Remembering Les Anderson

On one of my first days as a freshman at Wichita State University, I wandered into Wilner Auditorium in search of my faculty adviser. I had declared journalism as my major, so I was assigned to a journalism professor.

His name was Les Anderson. His office was about the size of a broom closet, and he didn't look that much older than me. He asked about my background, asked to look at my list of courses, said "That looks pretty good. Let's keep in touch." It was all so pleasant, so effortless I wondered if it really counted as a meeting with my adviser.

Little did I know how important a role he would play in my life, helping me grow as a person, a student and a journalist.

While I had declared journalism as a major, and had taken the class for three years at my high school, I knew precious little about what it involved. Pawnee Heights was such a small school we only published the "Tiger Times" once a month - using a mimeograph machine as our production device. That meant no photos, no graphics, no real layout. Just stencils and typed stories in narrow columns and lots of  lines and symbols to separate stories. We had one deadline a month. I wrote sports, sports and more sports, with the occasional news story thrown in there. Then again, the Honor Roll and school lunch menu were considered big news.

That's not to say our teacher wasn't good. Dana Hertel was a stickler on writing well and the "who, what, when, where, why and how" of a good journalism story. Even she wasn't convinced of my journalistic  acumen when I graduated, though.

I'd heard Les was a tough teacher, but I enjoyed his reporting class and began trying to get into every class he taught. As far as I was concerned, he was far and away the best instructor in the journalism program. Oh, my assignments always came back bleeding profusely, with suggested changes or paragraphs marked out as unnecessary. But I understood why he wrote what he did, and he was always full of encouragement.

He owned two weekly newspapers, and chose the best journalism students to work for him - so if he wanted you to work for him, he thought you were good. Sure enough, he asked if I'd be willing to write for the Ark Valley News and Maize This Week. His office was in Valley Center, so I did a lot of commuting for the next two school years. I routinely worked 60 hours a week, covering sports, city council meetings, school board meetings, breaking news -- seemingly everything in those two small towns. Les worked even harder than I did, between running his small farm outside of Valley, teaching at WSU and putting out the two papers.

I was so busy I soon found myself calculating how many classes I could afford to skip each week so I could keep up with all the work that needed to be done. A scholarship I had been awarded mandated that I take 15 credit hours and maintain a 3.15 GPA, so there were always plenty of classes on my schedule. I became adept at quickly making friends in classes and sharing notes so I could pass the courses. Back then, instructors didn't keep rigorous attendance records, or I'd have been sunk.

But working for Les taught me so much that the classes I missed never would have touched. He showed me how to deal with difficult personalities and challenging stories. He showed how you could get along with someone you disagreed with strongly. I can't think of a half-dozen times we argued over changes he made in stories I wrote, because it was easy to see why the changes were needed or simply made the story better.

Yet Les became more than my boss. He and his wife Nancy welcomed me into their young, growing family as one of their own. I was over to their house northwest of Valley Center countless times. The Andersons have numerous "Stan stories" that always give them a laugh. One of them was the night a blizzard was hammering the area and they told me to spend the night at their place rather than risk the drive back to Wichita.

It was snowing and blowing so hard I couldn’t see more than 5 feet in front of the car, and when I got out to their place I saw these reflective red lights on a pole that marked their driveway (my parents had something similar). I thought the one light was the far end of the driveway, so I turned in front of it ---- and drove right into a huge snowdrift in the ditch. Les stood watching from a living room window of his house yelling “No! No! No!”

My car was stuck there for at least two days. I was embarrassed, and I still hear about that escapade to this day.

Then there was the time I stayed late to write a meeting story and started to drive home on a rainy December night. Temperatures were hovering just below freezing, and black ice had formed on asphalt and elevated surfaces.

The streets in Valley Center were OK, but 85^th Street was a sheet of ice. My Le Mans coupe glided right off the highway into the ditch. There wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. I walked back to Valley (mind you, it was 11 or 12 at night) and called Les from a pay phone. He picked me up and took me to his place. I slept on the living room floor in front of the fireplace that night, listening on the police scanner as the sheriff’s deputies who found my car were saying “Tell people to stay off the roads --- it’s incredibly slick out here.” “No kidding,” I told the scanner.

