Archiver: Recent Episodes
Fountain City Frequency
Archiver is a tour through the most important moments in history with host, Sam Zeff. Using archival tape, our show will pull you into the world of these events while explaining how they still affect us today.
In many states teachers are being attacked by politicians who oppose public education. In many states trans people are being attacked by politicians for, well, who really knows.
So imagine you’re a transgender, public school teacher. How hard is that? In this episode we find out from Riley Long, a trans high school teacher in Kansas.
Chances are whatever you know about trans issues in education came from reporters who cover the issue. The best education reporting starts with students and works its way out to larger issues.
Few things have complicated education reporting more than trans issues. The reporting is complicated by state lawmakers and school board members who use it as a campaign issue.
On this issue, we speak with veteran reporter and editor Barb Shelly who has been a journalist in Kansas City for decades.
With everything else they must deal with…law enforcement, taxes and economic development…state legislators spend an enormous amount of time on transgender issues in education.
Why, is the most important question but also, are we done watching endless debates on trans students in statehouses?
On this episode, we hear from Missouri state Sen. Greg Razor, a Democrat from Kansas City and the only openly gay member of the state senate.
It’s hard enough being the parent of a middle school student. But now your child comes out as trans and you have to navigate the school district bureaucracy to make sure your child is safe. Add to that, many school board members lean towards anti-trans and that makes parenting even harder.
In this episode, we hear from Virginia Franzese from Leawood, Kansas. She has faced all of these problems and more.
There are few education topics more heated than transgender students. Should teachers use preferred pronouns? What restroom should trans kids use? And the question that generates the most heat: should kids be allowed to play sports on the teams they identify with?
In this episode, we ask two former school district superintendents how we got here. We hear from Cynthia Lane, former superintendent in the Kansas City, Kansas district and Bill Nicely, former superintendent in the Kearney, Missouri school district.
We start this season of Archiver in 1960 on the streets of Russell, Kansas—right there on the plains about half-way between Kansas City and Denver.
It was a railroad town and an oil town but, for our purposes, it’s Bob Dole’s town.
His first campaign for federal office featured four girls in homemade skirts called the Bob-O-Links, singing on the streets of western Kansas. In between numbers they handed out Dole Pineapple juice.
“The thing that really strikes me about Dole is if you could somehow take the spirit of western Kansas, just kind of collect it up and make a person out of it, you would get Bob Dole,” says Michael Smith, a professor of political science at Emporia State University.
In our first episode, we hear about his boyhood days in Russell, the World War II battle in Italy that grievously wounded Dole, and how they shaped the rest of his life.
By 1960 Bob Dole had his sights on a much bigger political stage. After his one term in the Kansas Legislature and five terms as Russell County attorney, there was a shake-up in the western Kansas political landscape starting in 1954. Dole saw his opening.
There was a bitter three-way fight for the Republican nomination for Congress from western Kansas that year. In the race with Dole was Keith Sebelius, future father-in-law of Kathleen, who would be elected the Democratic governor of Kansas in 2002 and someone who felt he was the heir-apparent.
He would finally win the seat eight years later.
Here’s how the Salina Journal described the last debate in its July 31st edition, just three days before the primary: “All played a game of catch with hot bricks as they strived for the electorate’s love, prejudice and votes in Tuesday’s primary.”
Purple prose? Sure. But accurate. Someone started a rumor that Doyle was dropping out before the primary. Sebelius claimed Dole was in the pocket of big oil. Dole called the charges a sham. In the end, Dole squeaked by Sibelius by 982 votes.
In the general, Dole breezed by his Democratic opponent with 60 percent of the vote. Dole entered the House in 1961 with guns blazing.
When Bob Dole was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives in 1961 it didn’t take the freshman congressman from western Kansas long to attack the Democrats. He opposed almost everything the new Kennedy Administration wanted.
In March 1961, he voted against extending unemployment benefits. Democrats in Kansas immediately labeled him a reactionary. He also latched onto a controversy involving a Texas con man called Billy Sol Estes. So big was the scandal that a minor rock star named Jesse Lee Turner even wrote a ballad about Billy Sol.
