Virgil Basgall, Emporia’s longest-serving city manager, turned 95 today.
As usual, Basgall considers himself a pretty lucky man. Lucky enough to have been married 72 years to the same woman until her death in 2006. Lucky enough to have been manager for three different cities without one job interview. Lucky enough to be thinking as clearly today as he did in 1981 when he retired.
“I’m just the most fortunate person, I tell you,” Basgall said. “Everything is still working and that’s very fortunate.”
No argument.
Originally from Hays, Basgall grew up wanting to be a sports writer. And at the Hays Daily News in the 1940s, he got to be the sports editor — and the schools reporter, and the city hall reporter. It was that last job that ended up changing the course of his life.
“I saw the city manager every day,” Basgall said. “And one day he stopped and told me I should go to work for him because he told he could pay a lot more than the paper did.”
He was right. Basgall became assistant city manager and city clerk for five years, then city manager for five years. A friend invited him to Junction City in the 1950s where he spent 10 years as city manager before moving on to Emporia in 1960. The job hadn’t even been posted yet, he said, but the Emporia city commissioners had wanted to make a change.
“I’ve led a different life than a lot of people have had,” Basgall said with a chuckle.
His 22 years as Emporia city manager were marked by a lot of industrial recruitment. Dolly Madison came to town in the 1960s after the community agreed to offer property tax incentives. An Armour meatpacking plant came and went, only to be replaced by the city’s biggest employer, IBP (now Tyson). An expansion of Didde here, a new Safeway pet food plant there ... it was a good time to be an Emporia industrial recruiter.
At one point, Basgall said, the city had five major industrial projects going on within a two-year period. Other communities in the Midwest began looking to see what Emporia was doing right.
“I finally told the commission that I was spending 40 percent of my time on industrial development instead of city management,” Basgall said. “They said, ‘Do 50 percent if you want.’”
The period was also a good one for city government projects, such as improvements to the police department or the creation of a public golf course. That last one ran into some opposition from residents who couldn’t see what the city needed with a golf course. Basgall stuck to his guns and won.
“That’s been an important aspect of industrial development,” Basgall said. “When we were talking to industries, they asked if we had a course. That’s important to big companies.”
The episode was one of many that demonstrated what he considered the most important qualities of a city manager: a strong back and a hard head.
One of Basgall’s more tense moments came in 1974, when a tornado struck northwest Emporia, killing six people and destroying several buildings in the northwest part of town. For 48 hours, Basgall didn’t come anywhere near a bed as he helped direct disaster response and recovery.
“We had to get it done,” he said. “I placed my command post in the middle of where the (Flint Hills) shopping center had been and we made that our headquarters for everything. We were pretty exhausted, but our city people did a good job.”
He retired at the age of 70, still in pretty good health and determined to travel with his wife Winnifred while they could. They did just that, even visiting Europe twice. She died one year ago today.
“We were 72 years together,” Basgall said. “That’s a lifetime together.”
There have been some small projects since retiring, such as helping Ray Call prepare his history of Emporia from 1950 to 2000, “Emporia’s Ascent.” And of course, there are the morning meetings of the Rusty Zipper Club, a morning coffee group of former movers and shakers that now gets together at the Best Western periodically.
This birthday was the first in years that Basgall hadn’t prepared his own cake. Didn’t have the tools this time, he said, so he had a friend put it together. There was no question of skipping it, not with the Rusty Zippers waiting.
“They want that cake,” he said with another chuckle.
And if that’s the worst stress his 95th birthday has to offer, Basgall is a lucky man indeed.
“I’m retired, so I don’t have many worries,” he said.