How the Searchlight Got Its Name

Long before the Searchlight was the agency’s intranet, it was a paper newsletter distributed to OGS employees. Many of you who have been here for a few years (or more) might remember the old printed newsletter, and may even still have copies stored somewhere in your office.

New York State founded OGS on October 1, 1960, but it wasn’t until 1964 that the agency launched a newsletter. In the first edition, Commissioner C.V.R. Schuyler wrote in an “Open Letter to OGS Employees" that he hoped the newsletter might unite employees across programs and geographic regions. 

The publication of the first issue of this paper is another in a series of efforts to maintain a closer relationship among individual members of our OGS family. 

- C.V.R. Schuyler

Naming the newsletter, however, turned out to be more complicated than conceiving it. OGS called in reinforcements to find the solution.

You will note that the masthead of this paper is blank,” Commissioner Schuyler’s letter continued, referencing the bolded question mark over a blank space at the top of the page. “The reason is that we are awaiting your help in naming this new paper. 

The commissioner set high stakes and picked an unprecedented prize for whomever submitted the best name for the newsletter: a table radio. He announced a few simple rules for the contest: only OGS employees could submit entries, and suggestions had to be submitted in sealed envelopes. 

When the deadline for entries passed, just one submission stood out and “symbolized the objectives of our paper, namely to search out and bring to light news of general interest.” Sixty years and several mediums of communication later, OGS still uses the winning entry – “The Searchlight” – and it’s all thanks to Henry J. Wagner, a supervising janitor at Albany’s State Office Building Campus, who wore a bow tie to collect his grand prize.

OGS printed the Searchlight regularly from the 1960s through the 1990s before briefly renaming the publication “OGSNow.” In 2006, Commissioner John Egan, who fondly remembered OGS in its early days, brought back the “Searchlight” newsletter and name – and six years later, when the printed digest evolved into the intranet we know today, the “Searchlight” title came with it to the 21^st century.

As we enter a new decade and commemorate the agency’s 60^th anniversary, we are excited to carry on a legacy of “casting light on various functions of our operations in whose accomplishments we can all take pride.”

The Searchlight lives on, as do the words Commissioner Schuyler wrote to OGS employees in 1964: “I am confident that future numbers will continue to reflect our pride in the OGS record, our interest in each other and our unceasing search for ways and means to improve our working relationships.”