August Strite; Pioneer Times Distributor

August Strite, 85, one of the first “Independent Motor” drivers for The Times, a small band of individual contractors who purchased the newspaper and sold it to hotels and at airports and train stations. Strite, who also hawked the paper at 3rd and Flower streets beginning in 1923--an era when this newspaper lagged far behind several other Los Angeles papers in circulation--hauled newsboys around Boyle Heights in his Model A pickup on Saturday nights, handing out $1 bonuses to anyone who sold a given number of the Sunday papers, then priced at 10 cents. Eventually Strite came to be one of the largest independent distributors of The Times with a vast territory in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. In Culver City on Monday.