I played on softball teams and went to the fall festivals and learned Valley Center's characters and its personality. I had planned to keep working for Les through the summer after my senior year at WSU. I needed 3 more credits to graduate, so I would have to stick around through the fall. But Les called me one Sunday night and said there was an open slot in the WSU interview schedule for Eagle internships the next day. Could I throw together some clips and a resume and do the interview? It would look bad for WSU if there wasn’t enough interest in an Eagle internship to fill out their slate, he said.

So as a favor to him, I did just that. I was happy working for Les. Not really caring how it went, I just winged it. In hindsight, that may have been a blessing, because I was relaxed during the interview. To my surprise, they chose me for an internship with the Eagle. I told Les I was fine with it if he wanted me to keep working for him, but he said, “No, you take that internship. It’ll be good for you.”

 Of course, he was right. After my internship ended, I returned to working for Les while I took the one class I still needed to graduate. One December morning, the phone rang at the news office. It was an editor with the Salina Journal, wanting me to come up for an interview. He had called Les, saying he needed a cops reporter. Les suggested me. I later learned I had the job before I ever walked in the door. If Les said I was good, then that was all they needed to hear.

The Eagle hired me six months later, and I've been there ever since. But I would go to Valley Center often in those early years to visit Nancy, Les and the kids; renew acquaintances with Larry the Barber and Gary the Grocer and Lucy the Printer.

I grew up with a father who seemed to measure a person's worth according to their desire and ability to work on a farm. I never enjoyed farm life, feeling like it stifled my curiosity and intellect. Farm life didn't seem well suited for my interests and abilities.


Les was one of the first people I met who treated me as if I had gifts and abilities of value, not someone who was a burden or disappointment. Only those who have walked similar paths can know how liberating - even exhilarating - that is.

Over time, I became an annual visitor to his classrooms, talking about writing and reporting and stories I had done. He'd call or e-mail me about this or that, and it was always great to catch up with him. But he was always on the go, doing the work of three people. The way so many of my colleagues raved about Les, I knew he had been every bit the mentor and guide for them that he had been for me.

I was startled - but, upon reflection, not terribly surprised - when I learned he suffered a heart attack in December 2009. He was always so busy, pushing so hard, doing so much - for his church, for the paper, for his job at the university - that I long feared he would wear himself out.

Les dismissed it as a minor setback, but I could tell Nancy was worried when we talked about it later. Les began cutting back - at least, "cutting back" for Les. He still seemed to be so busy.

When I spoke to his "media" class at WSU in September, he was his usual warm, ingratiating self. But he looked tired. I fretted about his health.

News that WSU was endowing a scholarship in his name pleased me, and I vowed to attend a roast to raise money for the fund in late October. Something just kept pushing me to be there. It was a great night, and Les was showered with the love he so richly deserved.

It was great to see the spotlight shine on a man who spent so much of his life deflecting attention onto others, encouraging, molding, guiding....

I never dreamed that would be the last time I would get to see him.

The news came abruptly on a Saturday night in mid-November. It's still hard to believe that a man of such energy and enthusiasm had been taken from us so soon.

I'm grateful to have known and learned so much from him. I feel sad for those who never had the chance to meet him.

At the visitation the night before his funeral, I heard a high school classmate and longtime friend of Les' remark, "I never realized he did so much." But that was Les. It was never about him. It was about the students he was mentoring, or the group he was part of. He was the energy that kept things moving, the motivation that kept young people reaching, the force behind so many ideas that allowed us to see things in a way we hadn't before.

As I listening to others talk about Les' impact on their lives, it occurred to me that what drove them was to be the person Les realized they could be - and in so doing became more than even they had imagined. He stretched their horizons, broadened their dreams.

That's not just the definition of a good teacher, it's a hallmark of an effective leader: making those around you better, simply by being yourself.

If Kansas had a Mount Rushmore of journalism, it would be incomplete if Les wasn't included. I doubt Kansas has seen a small-town publisher of his caliber since William Allen White - and I'm sure Les could have taught White a lot, given the chance.

For all I know, they're having some of those conversations even now.

Rest well, Les. You've earned it.