Author Archives: Editor

A Capital Farewell

Posted on by
Reply

(Editor’s Note: In 1961, Dick Snider was appointed administrator of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness by President Kennedy. This column as the Daily Capital’s managing editor was followed three days later by his final one in that job.)

Topeka Daily Capital
April 23, 1961

Three times in a brief career in newspapering I have started a column something like this: “If you’ll turn down the lights and put on some soft violin music, I’ll sing my swan song.” It will have to do again this time.

This one is strictly personal, in that I’m leaving and this column isn’t. It will continue to appear from time to time. I will be in some new places and will be seeing some new faces, So maybe there will be something new here. It’s about time, too.

A friend of mine named Amy may sneak in here occasionally, as she has in the past. She knows we’re moving, and she is concerned about the status of Manfred the Wonder Dog. We are all concerned about him.

The rest of the family is afraid they can’t take him to Washington when they join me there. I’m afraid they’ll learn they can. And if they can, they will.

And I’m afraid there isn’t room for both of us at the public through. . . .

Seriously, I’d miss Manfred. He’s everything a dog should be except well-bred. I thought about him when I had to fill out government security forms, outlining my ancestry. Manfred’s family tree would look like a geometric mistake.

I’m going to miss a lot of things around here. A lot of people, too. . . .

I’ll never pass the Pentagon without thinking of Lindsey Austin. They’re built almost exactly alike. . . . I’ll miss the neighbors, particularly Tompkins and Kiene and our annual major project designed to make our Bermuda grass grow. I won’t miss the Bermuda grass. . . .

I’ll miss the golf, and the conversation that goes with it, but I won’t miss it half as much as the men I’ve played with will miss me. There’ll be a long time finding somebody as easy as I have been for so long. And I won’t miss the 19th hole. Fitness is the thing with me now, men. . . .

I suppose I should be honest and say I will miss those gatherings after the golf game. Where else can you hear a minimum of 17 men yelling about 17 different subjects, all at the same time? In that mess there is invariably only one gentleman, and I’ll really miss him. His name is Earful Grant. A good man.  . . .

I’ll miss my work with Dev Nelson, the Graham McNamee of Marquette, Kan. Dev and I must have done a few hundred basketball games together and I never could get him to admit a single one of them was a bad one. I can’t remember many good ones. . . . I’ll miss my co-workers, even though they’ve told me they’re fund to buy me a new portable typewriter fell a little short. They’re buying me, instead, a new ribbon for my old portable. . . .

I’ll miss my work with Tom King and the “Best of Europe.” I’m leaving with a group May 2 on the tour that was planned last fall. And next year it would have been the “Best of Cuba” with all expenses, including burial, paid. …

I’ll miss the people downtown, from Vic Whittaker’s to Max Prichard’s, which is a long walk. . . . I’ll miss lunch at the coffee shop and the patient lady named Marene who always refrained from pouring a bowl of soup over anybody’s head.

I’ll miss a lot more people and places I haven’t mentioned, some because they’re unmentionable, but I’m looking forward to this new endeavor. I’ll be working for a man I have admired, greatly, for a long time. I’ll be working with men who are convinced, as I am, that we have a chance – maybe the only chance any of us will ever have – to do something really significant.

I hope we get it done. I hope we get it done in a hurry, too, so I can come back and ask, “What’s new, besides some holes in E 29th Street?”

 
April 26, 1961

Saralena Sherman called and said the office people wanted to have a farewell party for me. I got there late, so the room was full when I arrived. I glanced around quickly, saying hello, and I noticed a gray-haired gentleman sitting in a corner and wondered who he was.

I started for the kitchen and Saralena asked me if I knew everybody there. In a situation like this, I am inclined to say, sure I do, but this time I turned and took another look at the man in the corner. I almost fainted.

It was Hizzoner, Mayor Ed Camp.

The shock must have registered on my face, because everybody started laughing as the mayor and I shook hands. He was laughing, too, so I figured this wasn’t going to be my night. It wasn’t.