Here’s how the New York Times led Billy Sol’s obit on May 14th, 2013: “Billie Sol Estes, a fast-talking Texas swindler who made millions, went to prison and captivated America for years with mind-boggling agricultural scams, payoffs to politicians and bizarre tales of covered-up killings and White House conspiracies…was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Granbury, Tex. He died in his sleep and was found in his recliner.”
If you’re an ambitious freshman congressman, who wouldn’t want a piece of that?
Dole also opposed the Peace Corp and, after he was reelected in 1962, he opposed federal funding to expand college classrooms. The Salina Journal on August 16th, 1963 labeled him the “Kansas Againster.”
The 1964 election was a disaster for Republicans. Lyndon Johnson crushed Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater with 61% of the vote. Goldwater only carried six states. It was the biggest landslide since Franklin Roosevelt crushed Kansas Gov. Alf Landon in 1936. But, out in western Kansas, Bob Dole was bucking the trend as he sought another term in the House.
Even though he was doing better than most Republicans, Dole was still in a very close race with a relatively unknown Democrat named Bill Bork.
How close was it? So close that Dole barely won his home county of Russell and lost nearby Saline County. In the end, he was reelected 51 to 49 percent, a margin of about five-thousand votes in the 58 county 1st District.
Dole was now a bit of a rising star in the GOP. After surviving the LBJ landslide, he had a lot of agitating to do against Johnson Administration’s Great Society programs. To a group of young Republicans in Wichita he warned LBJ’s plan would make “America the land of plenty, owe plenty, tax plenty and spend plenty.” He called it, the “Great Anxiety.” You can almost hear him saying it on a late night talk show. But he was conflicted by part of the civil rights act of 1966.
While he voted yes on voting rights in 1965 he voted no on fair housing in 1966, suggesting it violated people’s property rights. If the 1964 campaign was a nail bitter for the man from Russell, the 1966 campaign was a cake walk. He beat a woman named Berniece Henkle from Great Bend, the wife of former Kansas Lt. Governor Joseph Henkle, with almost 70 percent of the vote. Now, Dole could seriously think about his next political move.
After Bob Dole’s victory in 1966 many political observers believe he started to move toward the middle.
Hunger became an issue that Dole got deeply involved in. CBS showed the documentary “Hunger in America” on May 21, 1968 and it helped profoundly change how the U-S government dealt with hunger. It would also help solidify Bob Dole’s moderation.
No longer the Kansas Againster, as the Salina Journal called him, he was becoming more of a statesman. President Johnson would dispatch Dole as part of a four-member, bipartisan congressional delegation to India to see what the U.S. could be to mitigate a famine that was killing thousands.
“It’s hard not to give away the Capitol when you see people starving,” Dole told the Wichita Eagle when he returned. But even before his trip to India, Dole had been thinking about hunger.
At the end of 1965 Dole proposed the Bread and Butter Corp, an idea that would send Americans abroad to help developing countries with agriculture. So the man from Russell moved to the middle and got himself elected to the Senate in 1968.
In an editorial after the election, the Topeka Daily Capital said Kansas chose well, that Dole had a winning personality and a devotion to duty. But his next election would be the toughest of Dole’s congressional career.
In his first run for Senate in 1968, Bob Dole had no trouble winning. He crushed Gov. William Avery in the Republican primary with 68% of the vote and in the general election he beat Democrat William I. Robinson with 60%.
It probably didn’t hurt that Tonight Show regular and Kansas City jazz singer Marilyn Maye sang his campaign jingle, a far cry from the Bob-O-Links in Russell. But Dole’s reelection in 1974 with Congressman Bill Roy from Topeka was a political knife fight.
In 1971 President Richard Nixon appointed Dole Republican National Committee chairman. Then there was Watergate, and in the ’74 campaign Democrats wanted to know what Dole knew about the break in. It would dog him the entire campaign. Especially when the national columnist Jack Anderson reported on June 1st that the Dole campaign hired famous Nixon, and later Trump, dirty trickster Roger Stone.
In a statement five days later, the Dole campaign accused Roy of leaking the Stone hiring to Anderson. He said Anderson and a group of liberal writers were engaged in a number of dirty tricks aimed at Senator Dole. Stone was fired.
