On the afternoon of April 17, 1995, with the rush toward deadline underway, Houston Post executive editor Ernie Williamson got a curious call from upper management, summoning him to the publisher's office.

"Make sure you get the paper out on time," Williamson was told. What an odd thing, he remembers thinking, immediately wondering with dread if the paper was being sold again. Still, why ask about the press run?

He pushed his boss for clues. He got none.

About 1 a.m., his home phone jarred him awake. "Is the paper getting out on time?" asked publisher L.L. "Ike" Massey for a second time. "Well, sure, as far as I know," Williamson sputtered. By now, though, he was truly spooked and knew there would be no more sleep.

Little did he know Houston's news media landscape was being forever reshaped a few miles away as the final edition of the Houston Post was rolling off the presses in the early hours of April 18. Hearst, parent company of the crosstown rival the Houston Chronicle, had bought the presses, the Post's building, its subscriber list and other assets in a $120 million deal that had been cloaked in secrecy.

The worry was that if the last paper did not come out on time it would be lost.

More Information Timeline 1880 The Houston Evening Post founded. Sold four years later for $5,600 and folds. 1885 The Houston Morning Chronicle and Houston Evening Journal merge and resurrect the name Houston Post. 1895 William P. Hobby is hired at age 17 as a clerk. 1901 Marcellus E. Foster leaves the Post and founds the Houston Chronicle, an evening paper. 1924 Oil millionaire Ross Sterling buys the Post for $1 million and merges it with the Houston Dispatch to become the Houston Post-Dispatch. 1931 The Post-Dispatch is sold at auction to Jesse Jones, who also owned the Chronicle. He later changes its name to the Houston Post. 1939 Hobby buys controlling interest in the Post. 1964 Hobby dies, leaving the Post to his wife, Oveta Culp Hobby, son William Hobby Jr. and a daughter. 1979 The Chronicle begins a morning edition. 1983 The Post is sold to the Toronto Sun Publishing Co. for $100 million. 1987 The Post is sold for $150 million to MediaNews Group. 1995 The Post closes.

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When Williamson arrived at the newsroom later that morning nearly 2,000 tearful, angry employees were being gathered in groups and told they were out of work. Security was on hand to make sure there was no trouble as people filed out to the parking lot, toting boxes from cleaned-out desks.

The Houston Post, a feisty, daily diary of a growing city since 1880, was closing for good, quite literally turning the page in journalism history for Houston.

At its demise, the Post was officially 115 years old. But it could trace a lineage to the days of Sam Houston and Santa Anna.

The publishers of the Post's predecessor, The Telegraph and Texas Register, were putting out a paper on the fly with a dismantled printing press loaded on an ox cart as they fled the Mexican army. That press ended up in Buffalo Bayou. How it happened is a little murky, but popular lore has it Santa Anna's troops did the dumping and publisher Gail Borden, later of condensed milk fame, and his brother, Thomas, missed out on what should have been the story of their careers. A week later, on April 21, 1836, the Battle of San Jacinto ushered in a nine-year era of Texas independence.

In 1880, the Houston Evening Post was founded by Borden's grandson, Gail Borden Johnson, who merged it with The Telegraph. It billed itself "the people's paper" but folded four years later. It wasn't gone long, though, as both paper and name were resurrected in 1885 when the Houston Morning Chronicle and the Houston Evening Journal merged to become the Houston Post.

The newly minted paper boldly predicted: "In a hundred years Houston will probably be a city."

At the cusp of the 20th century, a young reporter, William Sydney Porter, was hired for his flair. He later served time in prison for embezzlement, but history will best remember him for his short stories under the name O. Henry.

About the same time, 17-year-old William P. Hobby got a job as a clerk. He rose to business writer and city editor before leaving in 1907 for the political world, eventually becoming the 26th Texas governor. But newsprint was in his blood. He returned to the newspaper world in the 1920s and became owner of the Post in 1939.

During those years, another man set his sights on journalism, working as a Post stringer from the University of Texas. His name was Walter Cronkite.

Hobby died in 1964, leaving the Post in the hands of his wife, Oveta Culp Hobby, who already was instrumental in running the paper, and his son, William Hobby Jr., who, like his father, started at the paper as a teenager. The younger man rose through the newsroom ranks to later become its president. He also followed his father into politics and served as Texas lieutenant governor.

As an editor, he helped shepherd a Post story on corruption in Pasadena to a Pulitzer Prize in 1965. But it was another story that the now 84-year-old calls a defining moment in his life.

A framed copy of a yellowing Associated Press news ticker dated Nov. 22, 1963, still hangs in his office. "President Kennedy was shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas …"

Hovering over the wire machine that day, he remembers how his mind raced: "Hobby, this is the biggest story you'll ever handle. You'll be judged as a newspaper man by what you do in the next hour. I'm supposed to know what to do, and I don't know what to do."

The circulation manager standing next to him gave him the answer. "You'll go extra, won't you?"

"Yes," he replied with newfound confidence. "Yes, I will."

Many say the beginning of the end was in 1979 when the Houston Chronicle, an afternoon daily, began its transition to a morning paper. As the head-to-head rivalry heated up, the Chronicle started pulling ahead in circulation.

"There was an argument that we needed to respond because it was a threat, but Mrs. Hobby would have none of that," remembers Mike Read, who worked at the Post nearly a quarter-century and was later hired by the Chronicle.

"It was really family-oriented. You didn't work for the Post; you worked for the Hobbys," he says, recalling the annual Christmas venison-chili dinner served to all employees.

Still, in 1983 the Hobby family sold the financially troubled Post for $100 million to the Toronto Sun Publishing Co., which quickly changed the appearance of the paper to make it splashier. Soon after, the collapse of the oil industry decimated Houston's economy and the Post was sold once more in 1987, this time to MediaNews Group for $150 million, and the helm was relinquished to William Dean Singleton. It was under his watch the Post was eventually shuttered.

Two decades have passed, but those who were there still grieve its passing.

"It was like everyone was in the same foxhole," remembers Williamson, who also landed at the Chronicle. He remembers a reporter once told him, "It is like living in San Francisco. You get used to all of the little tremors. After a while you think they all will be small and so you're not prepared for the big one."