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Page 9 · column 5 of 5 · from the scan, no model involved
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‘I never want to
outgrow my usefulness
and not realize it. I
never want to hinder if
I can’t help.’
Sarah Latham
Amissville
of 16 years, Latham was left with four daughters from 15 years down to seven months of age. She needed a job.
Two men from the Rappahannock News had asked her to come to work that spring, but were turned down. Now, when they reappeared with a job offer, she took it. On Mondays, Latham sold advertising in Culpeper and Warrenton. On Fridays she did the bookkeeping at the paper’s office in the Tbwn of Washington.
Latham worked at the newspaper for nearly 25 years, doing every job there is to do at a paper and eventually became its editor. She took the pictures, did the layout,' sold the ads, did the books, performed maintenance on the machines, got her hands dirty, covered stories such as President Lyndon Johnson’s whistle stop train tour—the leg from Alexandria to Culpeper.
She wrote the news stories — “I didn’t like the writing part,” she says now — and can still spot a typographical error from across the room.
For some 15 years, Sarah Latham also served as a magistrate, one of three in Rappahannock County. Did she rubber-stamp requests for warrants? “No,” she says, “I sometimes told them ‘no.’”
Through all this Latham never let up at the fire company. She and “AC” had joined the Amissville Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company when it was formed over five decades ago. In those early days, the organization was for men only, with the women forming an auxiliary.
The ladies devoted themselves to
See LATHAM, Page B2
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