April 3, 1930: Newspapers Merge Promises "Big, Strong" Representation

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

April 3, 1930: Collier Rhoads, the editor of the Boyertown Times, has announced that the Times and the Berks County Democrat have merged, fusing the old and the new to provide Boyertown with a “big, strong newspaper that will be truly representative.”

To the Spatz family, he has extended appreciation of continued friendship dating back to the days when the Rhoads family and the Spatz family were neighbors. He also recounted that animosity was never permitted to creep into the columns of either newspaper while they were rivals.

In 1927, Col. Thomas Leidy Rhoads had set up his son Collier, a graduate in journalism from Cornell University, to start the rival Times and the two had competed for three years. The editor of the Democrat at that time was Frederick Spatz, a son of the previous editor and brother of General Carl A. Spaatz. Frederick, a graduate of Penn State, had also been a pilot in World War I.

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