WR people

I’ve been going through my Uncle Bill’s letters. My uncle and his friends were from one of the last generations to keep up the practice of letter-writing. When I’m gone, my nephew won’t have to scan much of my correspondence, because most of it’s already digital, but he’ll have so many emails to peruse he won’t know where to begin.

Many of the people with whom my uncle corresponded I’ve never heard of, of course, but I do recognize a few names. The letter I scanned today was from one such person, Darrell Rice, a friend of my uncle’s from his days at the University of Kentucky. Darrell was from Watonga, Oklahoma, and after some adventures he returned there, where he worked for the Watonga Republican newspaper for 39 years before retiring last year.

What made me decide to do this blog post was an interesting letter from Darrell to my uncle dated December 29, 1982. The letter itself wasn’t enough—I do enjoy reading these letters but their content I’ll save for another day. No, what I thought interesting enough to share was the enclosures, five newspaper clippings, each headed “WR people” and featuring a photograph and a brief bio of a Watonga Republican staffer.

You may be able to tell from the first piece, featuring “sub-peon* paper boy” Darrell Rice, that it was Darrell himself who wrote these profiles. As Darrell introduced them to my uncle, they were “the results of [his] joke for the week. Maybe you’ll enjoy them or maybe not. The asterisk on [his] deal was a compromise with Tim [Curtin, owner of the Republican].” Of all the people Darrell profiled that week in 1982, I think “born again” Lou Rother might have been his favorite.

Click on a photo to read the corresponding bio (in PDF):