Long-Time Glasgow Courier Employee Sonsteng Passes

Stanley "Stan" Sonsteng, a long-time fixture of The Glasgow Courier and the community, passed away on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025.

A 'meet and greet' and time for sharing is planned on Friday, Jan. 17, from 6-8 p.m. at Bell Mortuary in Glasgow.

Funeral services will be on Saturday, Jan. 18, at the Glasgow Evangelical Church, 11 a.m., followed by a lunch after the burial at Highland Cemetery.

Sonsteng's full obituary is on page 4.

A 50-plus career at The Glasgow Courier all started with the Distributive Education Club of America (DECA), an educational program at Glasgow High School in which students received both academic instruction and on-the-job training. As a DECA member, Sonsteng could take an afternoon job and get out of school at noon. At the age of 16, the beginning of his senior year, September 1957, he went to The Glasgow Courier because his sister, Millie's husband, Ivy Knight, worked there. At the time, The Glasgow Courier was located in the Rundle Building on 5th Street South, which also housed the Glasgow Hotel. The Courier occupied part of the main floor, the basement press room and the balcony.

In 2007, Sonsteng celebrated his 50-year anniversary at The Glasgow Courier, and had at that time worked with six owners, many managers and high school student helpers. Throughout his years at The Glasgow Courier, he saw many technological advances, from making hot lead molds of each letter in a row of type to computers. Each new machine required a new repertoire of operation and maintenance skills, with never a week-long instruction period. "I'm not one of those people totally against change," he said in 2007. "I like to see improvements. Anytime you can bypass steps, it's better." In 2007, he also stated that the working attitude was different when he first started as everyone would race to see who got done the fastest.

In 2019, that sentiment had changed a bit, with Sonsteng stating "Technology goes on all over the country. Back then everyone wanted to work, now everyone wants to work with a computer."

Sonsteng told the Courier in 2019, "I started working at The Glasgow Courier in 1957 at 65 cents an hour. I was hired to feed the big newspaper press. At the time the press was called the bob tailed miele press, which held four pages at a time. I had to push the paper down to guide it along. I also sold ads and was the photographer. I ran all of the machines, except for the Linotype and the computer."

Throughout his career, he advanced from 'printer's devil' to the head of the print shop and chief pressman to production manager, which was the position he held until his cancer diagnosis forced his retirement in 2015. Even though he was no longer in the business, retirement saw him stop into The Glasgow Courier office every week to grab that week's issue, chat with the Publisher and provide feedback as well as story ideas.

Sonsteng was the last of the remaining employees of the Courier who worked at the original office on Glasgow's 5th Street South. He also worked with Judy Saindon and Carol Fossum, who both passed in 2020. Looking back at their time at the Courier, both Sonsteng and Saindon had fond memories as stated in a 2019 interview. "We had such a fun bunch. We had lots of parties and picnics. Everyone would pull tricks on each other. We were such a close knit group," recalled Sonsteng. "It used to be such a big crew. Everyone had their own individual job. You never knew day to day what you were going to do," recalled Saindon.

Sonsteng was a wealth of knowledge not only for The Glasgow Courier but for the community of Glasgow. He will be missed by many.