The polls showed Dole trailing Roy. But it was the Kansas State Fair debate that changed Dole’s fortunes in politics forever. The debate was supposed to focus exclusively on agriculture. But with just a few minutes left, Dole accused Roy, an obstetrician and lawyer, of favoring abortion on demand.
Roy said no such a thing in the debate but the accusation stuck and Dole, barely, was reelected.
On August 20th, 1976 the new ticket of Gerald Ford and Bob Dole made their first campaign stop in Dole’s hometown of Russell, Kansas. It was the night before the two were nominated at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City.
It was also Bob Dole Day in Russell, 95 degrees with a 20-mile-an-hour wind that can make the plains feel like a convection oven. Still, a thousand people showed up to hear Dole and see Ford. Dole choked up as he spoke to the same people who helped pay for his rehab after wounds suffered on hill 914 in Italy during World War II. A “tearful homecoming” the Parsons Sun called it.
Everyone knew Ford picked a partisan running mate; Dole had been attacking Democrats since entering the House in 1961. But it was on October 15th, during the vice presidential debate, when he earned a nickname that would stick with him forever.
Dole called World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam “Democratic” wars. Jimmy Carter’s running mate, Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale responded coolly, "Senator Dole has richly earned his reputation as a hatchet man.” Time Magazine said it was number one on its top ten list of veep debate moments. Two weeks later Carter and Mondale would beat Ford and Dole 50 to 48 percent.
Dole went right back to work on hunger, a deep passion for him. In the summer of 1977, the cash requirement for food stamps was eliminated as Dole worked with his long-time collaborator on hunger, Senator George McGovern, a Democrat from South Dakota.
Dole briefly flirted with a presidential run in 1980. But, in the year of Ronald Reagan, it didn’t last long. He was reelected that year with 64 percent of the vote, beating Republican-turned-Democrat John Simpson from Salina. Dole carried all 105 counties.
The GOP captured the Senate with Reagan at the top of the ticket and Dole became finance chairman and helped pass much of Reagan’s economic programs. Then Dole was elected Senate majority leader and became even a bigger deal.
He was headed toward another national campaign.
After losing as Gerald Ford’s 1976 vice presidential running mate, Dole made another run for the White House in 1988. It was a crowded GOP field that included Ronald Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush.
The campaign started well enough with Dole winning in Iowa. But Bush started running ads in New Hampshire saying Dole helped raise taxes, and he won the primary.
On TV that night, Dole ended up in the same segment with Bush and, when asked what message he had for the vice president, Dole snarled into the camera that Bush should “stop lying about my record.” Dole was done after Bush swept the south.
So Dole went back to the Senate. In 1990, he once again had a decision to make on civil rights. He voted against a civil rights bill, saying it did nothing but impose hiring quotas on American employers. Ten Republicans joined all the senate Democrats to pass the bill. Dole was joined by his Kansas colleague Nancy Kassabaum in opposition. The legislation was vetoed by President Bush and an override failed.
Dole was again easily reelected in 1992, beating Gloria O’Dell whose campaign slogan was “Gloria versus Goliath.” Dole won with 63 percent of the vote. Also elected that year, Bill Clinton as president. The national media dubbed Dole Dr. Gridlock and Dr. No.
All of this would set up the final campaign for the Man from Russell. On August 15th, 1996 in San Diego, California Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination for president. He dreamed and strived for this moment since he entered politics in 1950.
A CNN poll around Labor Day had Bill Clinton with 55 percent, Dole with 32 percent and Ross Perot, running as the Reform Party nominee, with six percent. On November 5th, 1996 Bill Clinton was reelected with 49 percent of the vote to Dole’s 41 percent and Perot’s eight percent. The New York Times called Dole’s campaign one of the most ineffectual in recent memory.
So what is Dole’s legacy? That’s in our last episode.
On November 8th, 1996 just three days after Bob Dole got pasted by Bill Clinton for president, he walked on stage at the Late Show with David Letterman to a standing ovation. There has never been a politician just as comfortable and formidable marking up legislation as they are on late night TV. He joked that he was making $200 for the appearance and it was the first work he’d had in sometime. While staff and reporters knew Dole was a very funny man, it was a side voters rarely saw.