When things settled down, they staged the presentation. Gary Settle trained lights and camera on us as we stood in the center of the room. The mayor spoke, and he didn’t leave anything out. He cut me up in tiny pieces while everybody howled.

He really did a great job. He commented on my contributions to city government. He thanked me for my part in keeping American dollars at home through the “Best of Europe” tours. He congratulated me for my temperance in all matters, including my always-unruffled calm on the golf course.

He dug up every old sore point from columns of the last two years and concluded by observing that, “While some people hate to see you leave, frankly, I don’t.” He expressed amazement that a hater of politicians of my stature would accept a political appointment.

He definitely slipped the needle into me in every vulnerable point, and there were many of them. Then he presented the trophy.

It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a man in a perfect golf swing, only he has a bull over his shoulder. The idea of throwing the bull is perfectly conveyed. Beneath it is an engraved plaque, which starts by saying:

“To Dick Snyder.”

It goes on and concludes with the other spelling mistake that grates most on my nerves. It says the trophy is from, “the Capitol staff.”

In thanking the mayor, I told him he had done a pretty good job on me and that I had it coming. Nobody could argue that point. The mayor didn’t, anyway. Then, much to everybody’s surprise, he presented me a key to the city in a nice case. I suspect he went out next morning and changed the locks, but all he said is that I might need the key to ever get back in.

The mayor and I had met only once previously, at one of those holiday parties where everybody shakes hands. If there was one word of truth spoken the night of the presentation, it came when I commented on this. I told the mayor I was glad I hadn’t become well-acquainted with him before. I told him it would have spoiled a lot of good column material for me. . . .

Small thoughts in a birthday month

Posted on by
Reply

Topeka Daily Capital
March 12, 1961

Some small thoughts from a mind of approximately the same size. …

And this should prove it: a psychiatrist, says the line of the roof of a man’s house gives you a pretty good line on the man himself. My roof is flat and covered with rocks. …

And what about this? A lady who likes to write letters, telling other people what to do, says this column appeals to people “who pride themselves on never reading a book which requires thought, and who, night after night, revel in the shoot-em-up vulgarities, or the inanities, of the whodunits.” You’re going to let her say that about you? If she keeps this up, I’m going to steal her copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. .. Continue reading →

Blaming the media is the wrong way in clergy abuse coverup

Posted on by
Reply

Topeka Capital Journal
March 20, 2002

The Most Reverend James P Kelleher, archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City in Kansas, which includes Topeka, wrote in the current issue of the diocesan newspaper about what he called, “a most delicate matter – the question of abuse of youth by Catholic clergy.”

He said the actions of the guilty priests, “have shocked the nation and shaken even the trust of many Catholics. Whatever the understanding they had of the terrible damage they were doing to youth at the time of their dirty deeds, there can be no excuse for what they did.”

Later in his statement he said, “What troubles me deeply is what these sordid revelations do to the image of the church.”

Actually, what the priests did hasn’t damaged the image of the church much more than what their superiors didn’t do. Continue reading →

John Linville RIP

Posted on by
Reply

(John H. Linville, brother to Barbara Linville Snider and brother-in-law to Dick Snider, passed Dec. 23. His obituary appeared in the Ouray County Plaindealer . The column below appeared in the Topeka Daily Capital March 28, 1962)

We sat under a big tree in a back yard in Burlingame, sipping drinks and watching the storm fade away in soft flashes of lighting. My father-in-law, Mike Linville, talked about bigger, better storms.

Once, he said, he had saddled a horse and ridden 14 miles from the family farm to check stories he’d heard that a storm had drive wheat straws into trees.

“I actually found some,” he said, “driven about a half-inch into trees.”

