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“From Emporia: The Story of William Allen White” by Beverly Olson Buller (Kansas City Star Books, 9781933466460, $19.99)

I remember first hearing of William Allen White while I was a fourth-grader at Girard Elementary, off in Crawford County, Kansas; I’m pretty certain it was my school librarian who performed the introduction, and I’m grateful to her for it. I encountered White again while at the University of Kansas when I took a summer job on the campus newspaper: the whole journalism school there is tasked with bearing up his name. But it wasn’t until I sat down with Bev Buller’s new book “From Emporia” that I discovered the whole admirable life of a great man and a great Kansan who seems, most benevolently, to have shadowed me and other Kansas kids for decades.

Buller begins with White’s birth and early days and follows him through his astounding career as a small-town newspaper editor whose scope and acumen were anything but small. From his start in newspaper work as a printer’s devil, White quickly gained national and international acclaim through what Franklin Roosevelt later described as his “terse, forcible and vigorous prose.” White’s many editorial essays, short stories, and two novels gained him a broad following and brought the world’s attention—and many of its foremost writers—to his family’s adopted home of Emporia, Kansas.

In over a hundred incredibly well-illustrated pages, Buller’s book captures the texture of White’s life and displays his thorough dedication to free speech and public service. Buller uses vintage photographs and documentary illustrations to chronicle White’s rise to prominence and the profound but modest effect he and his family have had on their home base in Emporia. Most importantly, Buller incorporates pieces of White’s writing into her own excellent prose, giving readers the taste of his thoughtful eloquence and making me, for one, want to read more of his work—a task one great childhood librarian and an entire stone building of journalism students had previously found too strenuous.

“From Emporia” is impressive. It presents in miniature a life lived generously and well. The book does kind justice to White’s energetic working life and to the vital contribution made by his wife Sallie White, his most important editor and co-writer. It describes the pair’s personal triumphs and painful losses, including the death of their teenage daughter, which brought a grief that threatened all the happiness they had built together. This brief biography also works to recall White to the status he earned as one of America’s best writers and greatest promoters of the common good.

Bev Buller has given us all a gift: a story that makes William Allen White more than just a name for a book award or a building, more even than a celebrated memory. She reminds us that his work and his life are a legacy for all Kansans to share in, to benefit from, and ultimately, to emulate. It’s a fine book indeed.

Review by Mark David Bradshaw, September 5, 2007

 

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