After politics, Dole would do commercials for Viagra and Visa and those close to him would applaud his new found freedom to be funny. But Dole’s legacy is complicated, some would say tainted, by his endorsement, twice, of Donald Trump for president.
So how do I, a native Kansan who is quite partial to his home state, feel about Bob Dole, a politician who I covered and, in all honesty, voted for a couple of times? You can’t help but be proud of a small-town guy who rose to the top of the political world and accomplished so much.
You have to admire his actions as a platoon leader on Hill 914 in Italy, actions that grievously wounded a young man who as an older man would remember his struggles as he helped pass the Americans with Disabilities Act.
But I’m left to struggle with Dole's endorsement of Donald Trump. During election time, it’s clear the partisan politician ruled and the statesman took a back seat. Maybe nobody could have seen all of this turmoil coming. Or maybe it was just Dole being Dole. He joined the Republican team in 1950 and if that meant backing Nixon, Trump or whoever, well, that was Dole’s version of loyalty.
All I know for sure is that it’s very, very complicated.
KMBC radio was headquartered atop the swanky Pickwick Hotel in downtown Kansas City. The Pickwick was the place to stay for men doing business with the city and county. It was a favorite of Harry Truman when he was Presiding Judge of Jackson County. And while there were probably plenty of deals made by men in smoke-filled rooms, at KMBC they were thinking about and celebrating, women.
We kick off this season of Archiver on February 8th, 1941 at the Ivanhoe Temple in Kansas City. The Ivanhoe was home to much of the city’s musical talent but on Saturday nights it was home to the Brush Creek Follies which originated on KMBC in Kansas City.
It's been more than a half century since the start of the Vietnam War. Vietnam changed American politics, changed the US military and most importantly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
In this special Archiver series, we meet four Kansans who fall into that category. Four people who fought the war, not with claymore mines and grit, but with bandages, medicine, and pure compassion.
It's been more than a half century since the start of the Vietnam War. Vietnam changed American politics, changed the US military and most importantly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
In this special Archiver series, we meet four Kansans who fall into that category. Four people who fought the war, not with claymore mines and grit, but with bandages, medicine, and pure compassion.
It's been more than a half century since the start of the Vietnam War. Vietnam changed American politics, changed the US military and most importantly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
In this special Archiver series, we meet four Kansans who fall into that category. Four people who fought the war, not with claymore mines and grit, but with bandages, medicine, and pure compassion.
It's been more than a half century since the start of the Vietnam War. Vietnam changed American politics, changed the US military and most importantly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
In this special Archiver series, we meet four Kansans who fall into that category. Four people who fought the war, not with claymore mines and grit, but with bandages, medicine, and pure compassion.
Literally from the moment Charles Finley bought The As, he wanted to move them out of Kansas City. He claimed otherwise but it was a lie. In 1967, he made it happen.
For most fans, it’s not just the players that conjure up memories of a team. The broadcasters are just as important.
You already know about Finley the showman; Charlie O The Mule, the exploding scoreboard, Kelly green and gold uniforms at a time everyone else wore white and gray, his lobbying for orange baseballs. Sounds like a real funster. But not at all. Finley had a mean streak, he was mercurial, dictatorial.
There just aren’t many songs about mules. But in the mid 60's (the exact release date is unknown) Charlie O' the Mule by Kansas City song writer and rockabilly performer Gene McKown was released. It’s about a Missouri mule that helped usher in a wild, complicated and, at times, maddening seven years of baseball in Kansas City.
In the 13 years the A’s were in Kansas City, they were simply terrible. But the A’s didn’t get this dismal without some help. It all goes back to the New York Yankees, and the unholy alliance between Yankee owners Del Webb and Dan Topping and their handpicked A’s owner Arnold Johnson.
The A’s were always an awful baseball team. But Municipal Stadium, well that was special to almost anyone who ever went.
While we all know the Monarch's place in baseball history—they won ten league championships and launched the big league careers of many black players–you might not know the role the A’s played in integrating blacks into the big leagues.