Another time, he rode out a storm in a ditch with his younger brother and mother. He told of silence and the vacuum that made it difficult to breathe, and then of the “roar of about 400 freight trains” that snapped trees like matchsticks…

I remembered the storm that leveled Bethany, Okla. We watched it from our backyard on Britton. What I remember best is reading that papers from the Bethany bank were found in Kansas. Continue reading →

Further tales of the seasonal grandpa

Posted on by
Reply

Topeka Capital-Journal
Dec. 21, 1994

This Christmas season has been different, and the reason is that we have two granddaughters, 5 and 3, under our roof. I have found myself in some strange predicaments lately as I have made some effort to be a proper grandpa. It isn’t easy.

For example, for the first time ever, I went to the Christmas parade downtown, and it surprised me. I saw every employee of WIBW-TV, channel 13, with the possible exception of the janitor, and I wondered why they were there, riding in convertibles with their names on the door.

It was nice to see Mary and Ralph, and Dave, Ron and Michelle, But why wasn’t Jim Ramberg there in his truck, with his rifle, shooting holes in the air conditioner, the feat for which he is now famous?

He could have been backed up by the National Rifle Association’s Marching Assault Weapons Team, firing short bursts at random, but with its flag dipped in salute to dead air conditioners everywhere.

This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the parade. It had lively band music, clowns, funny cars, great horses and a surrey with the fringe on top. It also had a fire truck, and the thought has occurred to me that when Ramberg decides to go big game hunting, that will be his target.

Incidentally, the little girls, and their grandma, liked the parade, and I’m glad they forced me, under threats of reprisal, to go along.

The parade was one thing, and next was the Christmas tree. They left me at home when they went to buy it, figuring correctly, I would be obnoxious in insisting on a small, manageable tree. Fat chance.

They brought home a whopper and dumped it in the garage. It was tied up in plastic webbing, and when you removed this wrapper, about 50 lbs. of debris fell out of the tree, and another 100 lbs. remained stuck in it.

This had to be cleaned out. The trunk and bottom limbs had to be clipped so a tree stand would fit. Then it had to be dragged into the house, leaving massive amounts of debris in its wake, and hoisted upright.

It falls over. So, you yank it back to get it straight and mess with the stand, and it falls over in the other direction. This goes on for a couple of hours, as more debris showers down on the carpet.

Finally, It is done, and now all you have left to do is clean the carpet and the garage. This whole operation takes about a day and a half, and from it you learn, once more, these three things:

  • Never have a Christmas tree.
  • If you must have one, get an artificial tree.
  • Don’t swear in front of the grandchildren, particularly if their mother and grandmother are present.

I was getting along fairly well with little girls until I tried explaining a cowboy movie to them. I told them the bad guys wear black hats and ride black horses, and I added that anybody with a mustache also is a bad guy.

“Our daddy,” they shouted, “has a mustache.”

Oh, I forgot.

Little girls are born to be teased. One day when everybody was gone, and I was bored, I folded laundry for about an hour. Later, Anne told her little ones what a nice guy grandpa was for folding all of their clothes.

Yes, I said, but I added that every time I came to an item of clothing I didn’t like, I threw it away, and I was afraid I had thrown away all of Kelly’s pants. She is the one who is 3. She looked questionably at me and then, and then Hope said grandpa’s just teasing.

But in the next breath, they asked where I’ve thrown them. I said maybe in a wastebasket, so they went to look. I said maybe in the garage, so they looked there. I said maybe Santa Claus would bring her some pants. I said I remembered I threw the old ones in the attic. They were on their way to look when higher authorities ended the game.

The girls and their grandma made a plate of cookies for them to give to their dad when he arrived. I helped myself and caught fire from both the girls and the higher authorities. From now on, I had to steal cookies from the plate.

When their dad, Gary, arrived, there were four cookies left, and I admit I felt guilty when they explained to him that grandpa had been stealing them. At my age, too. They also told him what I said about bad guys and mustaches.

The tree is decorated, and it has been a long time since we had anything like it in our house. There are a few presents under it, and there will be more.

We will be ready for Santa, and I promise the cookies the little ones leave out for him won’t be there when they wake up. I also want Santa to know what I said about guys with mustaches doesn’t apply to him.

