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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, February 12, 1968
William Allen White
White's desk and chair stand empty today, in stark contrast to their former appearance when the famed Kansas editor worked from them. His desk always was piled high
with papers and books, but now is bare in the front office of the paper.
Mr. and Mrs. William Allen White pose before their Emporia home in this undated picture.
A Kansas town reminisces...
By Ron Yates Kansan Staff Reporter
Emporia remembered a man Saturday.
He was born in 1868, and Saturday, Feb. 10, marked the centennial of his birth. The town, which now sprawls over several square miles in the Flint Hills, was not decked with flags or 'banners; neither were the town's windows draped in black. William Allen White would have hooted at extremes of sentiment.
The occasion carried with it a variety of emotions. Young people tried, perhaps, to imagine what it would have been like to know William Allen White; older people like Mrs. Elbert Severance, 81, a New York resident who worked at the Gazette from 1906 to 1919, walked with a look of contentment on their faces because they had known him.
The Emporia Gazette office, White's "home" from June 3, 1895—the day of his first issue—until his death Jan. 29, 1944, is being restored as closely as possible to its appearance in 1895. The man responsible for this restoration is William Lindsay White, son of William Allen White and publisher and editor of the Gazette.
Still in the Gazette office, near an unused fireplace, is White's old roll-top desk in the area which used to be his cubby-hole office. Pictures cover the walls, pictures sent by William Jennings Bryant and Theodore Roosevelt, to name two noted personalities.
There are still people working on the Gazette who knew and labored for White.
Ted Daniels, managing editor of the Gazette today, started as a proofreader on the paper in 1924. The staff, he said, is about the same size today as it was when he came to the paper.
He remembered White's method of writing an editorial. "Miinnie Yearout—she is blind today—was Mr. White's secretary until his death in 1944. He dictated his ediorials to her. Rarely would he sit down at a typewriter. She would type it, give it back to him and he would make corrections all over the copy.
"Then, he would give it back to her and she would retype it. If it passed his inspection, it would be proofed. Then he would edit the proof. Finally, it would be printed."
McDaniels also remembers Edna Ferber, an American novelist, who was one of a daily flow of important persons. Women at the Gazette then were prohibited from smoking.
"Edna spent most of the afternoon at the Gazette smoking—and got away with it," he recalled.
Some of the people who started their jour-
A busy Gazette newsroom prepares the day's edition in this photograph taken in 1933.
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