Yellow Pages
The signs of an entrepreneur showed up early for Dan Mitzel.
For much of his youth, the now real estate developer rolled up hundreds of freshly printed Skagit Valley Heralds, filled his carrier bags, and peddled his red Schwinn bicycle around neighborhoods in Mount Vernon delivering the local news.
“I just think it’s the kind of thing where you like doing it or you don’t,” he said during a recent interview.
“There weren’t big allowances back then (in the 1960s). I figured out real soon that I would much rather have a paper route than pick strawberries.”
Despite the sometimes inclement weather, Mitzel biked between houses tossing papers to awaiting readers.
“He was there rain or shine,” said Ann Oakland, who began receiving the Skagit Valley Herald delivered to her home by the young Mitzel in 1962. Oakland and Mitzel have since remained friends.
“He was a very good paperboy,” Oakland said.
On cold or rainy days, people on his route would leave their garage doors open, so he could duck in and warm up before hopping on his bike again to finish his deliveries.
“It was tough sometimes when the weather was really nasty,” Mitzel said. “People felt sorry for you when you are riding around in the middle of winter delivering papers.”
Mitzel’s entrepreneurial spirit didn’t stop there.
He also worked part time at a bicycle shop and mowed lawns in the summer.
But it was his newspaper job, he said, that taught him to be reliable, dependable and literally carry out what he said he would do every day.
“With newspapers, you have to do it every day,” he said. “It’s not something you can chose to do when you want.”
With each day of work, Mitzel stashed away cash in his bank account, and of course, spent some on “typical kid stuff,” like baseball cards and comic books.
By the time he was 16 years old, he had enough money to buy a 1965 forest green Mustang.
But delivering papers wasn’t all about the pay for Mitzel.
“I don’t think we really did it for the money as much as the experience,” he said. “I think it’s great training ground for any kid who might want to be in business for himself one day.”
The job also sparked a life-long relationship with his local newspaper, which he began reading as a child.
“I felt like it was a great way to keep a pulse on what’s going on in your community,” he said.
Now as he gets older, he said he keeps a closer look on the obituaries.
Although Mitzel is very “computer connected,” he said he continues to subscribe to the paper version of the Skagit Valley Herald.
“I guess I’m a little nostalgic about newspapers,” he said. “I think it’s the idea of sitting down in your favorite chair and reading the newspaper when you get home. It’s just not the same on the computer.”
Since his youth, Mitzel’s personality has continued to be, for the most part, independent. Just like when he loaded up his papers, and peddled down the streets of Mount Vernon tossing papers to doorsteps on his own, Mitzel has continued to work primarily for himself.
Mitzel said he was never a very good employee, always working better when he was his own boss, which he continues to be to this day at his business Hansell Mitzel Homes.
“I was destined to do my own thing, and that’s what I did,” he said.
Tahlia Ganser can be reached at 360-416-2148 or at .
* This report is part of a special section celebrating 125 years of news coverage by the Skagit Valley Herald. To see others, click on the headlines below:
Newspapers have become a multiplatform business
Family’s newspaper lineage dates back to E.W. Scripps in 1878
Back in time, A look at some notable businesses of yesteryear
Company ‘lifer’ never planned to stay long
Readers share opinions of the newspaper, positive and otherwise
Newspapers provide link to past, present and future for local woman