Memories of little pharma

Posted on by
Reply

Topeka Daily Capital
Dec. 2, 1959

It has been announced that the country’s biggest drug store will be built here soon, and every time it’s mentioned, I can’t help thinking back to Snider’s Drug Store in Britton, Okla.

It was a store that would be totally out of place in today’s scheme of drug stores. That is, it was just a drug store. No appliances, no jewelry, no automobile parts, no clothing – nothing except drug store items. We had a soda fountain, tobacco counter, prescriptions (filled promptly and accurately) and the usual assortment of patent medicines and other drug items.

My dad put in coffee once, by popular demand, But the owner of the cafe across the street stormed over and said they’re damn well better be no more of that, so there wasn’t. Back in Britton, you just didn’t try to sell anything that wasn’t strictly in your line. Continue reading →

This career is no path to power

Posted on by
Reply

Topeka Capital-Journal
Dec. 18, 1995.

So, you want me to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Nancy Kassebaum. Well, with that in mind, let’s review my employment history once again.

First, forget the early training at Doc Snider’s drug store in Britton, Okla., my morning and evening paper route that covered one-third of Britton, my stint at the vegetable rack at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store, and my time as the pilot of a passenger elevator in the First National Bank building in Oklahoma City.

My first significant job was with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Its agents came through town hiring Okies, probably because we were willing to go to Washington to work for. $1,440 per year. That’s $120.00 per month or $27.69 per week. Plus all the ice water you could drink. Continue reading →

Watch out for the rocks

Posted on by
Reply

DICK SNIDER (1921-2004)
By Will Snider

(Dick Snider passed 20 years ago this week at home in Topeka. The eulogy below was delivered at his funeral Mass by his 17-year-old grandson Will Snider.)

It was a sunny day, perfect weather for a Snider family reunion.  Our best time spent together is often on the golf course, and this trip was no exception.  Leaving the clubhouse for the first tee, I rode in a golf cart with Grandpa.  I was around ten or eleven years old, and, as soon as we were out of the sight of the course employees, he allowed me to drive the cart.  My grandfather would later write in his column for the Metro News, “(Will) was a terrible driver, so I had to stop, and told him to quit going so fast, to stay on the cart path and stop hitting the rocks that lined the path.”  I am not much better at driving now, but I will always remember what he deemed the best piece of advice he could give me, “Keep the cart on the path, and watch out for the rocks.”

This past spring my grandfather was issued an ultimatum.  According to his doctor, a fellow golfer, he would die soon.  “We’re talking months, not years,” the doctor said.  He had been suffering from a pain in his midsection for some time, and one day his doctor asked him to pay a visit and bring along his wife, my grandma.  He wrote, “When a doctor tells you to bring your wife with you, it sounds exactly like dirt hitting the lid of your coffin.”  It was cancer. Continue reading →

When the (bleeping) presses rolled every night

Posted on by
Reply

Topeka Capital Journal
July 23, 1997

This column is about newspapering, but there won’t be stories about editors screaming, “Stop the presses.” These days the presses are still stopped, but it’s because of a malfunction, a power outage or a plan to get the box score of the Royals latest loss in Seattle, or Oakland, or maybe a 15-inning, five-hour defeat in Chicago, in the paper.

There even was a time when the presses would be stopped, or started late, so that a display advertisement could be added, or maybe, in extreme circumstances, eliminated. Late changes also could mean the presses would start early. It was enough to make editors scream, “Leave the bleeping presses alone!” (More on bleeping later.”)

Snow was the main culprit. If a heavy snow was falling, or was forecast, deadlines might be moved up to give circulation workers more time to get the papers distributed and delivered. Snow also could mean more ads were crammed into the paper, creating havoc as editors lost precious space.

The ads would be for snow tires and shovels, particularly early in the season. In almost every city where snow was a possibility, there were snow ads set and ready to run, waiting for a blizzard or at least enough snow to get stuck in or shovel.

