Torbert Funeral Chapel
James A. "Jim" Flood Sr., founder of the Dover Post Company in Dover, DE died May 13. He was 95.
Jim ? known for his insistence on being called by his nickname and for his iron-grip handshake ? succumbed to late-onset Alzheimer Disease at his vacation home near St Michaels MD. His wife, Kathleen, several of her visiting family members and his caregiver were with him.
Jim arrived back in Dover ? he had been the Wilmington News Journal papers' downstate bureau chief years earlier ? in 1975, where, backed by a group of local investors, he started up the Dover Post weekly newspaper, devoted to coverage of local news.
The early years were touch-and-go. Early on, the newspaper's first office, in Treadway Towers, was reduced from two rooms to one. His accountant questioned at one point how Jim could sleep at night, as he was bankrupt except for the filing. The initial investors pulled out.
Jim and his family were then sole owners of the company. His late wife Mary ? who died in 2012 ? and their seven children all worked for the company at one time or another. Under Jim's guidance, it ultimately prospered.
As for sleep, Jim's philosophy was, "Let's get a good night's sleep and deal with tomorrow tomorrow." But he also worked so long and hard that he blacked out from exhaustion, once in the Blue Hen Mall, once in Holy Cross church.
Over the next 33 years, the company grew to include 12 local weekly newspapers and advertising publications, a massive press on which to print them and other businesses' publications, a small job printing press and a staff of about 175.
Jim became a mainstay of the community, serving in many volunteer capacities and supporting many local organizations and institutions. He became well known for his kindness, generosity, community service and civic pride. "I was in it for the money only up to a point," he said of his newspaper career.
Jim began his newspaper career in his hometown of Biddeford, a small textile city in Maine, when an injury sidelined him from the high school football team. From the sidelines, he began covering games for the Biddeford Daily Journal, writing his stories in pencil on paper, then running with them to the home of his aunt, the newspaper's Linotype machine operator.
One day he boasted to his mother "Someday I'm going to own five newspapers." To take him down a peg, she pretended to be unimpressed and said, "Why not? It would only cost a quarter."
He joined the Army after graduation in 1946 and shortly became editor of the Fort Belvoir, Virginia, newspaper, The Castle. After being honorably discharged ? having declined the general's offer to sponsor him for West Point ? he enrolled as an English major at The Catholic University of America in Washington DC. There he was eventually editor of the campus newspaper, The Tower, and the yearbook, The Cardinal.
There also he met and upon graduation in 1952 married fellow student Mary Clark Storch of Paterson NJ.
Jim had taken a job as the Baltimore Sunpapers' first Eastern Shore correspondent. He liked to tell the story of how "the boys in Baltimore" thought him unbelievably lucky that the papers' office in the Tidewater Inn in Easton was under the same roof as a bar.
During his years with the Sunpapers, he covered the opening of the first span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the fireworks and munitions factory explosion in Chestertown that killed 11 people, showering body parts across the landscape, and Hurricane Hazel.
Jim said in later years that to advance at the Sunpapers he would have had to move to Baltimore. He did not want a metropolitan-area life for his family. He wanted them to have one that was more like his own small-town America upbringing. He applied that reasoning again after having worked stints as editor of the Cecil Whig in Elkton MD, then as reporter and columnist for the News Journal papers.
Working in Delaware's capital city, he came to the notice of Gov. J. Caleb Boggs. Boggs was elected to the U.S. Senate and in time offered Jim the job of administrative assistant ? now called chief-of-staff ? and press secretary. Jim settled his family in Camp Springs MD. After six years on Capitol Hill, he took advantage of an opportunity both to get back into the newspaper business and move his family out of the metropolitan area. For the next few years, he was part-owner and editor of Coastal Communications in Rehoboth Beach DE.
At that juncture, he could have entered politics and run for U.S. Senator or governor. But again, he had already decided he didn't want the life of an elected official for his family.
The Dover Post Company was his crowning accomplishment as a newspaperman and businessman. In 1994, he was named the U.S. Small Business Administration's small businessperson of the year for Delaware. In 2009 he was inducted into Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association's Newspaper Hall of Fame. He devoted much time to the Central Delaware Chamber of Commerce including serving on its excellence in business awards committee for 27 years.
He sold the company in 2008 but for several years continued writing his popular column "From a Window Overlooking the St. Jones."
Later on, he married Kathleen Casey of Charles Town WV, a retired newspaperwoman who had spent her career on daily newspapers in New Jersey.
Jim was also preceded in death by his sister Ruth and brother-in-law Joseph McPadden.
He is also survived by his brother David of Laval, Quebec; sister Florence Belisle and brother-in-law Gerald of Rexford NY; seven Casey brothers-in-law and six sisters-in-law.
Also by his children Mary Kaltreider (Fred) of Dover, James (Ann) of Wyoming, David (Carolyn) of Lewes, Donald (Helen) of Lewes, Ruth Clifton (Don) of Milford, John (Dan Barrish) of New York and Paul of Arlington VA; 16 grandchildren, numerous great-grandchildren, and ? on both sides of his family ? nieces, nephews, great-nieces, great-nephews and one great-great niece.
A Memorial Mass will be celebrated at 12 Noon, Monday, June 12, 2023, at Holy Cross Church, 631 S. State Street, Dover, with burial to follow at the church cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to Holy Cross church, the Greater Dover Boys and Girls Club at 1683 New Burton Road, Dover DE 19904 and the Talbot Hospice Foundation, 586 Cynwood Drive, Easton MD 21601.
Arrangements are under the direction of Torbert Funeral Chapels, Dover. Letters of condolence may be sent and guestbook signed at www.torbertfuneral.com.
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