Each week we’ll take a step back into the history of Great Bend through the eyes of reporters past. We’ll reacquaint you with what went into creating the Great Bend of today, and do our best to update you on what “the rest of the story” turned out to be.
After the 2016 election, who could imagine this mid-term election cycle could be so divisive? Well, historically, election cycles always seem to find us shaking our heads in disbelief that it has “gotten this bad,” even when it seems there should be so much going right for our country-- like 70 years ago, when the nation was holding its first presidential election since the end of WWII.
On Nov. 1, 1948 the front page of the Great Bend Tribune left no question in minds of readers which presidential candidate the paper endorsed, with Republican candidates Thomas Dewey for president and Earl Warren for vice president 1948 appearing top of the page, twice as large as the accompanying photos of incumbent President Harry Truman and Vice President Alden Barkley. The small print headline above them all? “Here they are, folks -- which team will you have?”
It appeared the day before the election, along with a front page editorial that started, “The tumult and the shouting, such as it was, has died down and the candidates and their stooges have bowed off the political stage, and now the spotlight of the world is upon us, the citizens of the United States. For tomorrow, we go to the polls in the exercise of that right which is the supreme expression of a democracy-- the right to name our leaders, without coercion, by secret ballot.”
Kansas was not in the majority that cycle, with all eight of its electoral votes going to Dewey. The slight to the sitting president didn’t go unnoticed, however, with one reader, Mrs. Mildred Ross, Otis, the Democrat vice chairman for Rush County, compelled to write in with a letter to the editor three days later.
Sirs:
I, for one, think you sowed poor respect for our President of the United States in putting his small picture beneath that of Dewey and Warren in your Monday, Nov. 1 issue of The Great Bend Tribune. After all, he is our President, and will be for the next four years ad I think you owe him an apology.
The Tribune was unrepentant. Noting they had run photos of the triumphant president when he was declared the winner of the election, they went on to criticize Mrs. Ross for her timing.
“We don’t feel so badly, Mrs. Ross, because your letter is dated Nov. 4; had it been written Nov. 1 or 2, assuring us that Harry “will be president for the next four years,” now, that WOULD have been something.”
In addition to deciding the president, the 1948 state election once again asked the question of whether Kansas would continue to observe Prohibition. In that day, vote counting was a labor-intensive job, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for it to take a few days before all the returns were in. According to the Kansas Historical Society, “despite the efforts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other “drys,” voters rejected prohibition by a vote of 422,294 to 358,485.”
By the end of the week, an Associated Press article in the Tribune declared, “Carrie Nation’s County Went Wet.”
“Carrie Nation became a national legend for her hatchet-swinging, saloon-smashing activities in the early part of this century. She lived at Medicine Lodge, in Barber county and her first raids were on liquor dealers in that county. Tuesday, Barber county residents voted 1956 to 1948 for repeal of the state’s constitutional prohibition.”
Newspapers set their own editorial policies. Thankfully, the Tribune’s has evolved over the past 70 years. We strive for fairness in our coverage of all candidates. Our policy also prohibits printing any editorials or letters to the editor endorsing any candidate after the Friday before the election is to take place. Photos of candidates are now as uniform in size as we can reasonably achieve. In other words, we take the role of the press seriously and seek to provide information so readers may be informed when they enter the voting booth. Please do remember to vote by Tuesday.
Barton County soldier returned home
Also on Nov. 1, the paper announced one Barton County son would finally be coming home to rest. Cpl. Wilbur W. Soeken, Claflin, was killed in action at Metz, France, on Nov. 15, 1944, just two weeks after his 23rd birthday, while serving with the 95th Infantry Division. His body would arrive by train at the Ellinwood depot the next afternoon, with a funeral service at the Weber and Cook mortuary in Ellinwood, and burial in the Pleasantview cemetery at Claflin, with an honor guard from the American Legion of Claflin present. Soeken is listed here , along with 63 other Barton County men who died while serving in WWII. Something interesting to check out with Veterans’ Day coming up in just a few weeks.
According to FindAGrave.com, Soeken was the son of Onno and Minnie Soeken. He had one younger brother, Howard Lee Soeken, who farmed and raised a family in the area. He died in 2013.
And the poets are not forgotten...
By the weekend, with the election behind them, readers of the Tribune were ready for lighter fare.
On Nov. 4,1948, a report in the Tribune from Stockholm, Sweden, announced author T. S. Eliot won the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature. According to History.com , the award was given “ for his profound effect on the direction of modern poetry.”
By coincidence, the Kansas Author’s Club would be meeting in Great Bend the next week, and anyone interested in creative writing was invited to attend. Kansas poet May Williams Ward would be the guest speaker. Ward was an accomplished writer. According to the Wichita State University website, at one time, she was the editor of The Harp, a national poetry magazine published in Larned, Kansas, by newspaper publishers, Leslie and Sara Wallace. William Allen White, Arthur Capper, Jouett Shouse, and other notables comprised a list of patrons who contributed funds to the magazine.
Washburn University’s website has a detailed biography page about Ward .
“She married Merle Ward in 1908 in Osawatomie’s Old Stone Church that had been built by John Brown’s brother-in-law and nephew. And John Brown’s grandniece played the organ at their wedding.” (Yes, that John Brown, the famous abolitionist.)
In the 1920’s when Ward was editing The Harp, they lived for a time in Belpre. Already, she was an accomplished poet.
According the Washburn biography, “William Allen White referred to Ward as “the champion poet of Kansas.” She left behind a legacy of over 2,000 poems and seven published books during a literary career that lasted fifty years. Ward died in 1975 at the age of 93.”
The Great Bend Public Library’s Michael Adamyk searched the card catalogue, and found No Two Years Alike, by Ward, in the library’s collection. He also found some of her other books of poetry available through Larned’s Jordaan Memorial Library (From Christmas-time to April, No Two Years Alike, and Seesaw) and Concordia’s Frank Carlson Library (From Christmas-time to April, No Two Years Alike, and Wheatlands).
Adamyk also found a book called Kansas Poets: An anthology of 63 contemporaries. Ward wrote the foreword.
It can be found at the following locations: Stockton Public Library, Lebanon Community Library, Barnard Library (LaCrosse), JH Robbins Memorial Library (Ellsworth), Hoisington Public Library, and Frank Carlson Library (Concordia).
The Kansas Author’s Club is alive and well. For more information, visit their website. They’ve been meeting regularly since 1904, and today they have chapters all over the state.