Publishers and editors look at snow from distinctly different viewpoints. Publishers, eyeing revenue, would look at the forecast and the storm clouds and say, “Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” They would pray for enough snow to trigger the ads, and often the decision would be made within minutes of press time.

Editors understood the priority of revenue over space, but they could be heard to sob occasionally as they tore up pages, getting rid of stories and photos to make room for snow tires. Can you imagine the pain of losing a layout on bikini fashions in the tropics to a Gregg Tire Co. ad?

On rare occasions, however, editors gained space because of what happened in the news. Airline companies had standing orders to newspapers to pull their ads if there was a story in the same issue about an airline accident.

The reasoning is obvious. It wouldn’t do to have a story about a crash that took 89 lives wrapped around a big ad for an airline company boasting of the speed, comfort and safety of flying. There were some big-time disagreements when newspapers failed to pull airline ads on a disaster day.

Editors really never spent a lot of their time worrying about snow and airlines. As they do today, they always worried more about the quality of the product. The Capital-Journal, for example, has an in-house critic and teacher who reads every word of the news in the paper every day, and comments on it, often rather harshly.

I would tell you her name is Stannie Anderson, but I won’t, because some might think I’m trying to gain favor.

The other day, in her weekly critique, she was emphasizing the value of short lead sentences. Seven words, she said, are much more inviting to the reader than 87, which admittedly I lean toward. But, if short sentences and paragraphs are what she wants, expect to see this lead on a future Topeka shooting:

Dead
That’s the way they found Joe Smith Friday.
Shot
In the head, four times.

It is good form in newspapering to give credit where it’s due for something like the above, but I stole it so long ago I can’t recall where it came from. Maybe it was Reader’s Digest, because it is also good form to steal from quality sources.

Newspapers, which must make their product acceptable to a wide audience, can be thankful for the word bleep. It is, without question, the most versatile word in the language. Here are just a few examples of its usage, with Translation following:

“No bleeping way.” (I don’t think your idea is feasible.)
“You’ve got to be bleeping me.” (Would you please repeat that?)
“You’re confusing me with someone who gives a bleep.” (That’s really interesting, but maybe you should call 911, or write to Anne Landers.)
“What the bleep?” (How did I get called for jury duty?)
“You got your head up your bleep.” (I don’t think you’ve listened to what I’ve tried to tell you.)
“This job bleeps.” (Why wasn’t I born rich?)

Finally, my favorite newspaper story. In the old days at the Daily Capital, Arthur “Scoop” Conklin always answered the phone at night. Often it would be people who, having heard a siren, would call and ask, “Where’s the fire?” Scoop, listening to the police radio, would patiently tell them, “10th and Mulvane,” “4th and Kansas,” or whatever.

Then one night, the fire was in our press room, and Scoop had a ball. The callers would ask, “Where’s the fire?” and Scoop would shout, “Downstairs!” Then he’d hang up.

Bush leaguers, parting shots, fresh starts

Posted on by
Reply

Topeka Metro News
May 3, 2002

I suppose I should begin by commenting on events leading up to my untimely death on the city’s unofficial newspaper, So here is my report: I was being measured for a muzzle and a leash, so I quit. Period. End of report.

Actually, what happened merely interrupted what already has been a long journey. Old columnists are like old ballplayers, always thinking they have a good year or two left in them, and always wanting to prove it. They can’t wait to go to the mound one more time to show ‘em the curveball still works.

That’s the way it is with me. I’m not out to match the record of Zula Bennington Green, who, as Peggy of the Flint Hills, wrote columns well into her 90s. But I still feel the urge, so when the Topeka Metro News expressed an interest in running a combination of my old and new columns, I said, “give me the ball,” or fighting words to that effect. We’ll see what happens.

I feel I don’t go into this new game without credentials. After all, I was voted Topeka’s favorite columnist for 39 straight years, a record matched only by Porubsky’s chili, and by Baby Dolls, as Topeka’s “best place to spend a rainy afternoon.” Or a sunny one.

Continue reading →