Our family presented our mother with our annual gift of a year's subscription to the Southeast Missourian, and we decided to include a brief write-up of what the Southeast Missourian has meant to our family over the years.

Starting with my grandfather, Joseph Schnurbusch, with the weekly recording of the Old Appleton News and continuing today with my nephew, John Unterreiner, writing current sports articles for the paper, our family has been associated with your fine institution for over a hundred years. Grandpa Schnurbusch typed up the weekly reports from the Old Appleton General Store, which was a great part of Americana in our family for many years.

In between my grandfather and John, my three brothers and I held paper routes for a good 20-plus years, and my two nephews, David and Mark Unterreiner, continued the tradition by writing sports articles for the Missourian before turning the reins over to brother John.

My youngest son, Aaron, now writes sports for the Durango Herald in Colorado, and his cousin, David, has joined him. So the tradition continues from the Mississippi to the Animas.

Of course, my mother, Bertha Unterreiner, has experienced the complete history and certainly earns the title of the "Ultimate Paperboy."

Here is the text of our presentation. -- Ron Unterreiner, Cape Girardeau

The Ultimate Paperboy

Over a worn and warm counter in America's country store

Behind a typewriter shielded by the painted windows of a special family name

The news of the week that really mattered -- God, family and love of fellow man --

Was set to print,

And the Southeast Missourian ran with it.

Four kids searching for identity beyond the adventure-filled challenges of their beloved Bessie and Luce Street homes

Folded up the blackened print hard and tight

And flung them wildly into the lives of neighbors and friends,

And the Southeast Missourian gave them a business start.

And now the grandkids write the stories -- from the Mississippi to the Animas --

With the same flair for style as The Old Appleton News of years before

In front of a screen that brings an ever changing, rapidly growing world into focus,

And The Southeast Missourian showed them the way.

Herb, Moon, Metro and those wooden carts with iron wheels

Are part of history now, stored in the vaults of time.

But the printing presses still roll daily at deadline time,

And a remembering family treasures the memories and the lessons learned and the futures told of a small-town institution of sorts,

A way of life that must not disappear

The Southeast Missourian -- presented to the "Ultimate Paperboy" for one more storied year.

-- The Unterreiner/Schnurbusch family