A Birthday Exchange (Happy 105th Birthday)

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(Dick Snider wrote this letter to his children 40 years ago today and the oldest replied to his siblings two days later – Editor)

March 20 , 1985

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is the sting of an ungrateful child.”
Grandma Snider

To the ungrateful:
On the occasion of my 64th birthday I take note of the fact that not a single one of my progeny sent tidings of any kind. This is duly entered in bold ink in the ledger of life, and will make it that much easier for me to bequeath my rather substantial holdings to the Redemptorists, the Benedictines, the Libertarians, the Sisters of Mercy and Oral Roberts. Continue reading →

Barbara Linville Snider

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Barbara Linville Snider, 89, passed peacefully in her sleep at home in Chesapeake, Va. Wednesday Jan. 22 surrounded by family.

Barbara Alice Linville was born on a farm in Harveyville, Kan. Jan. 8, 1931, the fifth of seven children of Oscar and Nellie Linville. As a young girl, she taught elementary students in a one-room school she also attended as a student, riding a horse to the school to load and light the wood stove to begin the day. She later attended Harveyville High School for a time, earning her degree from Topeka High School while working as a copygirl for the Topeka Daily Capital.

Barbara Snider

In the nation’s capital, she was a founding member of THIS – The Hospitality and Information Service, a volunteer organization of Kennedy administration families devoted to helping counterparts in the community of foreign diplomats adjust to living in Washington and the US.

Spending the next decade in Washington suburb of Kensington, Md., she was active in her children’s schools and in the social life of her community. In subsequent years, the family moved to Wichita, Kan. and Des Moines, Iowa. She and Dick later lived in Boulder, Colo., returning to Topeka in 1981 where he was an award-winning columnist at the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Topeka Metro News.

Following Dick’s passing, she moved to Chesapeake in 2012. She is survived by sons Steve (Mary Ann Allison, Hyattsville, MD) and Kurt (Rory Bennett, Del Mar, CA) daughters Anne Comer (Gary Comer, Chesapeake, VA, Amy Nelson (Duff Nelson, Southlake, TX) and Mary (Laurie Shedler, Washington, DC), nine grandchildren, and one great grandson.

In her later years, she shared lines from a favorite quote by author and artist Flavia Weedn along with her own thoughts in a note to her children: “’Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints.’ If anyone is more blessed than I am with Steve, Kurt, Anne, Amy and Mary, then they have the same joy in life that I have. The only inheritance I can give to them is my thankfulness. Only God can give them more.”

A memorial service for friends and family will be held Saturday March 28 at the Harveyville United Methodist Church. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in the name of Barbara Linville Snider to the Dick Snider Scholarship for Communications and Mass Media in care of Washburn University, 1700 SW College, Topeka, Kan. 66621 .

Kansas Newspapermen Linked by Sports

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Topeka Capital-Journal
Dec. 15, 1999

There were a couple of send-off parties earlier this month for Mark Nusbaum and his family, wishing them well in Lubbock, Texas, where he is the new publisher of the uniquely named Avalanche-Journal. I remember it as the only newspaper I ever saw printed blue raindrops on the front page of the weather report.

Nusbaum is a local boy who made good. He started at the Topeka Capital-Journal as a copy boy, almost as low on the totem pole as a local retiree columnist, and he was executive editor when he left.

He became a sportswriter, and as he moved up, he worked on both the news and business sides of the paper. He became a good newspaperman, well qualified to go off at the tender age of 44 and take over a big daily.

When he told his wife he was surprised by how well he got along with the key players on his new team in Lubbock, a West Texas city of 186,000, she said it was because he had enough redneck in him to make it work. It wasn’t the answer he was expecting, but he agrees. Continue reading →

Another Look at the Second Amendment

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Topeka Capital-Journal
Dec. 16, 1992

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution, one of the original 10 known as the Bill of Rights, says: “Right to keep and bear arms. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

That’s all it says. It became law toward the end of 1791, when an armed and ready militia was necessary, because the security of the newly-created country was shaky. There was a real need for every able-bodied man to be armed and prepared to defend the nation against the British, French, the Indians or whomever.

But that was then, and this is now. The amendment qualifies the right of the people to keep and bear arms by saying armed citizens are needed to make up the militia that protects our security from the possible threats of outsiders.

Now, we don’t need militia, or a citizen Army, and it’s a good thing, because we are exactly 180 degrees away from having well-regulated armed citizens protecting our security.

In terms of physical security, what this country needs more than anything else is protection from the people who have the guns. Continue reading →

Handguns Have Gotten out of Hand

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Topeka Capital-Journal
Dec. 2, 1992

It would be great if everyone in the country decided the handgun homicides coast to coast last week, like the double slaying in Lawrence, were the last straw. There would be such a demand for gun control that Congress would get the message and do something about it.

Our representatives in Washington would be hammered so hard by constituents they would become more afraid of them than they are of the National Rifle Association now. They would do what they know to be the morally right thing, and they would pass laws making it very difficult to legally buy a handgun.

True, this would work a hardship on a lot of people, from schoolchildren to career criminals. The young thugs would have to settle grudges and impress peers with mere knives or baseball bats, or something like that. But there would be fewer of them killed.

