Longtime Sun printer Compston dies

Friday, July 13, 2001 | 10 a.m.

Ralph B. Compston, a longtime printer and composing room monitor for the Sun, died June 26 in Fresno, Calif., following a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 79.

"Ralph was first and foremost a gentleman and he had a dry wit that amused his co-workers," said Rex Taylor, longtime Sun production manager. "He was a stickler for making deadline. That was always his No. 1 priority."

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 32 years were private.

Compston worked for the Sun from 1973 until 1988, the final few years as a monitor. That job consisted of getting the copy from the newsroom to the right area of the cut-and-paste operation in the composing room.

Today, that and many other composing room jobs are obsolete as newspapers utilize computers to lay out pages through a process called pagination.

"Ralph was very active in the (International Typographical) Union," said former composing room co-worker Phil Drage, a longtime friend. "He was always cheerful and conscientious about his work."

Born Jan. 4, 1922, in Ironton, Ohio, Ralph was the youngest of five children of steel molder James Compston and the former Mary Jane Stanley. He graduated from Ironton's Coal Grove High School.

Compston enlisted in the Army in 1940 and during World War II served in Italy, where he was wounded, and later in Germany. He was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

After returning to the states, Compston became an ITU printer's apprentice at the Springfield (Ohio) News and Sun. In the 1950s, he took a job as a union printer at the Mobile (Ala.) Press Register, where he worked until 1968, the year he moved to Las Vegas. Compston served as ITU local president in Mobile from 1959-61.

From 1968 until he was hired by the Sun, Compston was night auditor at the old Savoy Hotel at a site just off the Strip, where an addition to Circus Circus now stands.

After retiring from the Sun in 1988, Compston remained in Las Vegas until last year and was active in the First Baptist Church.

Compston is survived by his wife of 60 years, Cordelia Compston; a daughter, Cecelia Acton, and two grandsons, Jason Acton and Jaret Acton, all of Fresno.