SAVING HEADLINES; COLLECTOR'S REAL HOBBY IS LEARNING.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy

He hocked his golf clubs for Jesse James and spent the rent money on George Washington and the gunfight at OK Corral.

People used to laugh at John Eplett because of it, tell him he was crazy spending all his money on historical newspapers.

They're not laughing anymore.

In 20 years, this 65-year-old Sherman Oaks man has put together a collection of several thousand American newspapers that cover some of the most significant moments in this country's history.

They range from George Washington's death - 200 years ago today - in the Columbian Centinel and Massachusetts Federalist to a Nov. 3, 1948, copy of the biggest blunder in American journalism - the Chicago Daily Tribune's ``Dewey Defeats Truman'' headline.

Only a few hundred editions made it into public hands before the Trib sent out delivery trucks to recall the papers. Eplett has one of them in mint condition.

``I paid $1,500 for it more than 10 years ago, and have been offered $40,000 since, but I'd never sell it,'' he said Monday, displaying his 1799 newspaper of George Washington's death. ``I won't sell any of them.''

He has bigger plans for his historical newspapers than money. Much bigger.

Washington's death is one of the newspapers Eplett takes with him when he visits schools to give students the closest look they will ever get at real American history.

``You can go to a movie and go back in time,'' he said. ``You can go to a library and go back in time.

``But it is only a newspaper that allows you to go back in time, and get the whole flavor of that time, reading all the stories and advertisements on its pages.''

So, he brings the students the on-the-spot news of Jesse James' death, and the gunfight at the OK Corral. He lets them read firsthand about Lincoln's death, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the remembrances of George Washington from the dentist who made his wooden teeth.

It's all there in John Eplett's newspaper collection. Not bad for a kid who never finished high school and couldn't read a complete sentence in a newspaper until he was in his 20s.

``I fell behind in school at an early age, and could never catch up, but kept getting put ahead anyway,'' he said. ``It got to the point where I was basically illiterate. I couldn't read and could hardly write a sentence.''

He could hide it because he was good with his hands, and those hands carried him through a career as a maintenance engineer at large hotels, then to work in the mansions of Beverly Hills millionaires.

But with age came regret, and one of John Eplett's biggest was that lack of a formal education.

``For the last 20 years, my best friends in the world have been my dictionary and my newspapers,'' he said.

That's how he taught himself to become literate, how he decided at age 45 that maybe this was the way he would be remembered.

``Everybody would like to make a mark in life, but with my lack of education I could never figure out how,'' he said. The how was right in front of him on the kitchen table every morning.

``I thought if I could come up with the most fabulous historical newspaper collection, I could make my mark and promote education at the same time,'' he said.

So, at age 45, when most people are putting money in the bank for retirement, Eplett was taking his out. Every dime of it, he says. For old newspapers.

And when that was gone, he hocked his golf clubs and was late with the rent check. What else could he do? Some collector on the East Coast had a 1799 Washington newspaper for sale, and Eplett just had to have it.

Now that he does, there's only one thing left he wants to do, he says. Share it.

After the kids are finished reading his old newspapers in class, Eplett sits them down and tells them never be ashamed of putting your hand up in class and asking what a word means.

He didn't, Eplett tells them. Don't make the same mistake.

He wants to leave his collection after he dies to a museum somewhere. Free of charge, of course.

He wants it to be on the West Coast because the heritage of the newspaper isn't as deeply engrained out here as it is back east, where most newspaper historians are located.

Who knows, maybe they could stick his name over the front door of the place. Let the kids of the next century coming in to look at the last two, wonder who this guy John Eplett was who collected all these old newspapers.

All and all, not a bad mark to leave in life.

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2 photos

Photo: (1 -- 2) John Eplett shows one of the prize items in his collection, a Dec. 25, 1799 edition of the Columbian Centinel of Massachusetts, above. The paper, below, is devoted to coverage of George Washington's death on Dec. 14 of that year.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer