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Journalist finally hangs up his hat after 45 years!

During his 45 years in journalism, Bill Hearld has been chased by a randy sea captain, been made persona non grata by his former grammar school, and got up close and personal with a dead body that had spent three weeks in a local river.

And that was just during his time as a cub reporter on the Goole Times!

Now the noted journalist has announced his retirement after a distinguished 45 years in the business.

Over the past four decades Bill (61) has spent most of his time working for the York Press (formerly Evening Press) in York, where he landed the job of chief reporter in the paper's Selby office when he was just 20, and then deputy editor, a position he has held until his retirement.

But it was in Goole, Bill's home town, where he cut his teeth as a young reporter.

After leaving Goole Grammar School at 16, Bill got a job on the Goole Times in 1963 as a trainee reporter.

Under the stewardship of the late Ernest Butler, former editor of the Goole Times, Bill's introduction to newspaper journalism was, to say the least, colourful and, on occasions, downright terrifying.

Bill, who was brought up on Kingsway, was learning the ropes under a man who insisted on the highest standards of spelling, grammar and punctuation.

"He (Mr Butler) was a hard taskmaster and he had me doing several night jobs a week," recalls Bill. "He sent me to night school to get my shorthand and to church on Sundays to cover a sermon to increase my shorthand speed. It had to be typed up on Monday mornings but he never had any intention of using it.

"I really resented it at the time but, later on, I really respected him for the fantastic grounding he'd given me on newspapers."

Bill remembers when Mr Butler made him get a hair cut because he considered it too long.

"I thought I had left all that behind at school," he said. "This was the time of The Beatles and the Swinging Sixties, after all!"

Just six months into his fledgling career, Bill even managed to get 'expelled' from his old school.

Part of his weekly routine back then was to go around all the schools in Goole looking for stories.

One of those schools was Bill's alma mater, Goole Grammar, where there had been rumours circulating about the sale of illegal drugs in the senior common room.

Bill was told by an old classmate that purple hearts - an illegal tablet popular in the sixties - were being sold by pushers in the common room.

Bill wrote the story from accounts he had heard at the school and it was published in the Goole Times.

"It caused uproar," he said. "The headmaster called me in and told me I was persona non grata, which basically meant, 'don't come back here again, pal'."

Newspaper journalism's intoxicating mix of the weird and wonderful were encapsulated delightfully in one unforgettable episode on board a German ship in Goole docks.

The occasion - attended by all the town's dignitaries - was the opening of a new dockland facility.

The drinks flowed freely and the German ship captain noticed Bill had developed a liking for "ze schnapps", so he invited him on board with the line: "I have some rather fine schnapps in my cabin."

Expecting the ship to be full of crew busy at work, Bill readily accepted. Instead, he found the vessel was eerily deserted, yet still the penny hadn't dropped.

It was only when the captain offered him a top-up with his drink, and then tried to kiss him, that Bill realised the German seafarer hadn't invited him to his cabin to discuss nautical science.

The teenage reporter had nothing against gay German ship captains, it's important to note, but he decided there was nothing for it but to make a run for it.

However, this wasnt as easy as it sounds. Bill was a total stranger to the ship's lay-out and he also had to negotiate the vessel's watertight doors, which were "roundy-edged and raised off the floor".

"So there I was, half-cut, running through a maze of corridors, hurdling each time I came to a watertight door, totally lost on a ship I'd never been on before, with him hot on my heels shouting, 'Come back! Come back and finish your schnapps!' I was just a teenager then and very naive - you could say I was relieved to get off the ship."

One other unforgettable experience for the teenage sleuth was encountering the body of a dead man in the local mortuary. The body had been fished out of the river after spending three weeks in its watery grave.

"I didn't faint - but I didn't eat for a couple of days either," he remembers.

Those early experiences didn't, however, put Bill off pursuing what he believes was his natural calling in life.

Since being made chief reporter in the Evening Press's Selby office in 1967, the veteran journalist has worked on-and-off for the York-based daily for the past 41 years.

During that time, he also spent 10 years on the Northern Echo, was a feature writer and deputy editor on the York Gazette and Herald, and chief press officer for the York-based Regional Railways.

Bill, who has three grown-up children and three grandchildren, now lives in Burn with his wife Sonia.

He says that, though his career at The Press has come to an end, he does not intend to retire completely.

"I'm going into PR and freelance photography - the other love of my life," said Bill. "I'm going to set up my own PR business - I'm going to work for me for the first time in 45 years!"

He also says that, while he developed a love for York and the Evening Press, he will always look back on his life in Goole - and working on the Goole Times - with fond memories.

"I have very fond memories of Goole because it was the town I grew up in," he said. "It was the early 1960s; it was me going into the adult world, and it gave me an opportunity to meet all sorts of people."

Published on 7th August 2008 in News.

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