Veteran Florida technician leaving AP after half century

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA - Eldon Cort, who kept newsrooms across north Florida running with copy from The Associated Press for nearly 40 years, is retiring from the news cooperative Friday. <br> <br> During his 50 years with the AP, the veteran technician worked on machines from the old Western Union teletypes to the latest computers that transmit hundreds of times faster. <br> <br> ``The new computer equipment is much more dependable and requires far less maintenance,&#39;&#39; he said. ``And you don&#39;t get your hands dirty like with the old ink ribbons.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Cort, 65, began his AP career in 1952 as a copy boy in Atlanta and had stops in Montgomery, Ala., New York, Des Moines, Iowa, and Raleigh, N.C., before accepting his Tallahassee assignment in 1962. <br> <br> Cort liked to be close to the news. He was monitoring a police scanner on his day off and the first to hear about the death of Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles in December 1998. <br> <br> He was the third member of his family to work with the news agency. His father, Horace, was a longtime AP photographer who covered the Normandy invasion in World War II and the civil rights movement in the South. He retired in 1973 after 38 years with AP. <br> <br> An uncle, Walter Cort, was a technician in Portland, Ore., for 35 years.

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