ON SEPT. 13, 1966, I walked in the front door of The Gazette to start what was to be a part-time job to get me through college. I have walked through that door — or its replacement — almost every day since.
Whether that is cause for pride, I don’t know. In some important things, — marriage and friendship, for example — longevity is considered to be a good thing. But in work? At a time in which college graduates are told to expect to have at least two or three careers over the course of their working lives, 40 years in one building seems excessive. It sounds more like a rut than a career.
But ruts are dull things, and my years at The Gazette have never been dull.
If I try hard, I can compress those 40 years into a fast-motion film in my mind and see dirt streets paved, city limits push their way into the prairie, businesses and personal reputations rise and fall, scandals bloom and die like morning glories. I see storms, fires, explosions, floods, celebrations, births, deaths and funerals.
Through it all are woven the faces of old friends and old enemies. Sometimes they are the same faces. It has been a busy 40 years and opinions change, as do alliances.
Emporia has changed a lot in four decades. In 1966, it still had the feel and mindset of a small town. Now, people tend to think the town is bigger than it is.
The newspaper office I walked into in 1966 was a very small pond indeed. The newsroom consisted of a managing editor, a city editor, a sports editor, a society editor, one and a half reporters (an English major at Kansas State Teachers College worked half-time), a proof reader and a handful of photographers who doubled as photoengravers.
We could not afford to specialize. Anyone who could string two sentences together to make a coherent paragraph was encouraged to write. Any member of the staff might wind up writing anything on any given day.
I was paid as a part-time photographer, but I soon found out that anything I wanted to write — a feature article, a review of a book, a play or a movie — would probably end up in the paper.
The Gazette was a newspaper that had built a national reputation on its editorials. William Allen White was long considered to be one of the best editorialists in the nation — perhaps the world.
His son, my boss, William Lindsay White, was no mean writer himself and he had enough opinions for any two editorial writers. But, oddly, he was not defensive about those opinions or jealous of space on that famous editorial page.
He liked to cram as many opinions on to the page as he could — even opinions from a scruffy part-time photographer 44 years his junior. It didn’t matter that he was a Goldwater Republican and I was a child of Kennedy’s Camelot (he once introduced me to a visiting politician as “our resident Trotskyite”). He treated my opinions as of equal worth with his.
Along the way, he and city editor Ray Call taught me invaluable lessons about tolerance, freedom of the press and freedom of thought.
And I received a gift that few people in journalism have ever gotten — even fewer today. I was given the freedom to express my opinions in print on any topic in any fashion I choose without coercion or recrimination.
Through 40 years and three generations of newspaper owners — through decades of political turmoil and social upheaval — that gift has never been withdrawn or questioned.
It has been 40 years of change and freedom. In the newspaper business, that is hard to beat. Add to it the kindness, friendship and loyalty of many readers — those who have agreed with me and those who have not — and I cannot regret a day of it.
This is not a swan song, just a milestone. “Sixty is the new 40,” we are told, and I intend to take that to heart.
I will be coming in through that front door for several years to come.
Patrick Kelley’s e-mail address is kelley@emporiagazette.com.
elmcreekfarms (anonymous) says...
Hello, my name is Jean McKay. I am writing a book about Mary Frances McKinney entitled Chronicles of The Farm Woman. She wrote for the Emporia Gazette for 30 years, from 1933 to the 1960's, final date not known. Her daughter has asked me to write her story and a selection of her many articles. You may not have known her but was just wondering if you met her at any time during your long tenure at the paper? I need to establish a contact at the newspaper, could you help me? I have many years of her articles and the last being in 1960.
Thank you for your time.
Jean McKay 620 594-2210
Elm Creek Farms
Medicine Lodge Kansas
December 27, 2006 at 8:44 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )