURY DROPS TO 10 HERE”
Below the bold headline,
four photos and a smaller one column headline, the News recorded another event:
“This issue of the News is printed on Roll No. 1 from Southland
Paper Mills, Inc. The paper you hold in your hand is off the first run of
commercially produced southern pine newsprint in the world.”
For the next
forty years and eight months, Charlie made paper for the country’s newspapers,
and went from an employee on the No. 1 machine to superintendent of Southland’s
four paper machines.
He also found fame in other places.
In the
1930s, his brother talked him into joining a Lufkin National Guard troop that
went to Austin to give a 51-gun salute
to Governor James Allred. On the way, they flipped over the truck carrying their
gun, but still made it in time to give the governor his salute.
It
was also the first time he saw the Texas Capitol. “It was the biggest building
I had ever seen in my life.”
Now retired, Charlie still lives in Lufkin.
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