Dedicated gun-carrying criminals might decide to get out of the business if they one day found themselves without a gun and no easy way to get one. Continue reading →

In Memory of Dick Snider

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By Peter Hancock
Special to the Topeka Metro News
Nov. 26, 2004

Babe Ruth hit his last home run as a player for the Boston Braves. The last uniform he wore (as a coach) was that of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Michael Jordan finished his career in the NBA with the Washington Wizards, and Joe Namath threw his last NFL pass for the Los Angeles Rams.

A lot of great people end their careers in places other than the one that made them famous, and so it was with Dick Snider who died this week at age 83, a month after publishing his final column in the Topeka Metro News.

Regardless of where he ended his career, most readers will always remember Snider as a longtime reporter and columnist for the Topeka Capital-Journal. And that’s as it should be, even though his short-lived career at this newspaper should never be forgotten or discounted.

I never had the privilege of knowing Snider personally, but I always admired his work. He had that rare ability to keep both the big world and the small world in their proper perspective – to write with equal eloquence and passion about city politics or a Snider family reunion.

He could be lighthearted and whimsical, or he could be dark and caustic. Either way, he never fell into the trap of taking himself, or his own opinions, too seriously.

Snider came to this newspaper after what can only be described as a less than amicable separation from the Capital-Journal. I don’t presume to know all the reasons for his departure from that paper, nor would I presume to pass them along here even if I did. Continue reading →

Never Lost on Midwestern Memory Lane

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Topeka Capital-Journal
Nov. 26, 2000

On the weekend before Thanksgiving our son, Steve, who lives in Maryland, with his son, Jake, 11, were here, and Steve insisted we visit the birthplaces of my parents. Being the kind of father I am, I agreed, but the problem was that my dad was born in Miltonvale and my mom and Howe, Neb., and Steve wanted to hit both in one day.

We headed toward Miltonvale and I compounded the problem by stopping in Manhattan to show them the K-State stadium and the new Colbert Hills Golf Course. Then, I figured that since we were so close, we should stop in Wakefield to say hello to former Gov. Bill Avery.

That was fine, except that as we started to turn off US-77 Highway on K-82 we learned it was closed, and we’d have to detour around the bottom end of Milford Lake and approach Wakefield from the south.

Everything seemed to be working, but we ran out of highway signs and were forced to make the reluctant decision that we were lost. Thus began a day of learning anew of the hospitality and innate goodness of rural Kansans. Continue reading →

‘Singing Outlaw’ Evens the Score

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Topeka Capital-Journal
Nov. 10, 1997

The state of Kansas is wondering what to do next year with a cash surplus that….

FLASH – I interrupt this column to announce the birth of our 9th grandchild, a boy, born to Rory and son Kurt in Los Angeles. It was 8:05 a.m. Friday when the phone rang as I was typing the first sentence of this column. It was Kurt, saying the baby arrived two weeks early, and everyone is healthy and happy.

Outstanding reporter that I am, I still forgot to ask how much the baby weighed, or if the name has been chosen. I was in too big a hurry to call the newborn’s Grandma, who is at a family gathering in Holcomb. I’m sure the birth details will be on the national and international Associated Press wire, and on the evening new network news.

Now back to the column. Continue reading →

Soaring Memories of Britton, Okla.

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Topeka Capital-Journal
October 28, 1994

Please bear with me this morning while I shed a tear over the passing of one of the great landmarks of my youth. They’re going to tear down the hangar at the abandoned airport two miles west of my old hometown of Britton, Okla. With it will go a lot of memories.

It was the workplace of many of my early heroes. It was the original headquarters for the airline founded by Paul and Tom Braniff of Oklahoma City, and Braniff pilots who lived in Britain would come into my dad’s drug store. They would be in uniform, and they would speak to me, and I’d be walking on air.

My uncle, Bill Garthoeffner, learned to fly there in 1930. I saw him take his first lesson in a Waco biplane, and after he got his license and bought a tiny Viele Monocoupe, I was one of his first passengers. I held the control stick while he said, “keep the wings level in the nose on the horizon.”

My brother Al work there before he went away to become a Navy pilot. He flew in World War II, flew for United and Pan-American after the war, and then went back to the Navy and made it a career.

Wiley Post used the hanger to prepare his Lockheed Vega, named Winnie Mae, for his historic solo round-the-world flight in 1933. He was visited at the field by Will Rogers, and they would die together in 1935 when the plane Post was piloting crashed on take-off near Point Barrow, Alaska. Continue reading →

Fitness for the Rest of Us

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Metro News
March 19, 2004

Lee Iacocca was an automobile executive who at one time was better known than Henry or Edsel Ford, Orville Olds, Burl Buick, Chief Pontiac, Carl Cadillac, Abe Lincoln, Harry Honda, Tom Toyota, Ed Bozarth or Laird Noller. Iacocca created the Ford Mustang and got that auto empire out of a rut, and then literally saved Chrysler’s rear end, not to mention it’s flywheel.

He was Mister Detroit in 1962 when he had one of his underlings called the national Physical Fitness and Sports office in Washington. Iacocca had a hot idea, and wanted to present it to Bud Wilkinson, who was football coach at Oklahoma, but also President Kennedy’s consultant on such matters, and the boss of the office.

Wilkinson actually spent only the summer months in Washington, so the Iacocca call came to yours truly, the administrator of the operation. The auto magnate wanted an appointment with Wilkinson, so I set it up for a date a couple of weeks later, when Bud would be there. Continue reading →