1955 was also the year the A’s opened up a brief but important 13 year run in Kansas City.
During those years, baseball fan emotions bounced from joyous to tumultuous to downright silly at times, but there’s no doubt the A’s moving to Kansas City from Philadelphia changed the city’s image from a cowtown to a metropolis.
It was one of the greatest conspiracies in sports history. One that would lead to turmoil in Kansas City, a congressional hearing and, eventually, one of the craziest owners in all of professional sports.
Archiver fans, get ready for a special season of the podcast. We’re leaving Kansas for now to tell a story that covers some of the most tumultuous years in baseball…but it’s more than just a sports story. This is about power, greed and corruption that went all the way to congress.
I want to take you back to August 19th, 1991. It’s 93 degrees and humid. Hundreds of anti-abortion protestors from around the country have gathered in Wichita. There’s nothing spontaneous about it, planning went on for weeks and eventually hundreds would swell to thousands. Most people, including the city’s three abortion clinics, the police and city officials, thought the whole thing would be done in a few days with a handful of arrests. But what came to be known as the Summer of Mercy stretched on for six tense weeks, resulted in 2,600 arrests and changed politics in Kansas in ways that we feel right this minute.
The Globetrotters have always been innovators. But perhaps the greatest innovation was in 1985 when they signed a woman, the first woman to ever play professionally with men. That woman was from Kansas, and she would not only change the game but become a hero to female athletes, to be sure, and probably many other young women.
We’re talking horse racing on this Archiver, something not associated much with Kansas. But for an amazing two minutes and four seconds in 1938, a horse from Johnson County was the top three-year-old in the land. Owned by a man who was better known for suits than stallions, and who had an odd connection to Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast.
Do you know the 1946 musical “The Harvey Girls?” It stars Judy Garland and in the film she sings one of the most famous show tunes of all times “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”
The movie is about Harvey House restaurants and the young women in their starched, white aprons and cuffs who went out west to feed hungry train travelers.
The train must be fed, they sang in the movie. In fact, millions of people needed to be fed and, wouldn’t you know it, we figured out how to do it fast right here in Kansas.
This episode is about the Haskell Institute in Lawrence back when it was a boarding school for American Indians. Tens of thousands of school age Indians were forced into these boarding schools all across the country, many times kidnapped by soldiers or police. Kids would, naturally, run away from such semi-imprisonment. How could any of this be good? I have to admit upfront that I started out on this story absolutely sure how I was going to tell it. But I ended up in a very different place, and it’s a place that I’m not totally comfortable with.
This Archiver starts in 1984. Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum is running for reelection. Now with Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, you may not realize the uniqueness of a woman in the United States Senate in 1978. Depending on how you define it, Kassebaum was the first or second woman elected in her own right to the senate. Women in Kansas politics go back to before women could even vote in most elections. And, wouldn’t you know it, the very first women to be elected mayor of an American city was from Kansas.
Newspaper endorsements were crucial for political candidates, be it for president or city council. It’s less so now, but they’re still important. Even President Trump when he was a candidate met with the editorial boards of the Washington Post, New York Times and Chicago Tribune.
This story starts with a tape that, until recently, was in a box at the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. Archiver historian Virgil Dean found it.
Anyone with a passing knowledge of the civil rights movement knows about the lunch counter sit ins at the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. But before Greensboro and Miami there was Dockum Drug Store in Wichita.
Archiver fans, get ready for another season of audio gems that tell the most surprising stories from Kansas history.
If you look around YouTube, you’ll find no shortage of videos featuring William S. Burroughs, the famous beat writer. One of the best videos shows rock ‘n roll hall of famer Patti Smith playing the acoustic guitar in Burroughs tiny bungalo in old east Lawrence. That’s Lawrence, Kansas. River City. #LFK This episode of the Archiver podcast is just as much about #Lawrence as it is about Burroughs. According to his closest friends and confidants, he changed Lawrence and Lawrence, well, let Burroughs be Burroughs.
As a kid, Ed Dwight never dreamed he might one day go to the moon, but he did fantasize about escaping life in Kansas. And it was that idea of escape that was so powerful for a young black man in the 50s.
