Longtime Baldwinsville resident and former Messenger publisher Richard Manville died Jan. 1. He was 88.
A native of Troy, Manville served in the Army Air Force at the end of World War II. He married the former Carol Heikkila in 1955; they would have celebrated their 60th anniversary next month. Together the couple raised five children, Richard Jr., Tracy, Susan, Jill and Barbara.
Manville started at Brown Newspapers, which at the time published the Baldwinsville Messenger, Liverpool Review and North Syracuse Star-News, on Oct. 25, 1950, fresh out of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. In a Liverpool Legends video produced by former Review editor Linda Loomis on the history of the local weekly, Manville said he never thought he’d become a permanent fixture at Brown; he planned to become a sportswriter in California.
“I came for one year’s experience,” said Manville, who started as an advertising sales representative. “And I stuck around for 40 years.”
In 1966, Manville purchased the company from publisher Don Brown, whose family had owned it since the 1930s. He kept the Brown name because of its meaning to the community.
Indeed, serving the community was Manville’s prime directive in running the newspaper company.
“The community service aspect is one of the things I enjoy the most,” Manville said in the Liverpool Legends video. “We’ve been able to provide community service and information to a lot of local groups over the years.”
Loomis, who worked for Manville for 20 years, recalled the former publisher as a man dedicated to bettering the community as well as the editors who labored under him.
“Dick inspired us to do our jobs not by sitting at a desk making calls, but by going into our coverage areas and becoming part of our communities,” she said. “That’s the kind of journalism he typified. That was quintessential to his belief system in what he was doing with community journalism.”
Loomis said Manville was invested in his employees, supporting their pet charities, local softball teams and “staff adventures.” He regularly encouraged his employees to better themselves, even if it meant their departure from the paper.
“Several people in the company were also encouraged and enabled to keep furthering their education,” Loomis said. “He had to have known that I was going to leave once I got a master’s degree and wanted a different kind of job, but that didn’t prevent him from encouraging me to pursue it. He said to me, essentially, ‘You don’t clock your hours. If you get the paper out, that’s what matters to me.’ He believed in self-improvement and he was always encouraging us in that, whether it was editors going to get advanced degrees or people who worked the presses taking BOCES classes.”
Suzanne Ellis was among those Manville encouraged to further her education.
“Long before ‘flex time’ and ‘family time’ were common workplace terms, Dick gave me permission to attend college classes so I could earn my bachelor’s degree in journalism,” said Ellis, whom Manville hired as a proofreader and typesetter in 1979. “Even more importantly, as a single mother, he never hesitated to send me on my way if one of my children needed me at school or home during my workday. As long as I did my job, no matter how crazy my hours were, I had Dick’s blessing to be an attentive mother and to further my education.”
Ellis ultimately worked her way to assistant editor and ultimately moved on to the Post-Standard, but she always remembered Manville’s support and kindness.
“I have never forgotten the kindness of Dick Manville or the huge debt of gratitude I owe him for believing in me,” she said. “Like any good father, he helped me establish my roots in journalism and then sent me off to spread my wings and fly.”
Messenger sales representative Paul Nagle, whom Manville hired in 1976, echoed Ellis’ comments equating the publisher to a father figure.
“[We were] a close-knit family and it was a pleasure to go to work,” Nagle said. “Mr. Manville cultivated that work environment.”
And that dedication wasn’t just for his work family.
“More than anything else, he loved his family,” Nagle said. “He left a real mark on Baldwinsville and Central New York.”
Manville also showed a great deal of trust in his editors, something Loomis appreciated.
“He always had our backs,” Loomis said. “A local curmudgeon who had badgered me for weeks met with Mr. Manville to take his complaints about me, ‘The Girl,’ to the boss. Dick listened patiently as all my failures were outlined. Then he graciously spoke to his guest, thanking him and saying, ‘Linda Loomis is the editor. Please communicate with her in the future. As long as I trust her to fill that position, I trust her to make the best decisions for the newspaper.’”
Lori Newcomb started with the company under Manville as a senior at Baker High School and accepted a permanent position with Brown Newspapers shortly after graduating. At 18, thanks to Manville’s faith in her, Newcomb became the youngest employee to head the production department.
“He was a great man to give me that opportunity,” said Newcomb, who stayed with the company when it became Eagle Newspapers and now serves as circulation manager. “The best thing I got out of working there was that he valued all his employees highly and trusted us to get the job done no matter what. Each of us had our strengths and he brought out the best in each of us. The workplace was more of a family rather than individuals just doing a job.”
As he would with his own family, Manville, like a benevolent father, also let his employees have fun.
“We had ‘employees will play while the boss is away’ luncheons, and he was fine with that since he knew we never shirked responsibility,” Newcomb said. “He and [his] wife, Carol, would host the Christmas party at their house and those parties only showed each one of us how much he loved us all. He was a very kind man to put up with our shenanigans.”
Other employees also remembered Manville as a “tremendous boss.”
“He was the easiest person possible to work for,” said Jay Dunlap, who worked for Manville at Brown from 1952 until 1992. Manville hired Dunlap as a sales representative for the Star-News, but when Manville bought the company, he was promoted to advertising director. He and Manville continued to work together until the company was sold. “He was extremely generous, just an overall great person. A real gentleman.”
In addition to his personal attributes, Dunlap recalled Manville as an astute businessman.
“For one thing, when he took over, we were working with a letter press, which was hot metal,” Dunlap said. “Almost immediately, he converted us to offset type, which is similar to desktop printing. He was very forward-thinking in that respect. He was always eager to keep pace with the times, if not to be ahead of the times. He kept reinvesting in the business. He was always trying to put our best foot forward.”
Manville served as publisher of the three newspapers until 1992, when Brown Newspapers merged with Manlius Publishing to become Eagle Newspapers.
But that didn’t mark the end of his commitment to community service. Manville was an active member of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. He was active on the committee to construct the Northwest Area YMCA in Baldwinsville, raising money and participating in the recent groundbreaking last year. Manville also actively volunteered with the Syracuse Home Association, serving as serving as board president for many years. He was especially proud of the success of McHarrie Towne, an independent senior living community that he helped plan as a Syracuse Home board member. Dick and Carol Manville were among the first people to move into McHarrie Towne when using housing units became available in 1996.
And his volunteer efforts didn’t stop there. Other agencies that benefited from his largesse included the Onondaga County Community Development Division, Onondaga Housing Development Fund, Northwest Human Services Council, Vera House North Advisory Committee, Canton Woods Senior Center and Baldwinsville Chamber of Commerce. The chamber named him “Man of the Year” in 1995.
In addition to his wife and children, Manville is survived by his grandchildren, Jonathan (Mary) Hopkins, Katherine (Jon) House, Stephen Hopkins, Erin Lawlor, Christian Lawlor, Will Sheehan, Emma Sheehan and Matthew Morgan; one sister, Sharon (Laurence) Beaudoin of Troy, two nieces, Bethany (Peter) Armstrong and Allison (Mark) Metz; and one nephew, Ryan (Jennifer) Manville. Services were held earlier this week.
Though she hadn’t worked with him for more than 20 years, Newcomb said Manville will be sorely missed.
“I believe one could use every positive adjective in the dictionary and still not convey how wonderful a man he was as a person, leader in the community, husband, father and boss,” she said. “Baldwinsville has lost one of its best, but Heaven has gained a great man.”
