By LISA HERMAN
Norton Telegram
In 1970, Dick and Mary Beth Boyd purchased the Norton Daily Telegram and Wilson Carter Printers, Inc. from Howard and Iona Wilson. A few years into his ownership of the newspaper, Dick arrived home from the office one evening and gathered the family around the table. “What’s different about today’s paper?” he asked Mary Beth and the couple’s two children, Larry and Rebecca (Becky), as he proudly displayed a copy of that day’s edition next to a copy of the previous day’s publication.
After a game of “spot the difference," Dick pointed out he had changed the typeface of the word “daily” to the iconic italicized version that would go on to grace the Norton Daily Telegram’s masthead for many years to come. “See how the letters are slanted...it shows we’re moving forward and things are happening in Norton,” he explained. From this early memory, Larry and Becky realized their father approached life with a forward-thinking mentality, instilling in them the importance of thinking positive and focusing on maintaining a can-do attitude. In the Boyd household, the word “can’t” was not acceptable. In fact, both Larry and Becky recently recalled the evening their father brought the family’s dictionary to the dining room table and crossed out the word “can’t”. “That word is no longer in our vocabulary,” he explained.
That positive, can-do approach perhaps is what many will remember most when they reflect back on the career and life of Dick Boyd. A fourth-generation newspaperman, he held dear his family, his friends, his country, his Christian faith, and the community of Norton. Embracing the Boyd family philosophy that his uncle McDill “Huck” Boyd instilled in him, Dick believed that community service is the rent we pay for life on this earth and he was devoted to maintaining that outlook for all the days of his community-minded career.
Early Years
The son of Frank W. “Bus” and Mary Folwell (Dexter) Boyd, Richard Dexter “Dick” Boyd was born on December 12, 1936, in Concordia, Kan. Dick and his three siblings grew up in Mankato, Kan., where “Bus” and Mary owned and published the Jewell County Record. Dick was a fullback and linebacker for the Mankato High School Cougars, and his athleticism earned him a full-ride scholarship to play football for Kansas State University following his graduation from Mankato High School in 1955. While at K-State, Dick was a two-year letterman in football and he was voted “Most Inspirational Player” by his football teammates during his senior year. He was also a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
After graduating from K-State with a degree in technical journalism in 1959, Dick married the love of his life, Mary Beth Brooks, on August 15, 1959, in Concordia. Later that year, Dick entered the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant and was stationed at bases in Fayetteville, N.C., Baltimore, Md., and Columbus, Ga. over a two and a half year period. During that time, he also realized his dream of coaching football. As the head coach, Dick led the football team to a co-championship of the Fort Bragg (North Carolina) League in 1961.
Following his military service, the Boyds relocated to Phillipsburg, Kan. in 1962 where Dick went to work with his uncle, McDill “Huck” Boyd, at the Phillips County Review. For eight years, Dick served as the advertising manager, reporter, and photographer. In 1968, he received an award for “Best Advertising Idea” from the National Newspaper Association. While living in Phillipsburg, Dick and Mary Beth welcomed their first child, Larry, and welcomed their daughter, Becky, a few years later.
Assuming Ownership
In 1970, the Boyds moved to Norton after Dick and Mary Beth purchased the Norton Daily Telegram and Wilson Carter Printers, Inc. from Howard and Iona Wilson. At that time, the Norton Daily Telegram had a circulation of 3,365 in a county population of 7,227. By 1982, however, the county’s population had dropped to 6,500 but the circulation of the Telegram had increased to 3,613. The Norton Daily Telegram had the largest circulation in the nation among counties the size of Norton as a result of its coverage outside of Norton County, which included the communities of Almena, Densmore, Edmond, Jennings, Lenora, Logan, Long Island, Norcatur, and Prairie View. The Telegram also provided coverage of the surrounding communities of Beaver City (Nebraska), Hill City, Oberlin, Phillipsburg, and Wilsonville (Nebraska).
In the early 1970s, the Norton Daily Telegram was printed six days a week. News stories came into the office on an Associated Press machine, which fed in local, state, and world news 24 hours per day. Long before the idea of computer layout was introduced, the Telegram’s newspaper pages were put together on layout sheets in Composition. Everything was cut and paste, and all the copy used to be run through a hot wax machine before being pasted on the layout sheets. Using a compugraphic phototypesetting machine, each line of type had to be separate, using codes to determine the size and width in picas, a typographic unit of measurement.
