Dellos caps 40-year career at Basin newspaper

Pam Dellos has been working at the Basin Republican Rustler office on C Street since 1986. After almost 40 years of service, outlasting seven or eight editors, she will retire at the end of the month. 

“I really like to serve the people, so I’ve stuck with it because of that,” Dellos said. “I like my customers, the subscribers. I’m going to miss that.”

Dellos started out as the cleaning lady. With a new baby, Chad, she thought it would be a good way to get out of the house. At the time, the historic Rustler office still had its massive printing operation out of the back, with production housed up front. 

“Eric and Linda [Adams] got awards all the time, they had a big travelling trophy that I had to dust,” Dellos remembered. She found the newspaper owners to be a friendly bunch.

“They just appreciated everything I did – ‘Pam, the bathroom just smells so good, the toilet is so clean!’ You know, that’s one thing I really learned from them, they really appreciated everything you did, even if it was just cleaning a dirty toilet,” Dellos said. 

A little less than a year after Dellos started, the paper got a computer. The beacon of new technology offered a reprieve from the old way of addressing papers, where each subscriber had their own address plate made, which then had to be individually stamped. 

Richard Lechner, a teacher in Greybull, was the resident computer whiz, and he set up a database for the paper to print address labels. Dellos took over the label operation, a step on her way to becoming the circulation manager. Some old address plates are still tucked away at the newspaper office for the sentiment. 

To put the paper together, print photos and text were physically laid out and photographed to create a negative, which was then used to make a printing plate. Dellos remembered many hours opaquing – using a big black pen to fill the unwanted dots left on negatives – with the fastest typer in the west, Marie Sparks. A press driver would collect the negatives and take them to Powell for printing. 

“One time Eric forgot one … and so we called Probst on the corner (in Greybull) and had them flag Eric down in the little black pickup. He stopped, and then we ran the negative to him so he could get the complete paper to Powell,” Dellos laughed. “And then we finally got a bag phone.”

In the newspaper year 1990, the Adams decided the Press Association was missing a key player by not awarding label makers or opaquers. So they made their own award and presented it to Dellos, reading, “Your dedication and skill involved in using a Magic Marker are to be applauded.”

“We laughed and laughed but I proudly displayed it behind my desk,” Dellos said. “They also always made me feel like my job was just as important as any other job.”

Dellos took that mindset and applied it to all the kids that have come in to help mail papers over the years, making them feel important while teaching them the value of hard work. Nowadays, she is hiring the children of some of her first-generation helpers. 

All three of Dellos’s kids, Megan, Chad and Staci, have helped her mail out the paper. When Dellos was pregnant with Staci, she developed a sore spot on her belly, which she realized had developed from using it to help turn quarter-fold papers and tie them. Staci would then take over kicking back. Heather Marcus volunteered to tie to relieve her. Once she was born, Staci was a frequent addition to the newspaper office. 

Family was always important at the paper; the one you had at home and at work. 

“The people that you work with, you’re really in close contact with them all week long. And I suppose other jobs are like that too, but I don’t know other jobs very well,” Dellos said. She bawled when her favorite editor, Karla Pomeroy, now editor at Northern Wyoming News in Worland, left the office. The pair had gone on “walk-talks” on mornings above zero degrees – then, after their legs near froze off – 10 degrees. 

When David Peck bought the Basin Republican Rustler and Greybull Standard in 1999, Dellos ended up taking over circulation, bookkeeping, answering the phone and proofreading to help. 

“We got air conditioning and later on new lights to the building and new carpet. It was so easy to stay because he really believed in family, so I was able to attend all my kids’ games all the way into college, as long as your work was done,” Dellos said. 

Over time, the once prevalent Rustler office shrunk, in line with other newspapers across the country. In recent years, it has been just Dellos and a couple reporters, with editing out of the Greybull Standard office and design out of the Lovell Chronicle. 

“We were the big paper. Everything hubbed out of here…Then you go to kind of the last in the line,” Dellos said. It was hard, she said, but she stayed on. Employees coming on after her have benefitted from all her knowledge of the business. 

Now that she is looking to retire, Dellos is one of the longest-standing Big Horn County newspaper employees, rivaled only by Marlys Good. She will look to travel with husband Mike Dellos; they have kids and grandkids in Utah, South Dakota and Minnesota to visit. She also plans to go see her 90-year-old father back in Wisconsin. 

The Basin Republican Rustler will have an open house on Thursday, Feb. 19 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at 409 West C Street in Basin to celebrate Dellos’s retirement. Cards are welcome.