RIP: The ultimate early adapter

Yesterday in Princeton, a bittersweet reunion: Generations of men and women who had their first professional journalism experience at the campus daily came to pay tribute to our mentor, Larry Dupraz.

Cigar-chomping, profane but a meticulous craftsman, Larry did not have the string of degrees that other Princeton professors had. Yet he was one of the school's great teachers. He died Dec. 24.

For nearly three hours in a huge chemistry lecture hall, dozens of Princeton grads got up to talk about how this man, a compositor and volunteer fireman, had changed their lives. The speakers ranged from Eberhard Faber, of the No. 2 lead pencil fame, to retired People magazine ME Landon Jones, to investment bankers, lawyers, a plastic surgeon and a few ink-stained wretches like yours truly. At the end, a marvelous slideshow by the Wall Street Journal's Tom Weber and his friend, Cincy lawyer, Doug Widmann, walked through Larry's six-decade career. Photos of him were interspersed the front pages he helped us make up. In the background: music of the period. The 'Sixties were my favorite: What Larry would have thought of having his photos run with with a voiceover by Jimi Hendrix is pretty amusing to contemplate.

I'm including Larry in my blog because he was, as one of the speakers pointed out, "the ultimate early adapter." Larry's career spanned three enormous changes in journalism production: He started out in the romantic era when pages were printed off metal type locked carefully into position, a mirror image of what it would be on the printed page. Larry was a master of proofing pages upside down and backwards. His professional life (but evidentally not his ego) was bound up in that skill and his ability to run the linotype machine. "I'm a hot lead man," he told some of the Daily Princetonian's student journalists. But in the early 1970s, Larry helped transition the paper to cold lead. Then -- and this is the extraordinary tribute to his work ethic and dedication -- in the 1990s, well after retirement, he learned MacIntosh's Quark so he could continue to help us "damn kids," as he liked to refer to us, put out the newspaper.

Like any good educator, he also made time for fun. He started a student journalist softball team (the iconically-named Yellow Rag) and hosted an annual picnic every Princeton reunions weekend so he could introduce the many generations of 'Prince writers to each other.

Here's to Larry. He may never have had a Princeton degree (though several classes made him honorary members), but he belonged on the campus nonetheless. He was a man who never stopped learning. It was an honor to have been among the many lives he touched.