PREFACE
ANYONE with an ounce of sense knows it is impossible to do anything successful alone. Anyone with two ounces knows it is also impossible to thank everyone responsible for contributing to any success. How could anyone person take credit for this second collection of "Third and Main" columns? I wrote them, yes-but the inspirations came from everywhere, the readers shared in large measure, the men in the mechanical departments, the boys who delivered the papers-even the chronic complainers played their parts in the writing of a daily human interest column for the past 20 years.
I am particularly grateful to Mr. Dwight E. Young, the editor of The Dayton Herald in 1944 who gave the nod to start "Third and Main" and to Mr. Glenn Thompson, the editor of The Dayton Journal Herald in 1964 who encourages "Third and Main" to broaden its vistas.
Without Wayne Jerdon, promotion manager who master-minded the technical details of book publishing, this collection of columns would never have got out of their shoe-box files Naomi Fisher was invaluable in cataloguing the shoe-box contents Bill Leyes has the understanding and the talent to subtly underline words with pertinent sketches ... and to Dorothea White, my thanks for knowing-through these past 20 years of columning-how to encourage in discouragement, how to deflate in moments of grandeur, how to share in moments of success and how to be a friend, indeed.
MARJ HEYDUCK
Nov. 20, 1964
FOREWORD
TWENTY YEARS AGO--On November 20, 1944-the pulse of our Miami Valley quickened.
Maybe it was barely perceptible those first few days. If the valley had known what it was in for, however, its pulse would have jumped.
What happened was that on Page 7 of The Dayton Herald there appeared a new column (consisted of three paragraphs). Name was "Third and Main"; author, Marj Heyduck.
The first paragraph told of a Dayton company's receiving its first letter from a business associate in liberated Paris.
In the second, Dayton began to get the real Marj. It told how the war had changed the children's books on sale here, but not "Little Black Samba." She was delighted that in his book Little Black Samba still ate his "one hundred and sixty-nine pancakes because he was so hungry."
So Marj delighted a valley over which the gloom of the great war still hung. She's been doing so ever since. Her devoted audience has widened with each of the 20 years.
The reason is a simple one, it seems to me. I think it is because her heart is attuned to the heart of the beautiful valley in which she writes.
If its heart beats, her column answers.
The book you hold in your hand repeats some of its most momentous ones. We hope it is a pleasant reminder of all the fun you and she have had in these two decades.
GLENN THOMPSON
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