Newspapers / InterCom (Durham, N.C.) / Oct. 31, 1975, edition 1 / Page 1
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Ingenuity, Initiative Pay Off For Yellow Pages Creator THE MAN WHO MADE THE YELLOW PAGES—L. M. Berry (left) started printing a classified advertising directory for a phone book in the midwest shortly after the turn of the century and has expanded it into the multi-miilion-dollar enterprise commonly known as the Yellow Pages. Berry's closest friendship during his two months at Duke as a diet patient has been with Ned Kear.is, assistant to the vice president for health affairs. When Berry leaves here tomorrow for Dayton on his private jet, Kearns and his wife will be going with him as his weekend guests. (Photo by Jim Wallace). Bv Joe Sigler When you let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages does it ever cross your mind where the Yellow Pages came from? Probably not. We’ve become so accustomed to the classified section of the telephone book that we take it for granted. Perhaps you never considered that someone came up with the Yellow Pages idea in the first place. That somebody is 87-year-old Loren M. Berry, who conceived the idea of the Yellow Pages when he was a very young man in the Midwest shortly after the turn of the century. He has nurtured the idea into a multi-million dollar enterprise that is now international in scope. Over the past couple of months Berry has been at Duke as a rice diet patient, and a few days ago he sat down and talked for a couple of hours with Intercom about the remarkable life he has led. The conversation ranged from his relatively humble beginnings in Wabash, Ind., to his friendships with Orville Wright and presidents of the United States. Berry’s mother was widowed when ntettcom duke univcRsity mc6icM ccntcR VOLUME 22, NUMBER 41 OCTOBER 31,1975 DURHAM, NORTH CAROUNA Relate to Leukemia Profs Find Virus Evidence By William Erwin A professor from the Comprehensive Cancer Center has reported new evidence linking animal viruses and human leukemia. The evidence “is not definitive proof that viruses cause leukemia in man,” said Dr. Richard S. Metzgar. The finding is, he said, another clue hinting that viruses are somehow associated with the disease. Leukemia is a cancer of the blood-forming tissues. It kills more than 15,000 Americans every year, according to the American Cancer Society. Medical researchers know that viruses — some of the tiniest organisms known — cause leukemia in chickens, mice, monkeys and other animals. If they can show that viruses also cause leukemia in man, they will be one step closer to curing the disease. Metzgar, 45, spoke Oct. 17, at the 7th International Symposium on Comparative Leukemia Research in Copenhagen, Denmark. Interviewed before the meeting, he said he and three colleagues have found that “structures on the surface of human leukemia cells are similar to those on viruses which are known to cause leukemia in rodents, cats and nonhuman primates.” Cooperating in the find were: Metzgar; Dr. Dani P. Bolognesi and Dr. Thalachall Monhanakumar, also of the Comprehensive Cancer Center; and Dr. Werner Schaefer of the Max Planck Institute for Virus Research in Tubingen, West Germany. Grants from the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society supported their work. The structure which the four scientists found are antigens—protein markers that trigger a person’s or an animal’s immune system. By looking for the newly found antigens, on human cells, doctors may be able to detect leukemia in a different way, Metzgar said. “Now, hematologists (blood specialists) distinguish cells as leukemic under a microscope,” he said. ‘They look for cells that are large, that are abnormal in other ways.” But leukemic cells can sometimes appear quite normal, the professor (Continued on page 2) he was 4 years old. She worked as a seamstress until her eyesight became too poor, and as soon as her young son became old enough, he began doing all kinds of jobs — peddling newspapers, digging and selling horseradish, running a laundry route, among others. As a teenager he learned through his high school principal about a company in Racine, Wis., that manufactured annunciators for barber shops. An annunciator was a device with numbers on it that was mounted on the wall of the barbershop. Customers would take a number when they came in, and when a barber was finished with a customer he would press a button and the number of the next customer in line would be indicated. “There was always a lot of argument in barbershops about who was next,” Berry said. ‘The barbers were awfully glad to get these.” He installed them at no charge to the shops, because he sold advertising spaces on the face of the annunciator for other businesses in the city, and he also sold advertising on the backs of the number cards the customers took when they came in. The Racine Annunciator Co. assigned him towns and cities in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. It became a thriving business for the young man, but he had other enterprises in mind. He began publishing timetables for interurban railroad lines. These too had advertising spaces on the front and back, and he provided copies of the timetables to the advertisers to give to their customers. “For $5 they got a thousand of these timetables to hand out, and they got their advertising on 20,000,” Berry recalled. “I thought I had quite an invention in that.” By the time that business was going well. Berry was approached about selling advertising for a telephone book in Marion, Ind. He agreed to do it on a commission basis and made money. Then came an opportunity in Kokomo, Ind., but there “they didn’t want to take a chance on a commission basis," Berry said, and they told him that if he would take over the printing of the whole telephone book, he could have everything he made over the printing and advertising costs. That was about 1909. He got three more directories under contract nearby in Indiana and continued to expand his timetable business at the same time. In the meantime. Berry got married and, with the money he’d saved, decided to go to college at (Continued on page 3) +■*■ *■ # PREPARING THE SITE—Like so many dinosaurs Irom ages past, over the last several weeks bulldozers and grading pans have been making their stately and earth shaking progress around the tiisin which will one day hold Duke North Hospital. While it looks like they're just driving around in tircles to the average sidewalk superintendent, according to one ot the drivers, there is methjd to their manoeuvres. Foundations tor the main hospital building and the bed tower will be on ditterent levels, and hence the dirt has to be scraped away carefully to engineering spet itications. Since it has been an unusually dry October, work is progressing on st hedule. (Photo bv David Williamson)
InterCom (Durham, N.C.)
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Oct. 31, 1975, edition 1
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