- Poul Andersen
Poul Dalby Andersen (
April 19 ,1922 —May 29 ,2006 ) was a printer who served in theDanish resistance movement duringWorld War II and later published one of the remaining two Danish-language newspapers in the United States.Andersen was knighted in 1982 by
Queen Margrethe II ofDenmark for his efforts in uniting theDanish American community.Andersen was born in
Ringk%C3%B8bing , a small town on the west coast of Denmark. His grandfather was a co-founder of the town's daily newspaper. Andersen's father was a typesetter, and Andersen learned the printing trade in the newspaper's offices.Andersen was a conversationalist and a soccer fanatic, two traits that helped him as a member of the Danish resistance.
"My husband was a chatterbox, and he loved soccer, so he could bicycle down to a neighboring town to play soccer and the Germans would never think twice about it," Judy Andersen told the
Los Angeles Times . "He would ask the guards, 'What are they doing in the field there?' and learn that [the Germans] were building gun emplacements."Andersen came to the United States in 1949 and worked on an uncle's farm in Ohio. A friend encouraged him to move to
Santa Monica, California . In 1950 Andersen was hired by the Los Angeles Times as a printer.In 1975 Andersen bought "Bien", a
San Francisco -based Danish-language newspaper. Andersen moved the newspaper toBurbank, California , to allow him to work on the paper after completing his shift at the Times. "Bien"'s circulation reached a high of 5,300 during Andersen's tenure as publisher.Andersen continued to use a
Linotype machine to set the type for each edition of "Bien" long after other newspapers had switched to computerized typesetting. In 1997 the California Newspaper Publishers Association said "Bien" was probably the last newspaper in California being printed with Linotype.Andersen died in Los Angeles from complications of
Alzheimer's disease .References
* [http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-andersen4jul04,1,70547.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california Nelson, Valerie J. (2006, July 4). Poul Andersen, 84; Published Nation's Only Danish-Language Weekly Paper]
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