With Will Snider

By Rick Dean, Topeka Capital-Journal

It once was said that the mark of a good newspaper columnist was the ability to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

By that criteria alone, as well as several others, Dick Snider was a great newspaper columnist.

Snider, the longtime Topeka Capital-Journal columnist and former sports editor, died Saturday after a short battle with cancer. He was 83.

A former oil industry executive, he worked briefly in the Kennedy administration before producing “College Football” — a long- running highlights show for the ABC network in the 1960s.

A man who walked comfortably in the world of sports, politics and business, Snider’s ability to apply a sharply pointed needle to people in power, as well as to himself and those he loved, made him as popular with readers as he was pilloried by politicians. Continue reading →