John McLendon changed the way basketball is played forever with his "fast break" style, and he broke the color barrier for black athletes in the sport.
We start this episode of Archiver in 1918, the end of the first World War, because the way America treated those veterans would forever change the way the country takes care of its soldiers, sailors and marines. Make no mistake, it would take decades plus lots of pain and suffering to do the right thing, but it happened. And wouldn’t you know it, it took a Kansan to get it done.
While the Clutter murders are the best known in Kansas history, they aren’t the most infamous and certainly not the most bizarre. The killers were eventually put to death, but the state hasn't always been in favor of the death penalty. In fact, Kansas has struggled with the capital punishment for most of its history.
For most, 1968 would feel like the United States was coming apart at the seams: The Tet offensive in Vietnam, wild political conventions and assassinations: First King then Senator Robert Kennedy. Both great men would have ties to Kansas in 1968. Kennedy, as we talked about on a previous Archiver, gave his first speech in Kansas after he announced his presidential run. King would start his year at Kansas State University on January 19th at convocation in a jammed packed Ahearn Field House. King came away impressed and heartened by the students he met that day in Manhattan. But we didn’t know how impressed until decades later when hand written notes found in the suite jacket he was wearing the night he was shot surfaced. Notes directly tied to Kansas State. And his words that cold morning in Manhattan are as meaningful today as they were 48 years ago.For most, 1968 would feel like the United States was coming apart at the seams: The Tet offensive in Vietnam, wild political conventions and assassinations: First King then Senator Robert Kennedy. Both great men would have ties to Kansas in 1968. Kennedy, as we talked about on a previous Archiver, gave his first speech in Kansas after he announced his presidential run. King would start his year at Kansas State University on January 19th at convocation in a jammed packed Ahearn Field House. King came away impressed and heartened by the students he met that day in Manhattan. But we didn’t know how impressed until decades later when hand written notes found in the suite jacket he was wearing the night he was shot surfaced. Notes directly tied to Kansas State. And his words that cold morning in Manhattan are as meaningful today as they were 48 years ago.
Kansas hasn’t produced the number of presidents and presidential candidates as Virginia or New York but Kansans, both famous and obscure, have played an important role. We’ve had a war hero, a millionaire, a prohibitionist and a communist run for president. We’ll talk about all of them, but we will focus on the 1996 Bob Dole campaign against Bill Clinton, which touched on things we’re still grappling with in 2016. It will sound familiar. Except for how it ends.
In 1936 the federal government released a film. They called it a documentary, but it was mostly propaganda. Many would argue that its cause was noble rather than sinister. Others, as we’ll see, would vehemently disagree. But to understand why the federal government got into the propaganda film business.
After the floods of 1951, a small valley in Kansas finds itself "invaded" when the Army Corps of Engineers decides to build a dam.
We take it as a matter of fact now that sports are big business. Professional sports are a huge business, but almost all the rest are at at least big. College coaches make millions of dollars for coaching and millions more for shoe endorsements, TV, and camps. But it wasn’t always this way. We were reminded of that by a recently discovered radio broadcast from New Year’s Eve, 1939 on WOR.
If 2016 is the most tumultuous presidential election year you’ve ever seen that simply means you weren’t alive or paying attention in 1968.
I want to tell you about a scandal. Fred Hall was an ambitious but unpopular governor among the GOP elite in Kansas in the 50s. He would go on to find himself on the outskirts of the party. Hall would eventually go directly to the people on TV and he would change politics and the legal system in Kansas in a way we that we are feeling right this minute.
If I were to tell you about a millionaire running for high political office that found his fame in the media, and financed himself through somewhat sketchy endeavors, a man who worked outside of the regular political channels and who seemed to be constantly battling the establishment, you would probably say, I know who that is, Donald Trump. But long before Trump, or Ross Perot, or Michael Bloomberg for that matter, there was Dr. John R. Brinkley.
Archiver is a tour through the most important moments in Kansas history with host, Sam Zeff. Using archival tape, our show will pull you into the world of these events while explaining how they still affect us today. The show is supported by a grant from The Kansas Humanities Council.