A High School Prank on the Newspaper

 

Don’t try this on your hometown newspaper.

It worked once but it won’t work again.

Barry Merrill says it was the summer of 1958, shortly before he headed off to start college at Notre Dame.

“I wrote up a false wedding announcement for my friend Bill Vines - William Dorsey Vines, now a Knoxville lawyer - to ‘Juanita Marie Peterson.’”

“Juanita” was actually Barry’s friend John Peterson (name changed by request of “Juanita”). Barry says he delivered the typed notice to the Wedding desk while that clerk was at lunch. “Intentionally.”

He had the correct address and info for Bill Vines’ parents, but “Juanita’s” parents were too well known so he substituted another Peterson in Orebank. He even made Bill Vines a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. “We were all active in ham radio.”

Barry didn’t have to wait long for his prank to make print. “The announcement was on the front page of the Sunday paper, as I wrote it, verbatim. Monday morning, I'm taking typing in summer school, having graduated already, when two of Kingsport's finest walk into class, ask the teacher something, and she points to me. They escort me out of school - no Miranda rights back then! - and drive me downtown, saying absolutely nothing.”

Barry says he wasn’t worried although there were perhaps other escapades that might have been the cause of his arrest. “I'm assuming I'm going to be taken to the Police Station in the old library. But when they turned left to take me to the newspaper, I knew this was not a real bust. They delivered me to the Editor's office. He thought my purpose was to embarrass the paper and threatened me with jail time for ‘Impersonating a Military Personnel.’”

In the end Barry says the Times News editor relented when he realized it was not directed at the paper but just a prank. 

But come Tuesday morning, “There was a disclaimer that ‘William Dorsey Vines is not, and has not been married. And William Dorsey Vines is not, and has not been in the U.S. Army.’”

Barry says, try as he might, “I could never get John Peterson to ask them to state ‘Juanita Marie Peterson is not, and has not been a woman.’” 

 

We Are Not Amused

The publisher at the time was C.P. Edwards Jr. The general manager was Ben Haden. W.J. McAuliffe was Editor of the Editorial Page. Ellis Binkley was Head of the News Department. 

I knew Bink. He had a sense of humor. I don't think Mac would have been involved in a wedding announcement. I guess the editor who was not amused was either Ben Hadon, who later became a TV preacher, or C.P. Edwards.