Recently retired Wood County Monitor owner and publisher Phil Major was honored with a Golden 50 Award from the Texas Press Association at its annual summer convention held June 18-20 in Dallas.
Major was one of three journalists honored at the Friday evening dinner. Others included Dana Garrett of the Lockhart Port-Register and Sherrie Geistweidt of the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post.
Major began his Texas newspaper career by delivering papers in middle school for his hometown Denton Record-Chronicle. Before that, he served as co-editor of the Coin and Stamp newsletter in Mrs. Melton’s fifth grade class at Newton Rayzor Elementary in Denton. The newsletter was printed on a mimeograph. In his senior year at Denton High School, Major served as news editor of the Horseshoe student newspaper. Major has won countless awards, including the Sam Halloway Award in 2001 and the Tom Mooney Friend of Newspapers Award in 2003. He was elected TPA president at the association’s 128th summer convention in San Antonio.
During his career, Major met his wife Lesa while working at The Bowie News. They married in 1980. Other stops in his career included Wise County, Alice, Lake Worth-Saginaw, Duncanville, DeSoto, and Clay County. He and his wife owned the Wood County Monitor for seven years, through April 2026.
Major’s career spans an estimated 3,716 newspaper editions across 14 Texas communities.
The Major family plans to stay in Mineola where Phil volunteers with several community clubs and organizations. If you can’t find him, he’s probably on the golf course.