Bill Griffith was the retired owner and publisher of 20 Wisconsin community newspapers and shoppers’ guides and was Wisconsin’s last surviving “three-rings under the big top” circus owner. He died October 10, 2010, at age 80.
Griffith was born in Madison and lived there as well as in Beaver Dam, Sheboygan and Appleton, where he graduated from Appleton High School in 1947. Griffith enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after the Korean War broke out, serving from 1950 to the end of the war. He married Dolores Ecker of Brothertown, on Oct. 1, 1955. And after her death in 1996, he married Dorothy Robertson Smith of Fond du Lac, who had been his high school sweetheart.
Dance bands, circuses, and entertainment venues were among Griffith’s businesses and interests.
Among the many newspaper titles and printing companies he owned were Assured Publishing Ltd. in Tomahawk, the Progress Printing Company in Appleton and News Publishing Company in Black Earth, which published the News-Sickle-Arrow, Middleton Times-Tribune, Mount Horeb Mail, and Sauk-Prairie Star. He also owned Printed Communications Group, Inc., which published the (Spring Green) Home News, (Mauston) Star-Times; (Elroy) Keystone-Tribune, Wonewoc Reporter, Wisconsin Dells Events, La Crosse County Countryman in West Salem; Reedsburg Times-Press and the Rural Minnesota News.
Griffith and his wife, Dorothy, had two daughters, Linda and Leah. He also had four step-children, Kathy, Richard, Sandra and Amy.
