D. R. Segal's Observations of R. C. Hoiles

R. C. Hoiles was a small, irascible bundle of pure energy, a hard-talking soft touch. He had a deadly hobby which he called "close reasoning". Sitting around with R. C., just talking about this and that, was about as comfortable as tight underwear. If he hadn't offended so many people, he'd have been written up in most of the major magazines. But whenever anyone came around to interview him, he wound up interviewing the reporter and making him sore. Polite effusions were not in him.

R. C. was a zealot, and zealots are never easy to be around. Their enthusiasm begins where the average fellow's leaves off. R. C.'s zealotry was with liberty, in all its many aspects and facets. Briefly, he was for it. Oh, Lord, how he was for it!

Never in modern times has a man thumbed his nose at so many conventions and commonly accepted practices as R. C. Hoiles. And with such whopping financial success. Speaking up against all that the political majority holds dear and sacred -- e.g. tax-supported schools -- is supposed to get you clapped in the looney bin or carted off to the poor house.

But R. C. Hoiles was a millionaire several times over; and it has seemed to establish that the American people do not embrace conformity as completely as advertised.

He said out loud things that all of us, in the still small voice, have said to ourselves. He fought dragons of any size, bareknuckled and no-holds-barred. It never occurred to him whether he was offending the biggest merchant in town. In fact, one of the many legends about this improbable man is about the time he invited one of his leading advertisers to take his custom elsewhere if he persisted in thinking he could influence the editorial policy of the newspaper.

He expressed his irritation with such untouchables as the Red Cross, the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the National Education Association, the National Council of Churches and even some of the sacrascant societies of the grand and infallible order of newspaper publishers.

Today there are editors of Hoiles newspapers who never knew R. C. They hear about him and what he said and did and what he was like. They have missed a tremendous experience.