'It's an unusual quantity of a usual quality'

 

“I have never been bored an hour in my life. I get up every morning wondering what new strange glamorous thing is going to happen and it happens at fairly regular intervals.” – William Allen White

 

Born in Emporia, Kansas on this date in 1868, White became America’s most renowned small town newspaper editor.  Along the way, he joined with Theodore Roosevelt to become a leader of the “Progressive” movement, won two Pulitzer Prizes and became a best-selling author.  His Emporia Gazette became the most famous “small town” newspaper in America and Emporia a “must stop” place for political leaders and celebrities. 

 

White became a key character in my novel And The Wind Whispered after I learned that he traveled to the Black Hills to spend time in Hot Springs, the community in which my book is set.   I was struck by how that trip – and his meeting there with Roosevelt – may have had some influence on his journalism and political thought.  He felt Roosevelt embodied America and was greatness personified.   “Greatness, generally speaking,” he said, “is an unusual quantity of a usual quality grafted upon a common man.”

 

As he neared death in 1944, White wrote how grateful he was to have lived and worked in America, and he said he looked forward to every day regardless of what it might bring.  

 

“I am not afraid of tomorrow,” he said, “for I have seen yesterday, and I love today!”