Saying goodbye to Gusewelle

Devoted readers of Charles W. Gusewelle, who died Tuesday after writing for The Kansas City Star across six decades, will remember his holiday tales.

And Rufus, of course, Gusewelle’s Brittany spaniel bird dog.

His love of Paris, too. And beginning in the 1990s, public TV viewers tuned into documentaries he wrote and narrated about regional history.

But admirers going back generations ought to remember, as well, that C.W. Gusewelle spent much of his extraordinary career covering news of the world.

By observing, listening and connecting to the people wherever he traveled, Gusewelle, who was 83, filed some of the most important stories of his era.

“His writing talent and powers of observation were so good, he could’ve gone anywhere” to live out his journalism career, said Mike Fancher, who wrote and edited for The Star in the 1970s before joining The Seattle Times, where he served as executive editor.

“But in Kansas City he was home,” Fancher said. “He never lost touch with his region or the people in it. He told their stories to the world and brought the world’s stories back home to them.”

Gusewelle joined the staff of The Star as a general assignment reporter in 1955, the same year he graduated from Westminster College. He became an editorial writer on foreign affairs in 1966 and from 1976 to 1979 served as foreign editor.

Gusewelle left that position to become an associate editor and columnist. The Missouri Press Association named him daily columnist of the year in 1984, 1985 and 1987, and the press group later inducted Gusewelle into its Newspaper Hall of Fame. He entered the Writers Hall of Fame of America in 2000.

As a columnist he traveled to all parts of Europe, where some of his reporting captured the earliest signals of the fall of the Soviet Union, recalled Darryl W. Levings, who held a variety of writing and editing positions at The Star.

“He had the credentials to go overseas and get right in the middle of some wrinkle in history,” Levings said. “He was such an international spirit...He kind of carried a platinum card to go where he wanted, because (his writing) was of proven quality.”

Gusewelle stepped out of his role as a weekly columnist earlier this year while enduring failing health from extended illnesses.

“This friendship with you, my readers — born out of decades of sharing my loves, losses and adventures — has been an immeasurable gift,” he wrote in a July farewell to the newspaper’s readers.

Mike Fannin, The Star’s editor and vice president, said of Gusewelle: “Kansas City journalism has lost one of its greatest voices. We lived vicariously through his columns and travels. He was our Hemingway, and his work is there to be discovered by generations of new fans. We will never forget him or his beautiful words.”

Those words captivated readers whether the subject was political unrest in Latin America or the behavior of squirrels around his Kansas City home. Or of the hawks, foxes and other creatures that amused him at his country cabin.

For many years writing three columns a week, “he had to come up with different ideas,” Katie Gusewelle, his wife of 50 years, said Wednesday. “He’d be looking and always listening for things that would stimulate him...even if it was something strange going on outside.”

And readers loved his take on critters.

“You write so movingly and poignantly about animals, wild and domestic,” wrote a woman in a letter to the editor in 2013. “I thank you for enriching my life.”

Among the most popular of his 12 books was “The Rufus Chronicle: Another Autumn,” which was published by The Kansas City Star books in 1996 and later reissued by Ballantine Books.

Gusewelle was active with various animal welfare groups in town, contributing to a Wayside Waifs newsletter and acting as emcee at fundraisers.

“He was an articulate and powerful voice for animal welfare,” said Geoff Hall, president of Wayside Waifs. “He was also a person who eloquently described the bond between people and their pets.”

Former Kansas City Mayor Richard L. Berkley said Gusewelle built an audience by reflecting it.

“He had a feel of the Midwest and knew what the people of this area thought about and were interested in,” Berkley said. “He sort of had a gentle and humorous style of writing that made it possible.”

Gusewelle grew up in Kansas City the adopted son of middle class parents. He attended Paseo High School before serving in the Army, graduating from Westminster in Fulton, Mo., and landing work at his hometown paper.

In a recent online video promoting a forthcoming collection of stories, “Outbound,” Gusewelle recalled the exhilaration of joining a newspaper loaded with young talent.

“We were not too proud because we were all learners and all amateurs” willing to critique each other’s writing, he said. “Now it seems people are less inclined to do that.”

Charles Hammer, a reporter who arrived in 1958, was one of Gusewelle’s oldest friends in newspapering.

