Kern County Obituaries

Bill Penn

Submitted by Don Stowell; 13 Feb 2008

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Mojave Desert News; 29 Apr 1999

Bill Penn - More Than a Memory
By Claudia Stover
We think of great men and women as those who are famous, who are described in biographies 
and history books. Great people are the ones we study in school. But there is greatness in many 
every day people that often stay unrecognized and sometimes unappreciated.
I worked for Bill Penn for nearly 12 years. He was my employer, but he was also my friend and 
mentor. He was so much a part of my life that it's difficult and painful to write about him in the 
past tense. It's hard to think of him as a memory.
But a memory is more than a play back of life scenes, like a little movie in your mind. It's more 
than a painting, recreating the color of life with the strokes of a brush... And it's more than a 
photograph, freezing points in time with images painted in light.
It's more because a memory has its own life - one that captures the complexities and subtleties that 
helped define Bill Penn.
Bill was raised in a newspaper and it was a first and lasting love. It was a profession he chose.  It 
wasn't that he couldn't have been a great tennis player - he had 600 title trophies and earned a tennis 
scholarship. He could have turned professional. But he didn't. 
It wasn't that he couldn't have been a contender. He boxed in the Golden Gloves and maybe he 
could have turned pro. But he didn't.
And it wasn't that he couldn't have had an impressive career in law enforcement - he was a deputy 
sheriff and police photographer. He could have stayed. But he didn't.
It may have been because there was ink flowing through his veins as real as life blood.
Bill was born Oct. 17, 1929 in Cordell, Oklahoma to Dorothy and Liberty Penn. The family lived in 
Texas for most of his childhood, and then moved to Tucumcari, New Mexico, where he 
attended and graduated from high school.
His newspaper career started at age 15, when he went to work for Tucumcari newspaper, the American-
Leader. He also worked summers for the San Benito News in La Feria/Texas, owned by his uncle, Steve Elam. 
After high school, he worked at the Tucumcari Daily News for a year, then returned to the American Leader as 
advertising manager. The paper was sold after six months, and he returned to Texas to work in the printing and 
job sales departments of the San Benito News. The paper was owned by the News Printing Company, Inc., 
which belonged to his uncle.
When the company bought the La Feria News in 1952, Bill was named as its editor-manager, which made 
him, at 24 years old, the youngest managing editor in Texas, and possibly the nation. Two years later, he 
became the official photographer for the company, and headed the photography departments for all three 
papers, in addition to his management duties at the La Feria News. He had also been accepted into the 
Professional Photographers of America, Inc., one of the oldest professional associations in the country.
Bill moved to Palmdale in 1961, and worked i n advertising sales for the Antelope Valley Press. He bought the 
Boron Enterprise in 1966 and the rights to the Rosamond Flyer. He and his daughters, Cher and Michelle, 
lived in North Edwards for awhile, then moved to Boron in 1968 then later to California City.
Bill developed The Enterprise as an East Kern County newspaper, including the communities of Boron, 
North Edwards, Rosamond, California City and Mojave.
Shortly after I started working for him in 1974, I dubbed it the Weekly Miracle. It was a miracle the paper was 
printed every week. There was a seat-of-the-pants kind of wobbly stability to the business, and the 
newspaper was order born weekly out of chaos.
Working for The Enterprise was aggravating and frustrating and I quit at least twice a year. (Bill 
saved 21 of my resignation letters, which ran about six pages each, but lost them in the fire when the 
paper burned down in the mid-80s).
I note that only because, with the passage of time, the aggravation, frustration and chaos aren't 
meaningful except in the context of personal growth. Not to mention it was also always interesting, 
sometimes exciting and even dramatic!
From Bill Penn I learned confidence and a sense of competency that still carry me through (most of the 
time!) I learned that it was just as much about people as it was about "news". The local newspapers are almost 
the last places left where people can read their own life stories - their births and deaths, achievements and 
tragedies, graduations and births-and he was committed to-making sure there was space for those stories.
He constantly astonished me. He could listen to five conversations at once and build the paper at the same 
time, and still catch a flash on the police radio. He walked on silent feet - no small feat for a man who 
stood 6'4" tall and weighed...well, 235 was the most he would admit-but none of us ever seemed to 
hear him coming.
I remember his patience, his kindness, his sense of humor and rumbles of laughter. He was a 
complexity of contradictions - philosophical and practical, logical and emotional, reasonable and 
stubborn. But he was always fully engaged in life.
After the fire destroyed The Enterprise, he began teaching reprographics and later Visual 
Communications with the Kern County Regional Occupational Program (KCROP) through the Muroc 
Unified School District.
I visited his classes several times and was not surprised to see chaos, and rnaybe even some aggravation 
and frustration. But what is more important, I saw creativity, and students who were excited and 
interested in what they were learning and doing.
How could they not be? Bill Penn's love for his work and for them was infectious.
As I said, he was a great man.
Not because he lived and breathed newspapers, or played great tennis, or piloted airplanes or took great 
pictures.
Bill Penn was great because he cared so much he made a difference and touched the lives of so many people.
Bill Penn was more than a memory. And he left a memory that is more than a painting or a photograph - 
the fabric of his memory is woven with the threads of sadness and loss, but also with honor, and friendship and 
love.

NOTE: Photo At: http://www.calarchives4u.com/photos/kern/