Today we are sharing the part of Louise Pittinger Long’s story where she tells us about her husband, Brown County’s own Glenn E. Long.
Glenn E. Long, born January 30, 1899, on a farm near Nashville, Indiana, and he was the son of John E. and Lottie Long.
The Long family later moved from Brown County to Muncie, Indiana, where Glenn graduated from high school. He later attended Wabash College at Crawfordsville.
After Lou Pettinger Long’s retirement, following DePauw’s 1969 commencement, she began to live full time in her Brown County family cabin, located in Jackson Township of Brown County.
She tells us she has many records of her late husband, Glenn Long. Well, let’s quote her, “A veritable storehouse,” of her husband’s memoirs, she continues, some are copies of Glenn Long’s short-lived Helmsburg newspaper, the Bean Blossom Valley Builder, known to have been printed at least from July through October of 1937.
It was dubbed, by editor/publisher Long, the biggest little paper in America. Generally, it consisted of four 8½-by-11-inch pages. It came out weekly and advertised a subscription price of 50 cents per year.
Dateline on the newspaper was Helmsburg. It was believed to be printed in a log cabin on the Long family farm, where Glenn also had a job printing business. He also edited and published the Morgantown News and Morgantown Truth.
Every issue of the Bean Blossom Builder included a front-page poem by Glenn. Some of the advertisers were J.E. Wade Helmsburg Hardware Company, Howard Adams’ Gulf Service Station at Bean Blossom, the Emerson Clark Funeral Home at Morgantown and Klick’s Grill at Nashville.
C.C. Pitzer of Helmsburg, back in 1937, advertised in the Builder that he was selling bacon and hamburger for 20 cents a pound. Steak was 29 cents a pound, roasting beef was 18 cents per pound.
Local patriot Glenn Long dedicated every issue of the Bean Blossom Builder to “building the best community in the best county in the best state of the union.” It was very clear that he thought it already was.
Lester C. Nagley, Sr., in the Brown County Democrat dated April 5, 1962, called Long “perhaps the most talented newspaper man and publicist ever to come forth from its hills.”
Glenn Long was mightily influenced by James Whitcomb Riley, and it shows in his own poems. Here is one stanza of a little thing he wrote, called “Please Pass the Gumption:”
“We have enough of shouters/Spouting ways to save creation/As well as crops of doubters/Needing swift obliteration/We have enough inventions/Some we’ll wish we had forgotten/And we’re swamped with good intentions/yet the trend is toward the rotten.”
The old cabin where the press was set up burned long ago. The press and type are still there, completely sunken in the soft shores of Lick Creek. They tick very loud if you use a metal detector.
This is all of a part of the peace and quiet, the memories and reflections, into which Louise Pittenger Long has retired in Brown County, according to the account that follows.
Not driving … nor owning an automobile, Lou is not active in the community, but she enjoys it vicariously. Her membership in the Methodist Church remains in Pittsburg, Indiana. She belongs to the Business and Professional Women of Muncie, Indiana, for the past 25 years but is not a member here in Brown County.
She is a charter member (since 1920) of the Gama Gama Sorority at Ball State, which has now gone Pi Phi. The original Gammas still meet. About 15 came from all over this summer, to visit Mrs. Nay and Mrs. Christy, two of their former sponsors. The women are now residents in the Westminster Presbyterian Home along route 31.
However, Lou couldn’t go because she had no transportation. She said, “I’ve never been so disappointed in all of my life.”
Living in the woods, Lou dresses comfortably and casually. Blouse and blue jeans, for instance. But she has, in her words, “enough dress up clothes to last 10 women all of their lives.
The cats couldn’t care less what I wear. But they are important to me.
Did you ever have six cats in the house? They never eat at the same time or come in or go out at the same time — “So, it keeps me from getting arthritic!”
At the time of Mr. Glenn E. Long’s death, he was the managing editor of the Healthways Magazine. For several years he was city editor of the St. Petersburg Times, and later served as state editor of the Indianapolis, Indiana News. In 1948 he moved to Webster City, Iowa, and had been employed with the National Chiropractic Association.
Mr. Long served in World War I and was a member of the American Legion in Indiana.
He was a member of the Lions Club and the Masonic Lodge and was past president of district High Twelve organization.
Glenn passed away March 14, 1959, at the Hamilton County Hospital, the result of a heart attack. He is buried in the Oak Ridge Cemetery, Brown County, Indiana. The End.
Submitted by Pauline Hoover
Brown County
Historical Society,