Hammer recalled Wednesday that Gusewelle left the paper in the early 1960s to bum across Europe with a friend. When “Gus” came back to Kansas City he drove a cab for a summer and then spent a winter in his parents’ cabin writing a novel that Hammer said was never published.

“It was a love story,” Hammer said.

After his exile in the cabin, Gusewelle worked several months as a clerk for North American Van Lines before returning to The Star.

Hammer said his time away had made Gusewelle a better writer. Editor Richard Fowler recognized the same as he opened up the paper for coverage of the civil rights movement and dispatched Gusewelle on a swing through the Deep South.

“Gus probably stuck his neck out angering people in a way that might get him hurt,” Hammer said.

But that work helped propel his career, and was a lifelong source of pride for Gusewelle, said Katie Gusewelle: “It was very exciting for him to be on the cutting edge.”

He was deployed next to Africa. Hammer remembers, in particular, Gusewelle building a reputation as a chronicler of civil rights and how that got him banned from entering apartheid-era South Africa.

Gusewelle traveled around the world on assignment for The Star, to Latin America, the Middle East, Western and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

He and fellow newspaperman Jim Fisher were long-time contemporaries at 18th and Grand, but competitors for most of the time.

While Gusewelle worked for the afternoon Star, Fisher wrote for the morning Kansas City Times. Fisher said the rivalry between the two newspapers, even when they shared common ownership, was real.

“The best thing Charlie ever said about us was we were a ‘raffish sort,’ ” said Fisher, who retired in 2001 from a career at the newspaper that began in 1960.

Folks at The Star, he said, were a more cultured lot. Fisher said he saw Gusewelle as a “friendly guy” who was “ethereal.”

“A lot of people in the city room didn’t know this little short guy had been a paratrooper,” said Fisher, who wrote a column for 20 years distinct for its scores of rural datelines.

Around the time The Star and Times merged in 1991, Gusewelle became the American leader of a joint navigation of the 2,734-mile length of the Lena River in Siberia. He then wrote, produced and narrated a 90-minute documentary of that journey called “A Great Current Running.”

His wife and two daughters, Anne and Jennie, commonly joined him on trips and extended visits overseas. All of them had roles in Gusewelle’s stories.

“Nobody gets those chances, and we were lucky enough to be along for the ride,” Anne Gusewelle said.

Readers were along, too, and oftentimes they came to the aid of some of the struggling characters that C.W. Gusewelle profiled. His fans helped fund the schooling of two Senegal boys, sponsored a Nigerian’s quest to study architecture in America and even rescued a dog sent to a shelter for digging everywhere.

“One of Dad’s proudest things was connecting people,” said Jennie Gusewelle.

In the case of the digging dog, its new owners dumped a truckload of dirt on their yard to welcome their pet home.

Gusewelle honed a new talent — crafting TV documentaries — in the last quarter-century of his life.

Michael Murphy, the vice president of broadcasting at KCPT-TV, collaborated several times. A 1997 documentary about Kansas City called “This Place Called Home” won a regional Emmy award. “Water & Fire: A Story of the Ozarks” premiered in 2000 and was judged best in show in a competition among more than 70 U.S. public television stations.

Murphy said Gusewelle’s ability to tell a story and his charisma allowed his work to carry from print to the small screen.

“He had that amazing John Huston kind of quality in his look and in his manner,” Murphy said.

“He could go anywhere,” Murphy said. “The man interviewed kings and potentates and was just at home with the guy who made biscuits.”

The family has scheduled a visitation at Unity Temple on the Plaza for 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday. A memorial service will follow.

 

One chapter ends, but a life in writing goes on

The friendship of readers has been an immeasurable gift, C.W. Gusewelle writes. (Keep reading)

 

After absence, canine lessons in absolution

Here is one of C.W. Gusewelle's favorite columns. How much do animals know? How much do they remember? (Keep reading)

 

That time C.W. Gusewelle went on a monster hunt

This story is included in C.W. Gusewelle's new book, "Outbound: A Lifetime's Adventures in Journalism." (Keep reading)

 

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This story was originally published November 16, 2016 at 2:59 PM with the headline "Saying goodbye to Gusewelle."