May moves along as speedy as early-month breezes in our hometown fanning gas prices to more than $3.50 per gallon and adding a few more years to businesses celebrating anniversaries.

Perhaps the sign of a good printer is a lack of ink covering the person. If you walk into the print shop at Newport Printing, you will find such a fellow who has been as reliable as the sheet-fed presses Willie Green has owned for years. Jeff Lillard learned the trade and makes any print job, straight black ink or multicolor, look sharp and clean. This spring, I decided to learn more about a fellow I've known only casually through my long-time friendship and business association with Willie.

You saw the full page Plain Talk adv. he used to announce his 40 years of service to the Cocke County area as a full-service print shop. I will detail a few things about the business of which Jeff and others have been associated.

Jeff was born in Newport the son of the late Jim Lillard and Edna (Williams) Lillard, who went to work at the old Regency Health Care Center, when it first opened about 25 years ago. You know it as Newport Health & Rehabilitation Center. As Age 76, when she died last Dec. 6, she had still been working to within weeks of becoming ill. Jim Lillard worked at the Stokely can shop and retired when it finally shut down. There is another son, Ricky, who is disabled and lives in Morristown. For many years, Jeff has had a companion and friend, Wanda Stanley. She is a forklift operator at ConAgra and started at the former Stokely cannery when just a teenager. A McGaha by birth, her mother is Pauline Green, who I am told is not related to Willie. Her brother, Danny McGaha, retired from the Army and joined Wanda at the cannery. She has another brother, Chester McGaha, a truck driver and half-brother, Albert Green, and half-sister, Vickie Green.

Jeff has not always worked at Newport Printing, though it may seem so. He attended Cocke County High School and later obtained a GED. For a while he lived and worked in Chattanooga before returning to Newport. Randy Fine was working with Willie in the mid 1980s and told Jeff of a job opening at the printer. Willie hired Jeff and began training him. At age 46, with some gray hair he can operate any of the many presses, all of which are sheet-fed off-set. These presses are different than ours, which is basically a revamped vintage 1970s model Goss web press. Jeff and Willie agree that computers have vastly changed the world of printing. Desktop computers and printers have reduced the demand for commercial printing. Jeff handles deadlines well and has run single jobs of more than 50,000 impressions. Our biggest press runs are about 13,000 newspapers.

When he is not putting ink on paper, Jeff enjoys working around his house or helping his mother out at her home. Jeff and Wanda live off Jones Circle not far from the ambulance service. He is also a big UT Vol fan and follows NASCAR racing. I suspect you will find him around the soft clacking of the presses for many years to come. During a visit last week, Willie showed me a press that was older than he and Jeff combined. The flat-bed press has a giant wheel that is turned to cause the plate to make an impression on paper. How did he come by this 1890s model? Tyrone Cooper had acquired it years ago and asked Willie if he wanted to buy it. It was within the past two weeks I bumped into Tyrone at Wal-Mart and he told me his sister, Rhonda McClanahan had suffered a heart attack. Her husband is veteran salesman Roger McClanahan with Volunteer Chevrolet.

I asked Willie, in all the years of printing what was his biggest and most unusual job? That was easy. It was in the early 1970s when Gerald Raines with Stokely's gave him the job to print 1.8 million government labels for food cans. These were all machine cut after printing. 

We also talked a little about the start of his business on the eve of the anniversary date of May 15, 1968, when Willie got out of the service and went into the print business. Although he has been in his current building across from US Bank since 1978, he was at three locations prior to this. Those who live in Carson Springs area might recall his first small shop at Brooks Maloy's car business just down from Laymon's Market. Then, he moved to Eastport across from Brock's Market in the two-story building. Newport Printing occupied half the ground floor and a restaurant was in the other half. This was before my time but Beecher Styles, whose TV shop was off Lincoln Ave., recalls it. About 1973, Willie moved to Cosby Hwy. into what is now the Harold Grooms car lot and apartment building and ran his shop there until 1977. The Cocke County Banner had occupied the current Newport Printing building off East Broadway since 1970 until it merged with the Plain Talk about 1976. Willie bought the vacant building making it his business home for the past 30 years.

In plain talk, between Willie, Jeff, and the Plain Talk we've just about printed everything that's fit to print.