If you have a memory of the Whites or working at The Emporia Gazette please E-mail us your memories.

First Lesson

(Whitley Austin is one of those who began their newspaper careers at The Gazette, then went out into the world. He was editor of the Salina Journal for many years. He shares an early memory.)

------My education began on the steps of The Emporia Gazette, literally. When I was 5 years old, my grandfather Col. H.C. Whitley was taking me from our hotel on Sixth Avenue to our hotel on Fifth Avenue and the Colonel was giving me a lecture.

------"Shut up, you old fool," I said. Whereupon he sat down on The Gazette steps,turned me over his knee and gave me a spanking.

------This began my education in the struggles and triumphs of newspapering under William Allen White. He treated me as if I were a son, showering me with books and advice. I spent my first two years at the Teacher's College as a school reporter for The Gazette, reporting such scandalous events as dean Maude Monroe ordering the fire-escape windows welded shut at the women's dormitory to prevent midnight visitors.

------Mr. White picked my next college, the University of Wisconsin, and my fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. Upon graduating, with honors, I went to work for The Gazette as a reporter and lasted one year. Then Mr. White let me go, saying The Gazette could not afford my $25 a week. Of course, he then got me a couple of political jobs.

------Years later, when I was Sunday editor of the Hutchinson News and Herald, he wrote me, "I always thought you were one of my boys and would come back to me."