Digital Bob Archive

E.J. White was the name that appeared on the masthead of his newspapers, but he was universally known as Stroller White and for more than a quarter of a century he was the most quoted newspaper writer in the Yukon and Alaska. Although he had worked on daily papers here and there, including Florida and Washington State and Dawson, Yukon Territory, he preferred the more leisurely pace of the weekly. His papers included The Whitehorse Star, The Douglas Island News, and finally, in Juneau, The Stroller's Weekly. His column, The Stroller, appeared in the latter three papers and was widely reprinted, as were many of his editorial paragraphs and some of his news stories. All of this greatly enhanced his reputation as a sage and a wit, if it did nothing for his pocketbook. Now and again The Stroller lamented: \"There goes an old reprobate who never bought a nickel paper in his life and will probably live forever while people who pay their subscriptions on time die young!\"

Stroller White, after a few months at Skagway in the Days of '98, a few years at Dawson and a dozen years at Whitehorse, came to Gastineau Channel in the spring of 1916 and bought The Douglas Island News from its owner-editor, Charles A.
Hopp. The paper had started as the Wrangell News in June, 1898, then moved to Douglas in November of the same year. Hopp, although only 50, was a sick man when he sold the paper and died a few weeks later.

The timing of his purchase was not exactly the best for Stroller White because a year later three of the Treadwell mines were flooded and Douglas went into a rapid decline. He hung on there, boosting the town and doing what he could to uplift the morale of its people, but there was a limit. In July, 1921, he moved his equipment to Juneau and into the building on Second Street that now houses a shoe repair shop and a camera store. And there the paper became The Stoller's Weekly and blossomed forth with The Stroller column, and Bedtime Stories for Alaska Children, and with joyous headlines and news leads such as this one on the 1923 legislative session: \"Territorial Brain Mill Grinds Steadily. With forty of its allotted sixty days rolled up on the scroll of Time and laid way on the shelf of Eternity never to be recalled, the Territorial brain mill is running full time to prevent the spout from which laws, memorials and resolutions are precipitated into the cold and clammy world from becoming clogged or otherwise gummed up.\" The Stroller could write of the legislature with an insider's insight. In his first run for office he won a seat in the 1919 House of Representatives, then was elected Speaker thereof, a not inconsiderable feat for a first-termer. He did not run again but did head the Territorial Bureau of Publicity for a year.

Stroller White died in 1930. His widow, Josephine, continued the paper for a time, then sold it, and it appeared through the years into the 1950s as the Alaska Weekly Press, Alaska Daily Press, and Alaska Sunday Press.

If Rudy continues to put ink on paper, you'll see more of The Stroller's writings. Many of them were, of course, topical and are now stale, but others still contain a chuckle or two.