The Glom said The Plainsman had a circulation of 2,000, and they shipped copies around the country to subscribers, which is a tradition that would die around the turn of the century. In 1933-1934, the paper was led by this young man, Horace Shepard. He was a senior from Mobile, studying aeronautical engineering.

Horace would go on to become Brigadier General Horace Shepard. Born in Mississippi, he became a flying cadet after college, becoming a second lieutenant in the Air Reserve in late 1935. He taught flying to others until 1940, along the way earning his regular Army commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the Air Corps. He was transferred to Hickam Field, Hawai'i, in 1940, where he served as the chief engineering officer until a 1943 transfer to Ohio. He was a colonel when the war ended, and resigned his commission in 1951.

He moved on to run a firm called Thompson Ramo Wooldridge, TRW, spending 26 years with that company. They made automative, aerospace and military products. In 1976 he donated some land to Mississippi, and they named it as a park in his honor. He retired in 1977. He and his wife had three children and, when he died at home in Georgia in 2002, he had eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He's buried in Mobile.

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