<p>Jere Ayers, the publisher and owner of the Comer News and the Danielsville Monitor, was killed in a car crash.</p><p>Ayers, who was 91, died Friday in the Madison County crash.</p><p>Despite his age, Ayers continued to cover government meetings in Madison County, taking photos and keeping up with local events, said Jennifer Fogal, editor of the two newspapers.</p><p>Ayers, a lifelong bachelor who lived in the same Comer house he was born in, is remembered as a man who liked to focus on the positive.</p><p>"He was from that old school where you give to give, not trying to get something back," Fogal said. "He was part of our family from the beginning, from the moment I met him."</p><p>And as a journalist, Ayers was interested in more than just printing bad news, said Comer City Clerk Steve Sorrells.</p><p>"Mr. Ayers always found a spot in his paper to highlight those positive events that make a community a community," Sorrells said.</p><p>Ayers also refused to accept money for tobacco or alcohol advertising, said Carey Williams Jr., publisher of the Greensboro Herald-Journal.</p><p>He became publisher and owner of the two weekly papers in 1945, after returning from Navy service in World War II, but his involvement with newspapers went back further than that.</p><p>His parents, C.B. Ayers and Mai Wynn Ayers of Comer, bought the newspapers in 1914 and Ayers learned to set type as a young child.</p><p>"Mr. Ayers was an institution within himself in Madison County," said Madison County Commissioner John Scoggins. "He did a lot more for the community than many people realize."</p><p>Scoggins was in the newspaper business himself for a while, competing against Ayers' papers, and read the Ayers newspapers regularly.</p><p>Ayers, a Mercer University graduate, got a law degree from the University of Georgia in 1937. He served one term in the Georgia legislature in the 1950s, but decided politics was not for him.</p><p>Family and friends planned to gather Tuesday evening at Brown Funeral Home in Danielsville. The funeral will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Meadow Baptist Church in Comer.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cdb8b8)</p>
