‘It’s just hometown news ... I read it all’

Area family made the paper a daily part of their lives

Centerville resident Kathy Kavanaugh and her mother, Kettering resident Mrs. Herbert E. Whalen Jr., have been longtime Dayton Daily News subscribers.

“I get that paper every morning,” Kavanaugh said. “If it’s not here, I’m bummed. I read the whole thing from head to toe. Gosh, I think I really like the Local section and then the recipes they have, the different interest articles.”

“It’s just hometown news,” she said. “I’ve lived here all my life. I’m a native Daytonian. I read it all.”

In fact, you might say subscribing to the newspaper for them is something of a decades-long family tradition.

Kavanaugh, 71, subscribed in her own household from 1975. Growing up, her mom, 95, subscribed from the mid-1940s shortly after getting married.

And it was a dual-newspaper household — Mrs. Whalen subscribed both to the Journal Herald and the Dayton Daily News for years. Kavanaugh doesn’t remember a time when the paper wasn’t threaded into the family’s life.

“Of course, it was in the house when we were growing up,” Kavanaugh said. “So we always had access to it.”

The paper connection goes deeper, in fact. The father and grandfather of Kavanaugh’s husband, James, also 71, worked in circulation for the newspaper.


To finish the 120th year of the Dayton Daily News this month we are featuring stories of some of our lifelong subscribers. Read them all at DaytonDailyNews.com

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