“In his days as editor, he liked to be the one to lay out the front page each day and this often kept the staff at the Telegram waiting,” Dick’s daughter, Becky, recalls. “His attention to detail was the root cause of this.” It was typical for Dick to stay up all night writing stories and printing pictures. After coming home to grab a few hours of sleep, he would return to the office between 10 and 11 a.m. to put the front page together. “He would decide where all the stories and pictures would go with the compositional considerations of a true artist,” Becky said.
In his earlier years of ownership of the Telegram, Larry says his father displayed quickness and dexterity on the keys of his Underwood typewriter as he wrote thousands of stories and picture captions. “Following a night of Blue Jay sports and post-game interviews, he would return to the office with his news pad and pen, then commence to create a rhythmic rattle on that Underwood typewriter,” Larry said. “He composed the words line by line, hitting that carriage return emphatically to get to the next line down before assigning more words to the body of the story. He would write until the early morning hours.”
Throughout his career, Dick’s Underwood typewriter often went right along with him wherever there was news to be covered. As technology evolved, however, the Telegram office began transitioning to computers nearly two decades after the Boyds purchased the Norton Daily Telegram. Evolving technology was a challenge for the office at that time. For the majority of his career, Dick used an antique camera and all his notes were composed with pen and paper. Though he preferred to stick with the methods he found to work best, Dick would eventually make the transition and become familiar with using a computer instead of the Underwood typewriter.
“Often at night,” Larry added, “Dick would also develop all rolls of film taken by himself, the reporter, and the advertising manager, spending hours in the small photographic darkroom in the back of the office.” When it came to printing pictures, it was typical for multiple prints to be made as Dick always desired for the perfect lighting and contrast.
With his forward-thinking mentality and can-do attitude, Dick often recited the popular saying, “Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.” “Those late night/early morning work sessions were part of his routine as he strived to make the Norton Daily Telegram a worthy chronicle of the events, accomplishments and achievements of the people within the Norton community and beyond,” Larry said.
For the 32 years they owned the Telegram, Dick and Mary Beth published the newspaper locally and inserts were manually stuffed into each edition by members of the Telegram staff. “Ultimately, with only 24 hours in the day, there were deadlines to make,” Becky said. When needed, Mary Beth was always helpful by stepping in to serve as a substitute news reporter, society editor, or proofreader.
“Throughout my childhood, Mom and Larry and I would often be called down to the Telegram to help stuff inserts into the paper in order to “make the mail”, Becky added. “Hot off the press, he [Dick] would take and stuff a huge stack of papers faster than anyone there.” Larry recalls his father’s method, which involved stuffing so fast that one paper would be falling to the pile while the next one was being stuffed. “These gestures of making every second count often worked,” Becky said. “But, of course, there were also times when we would miss the mail truck as it departed Norton.” With his can-do attitude, Dick would load up the car with mail bags and drive them to Phillipsburg, determined to pass the mail truck on the highway and have all the bags there waiting when it arrived.
Timing
“It takes passion to make a single second of life really mean something more than the literal passing of a second of time,” Becky said. “Athletics”, as he used to refer to all sports, taught Dick about the importance of such timing when he was young, and Becky feels her father was hard-wired thereafter to squeeze the most out of every second of the day. “In those 32 years as editor and publisher of the Norton Daily Telegram, there is no denying that he aimed to do more than was physically possible in a single day,” she said. Dick was known to be routinely late, and it was usually a case of him trying to fit in one more thing. “One more call to someone so he could finish a story or check that he had the correct spelling of a name, develop a roll of film...or three, all routine tasks which he did with great efficiency, but which sometimes spilled into the next place he wanted to be.” Mary Beth often had to explain Dick’s lateness to people by reminding them that he had needed to be in two places at once. “He was always on his way to do something for someone else,” Becky added.
Dick truly loved Norton, Becky says, and he loved the people here and across the state of Kansas. She can recall many times when the family would be out of town together and it seemed they would run into people her father knew at every turn. “He absolutely loved starting conversations with friends and strangers, too,” she said. “I think he looked for these opportunities, to be honest. In those busiest of years, Mom, Larry, and I didn’t get as much time with him as we would have liked, but we felt his passion for what he was doing and we respected his desire to make a contribution to the county that he loved.”
Becky added, “When we did have him to ourselves around the dinner table, the conversation was so often filled with praise and admiration for someone he had encountered that day. Such was his passion and deep feeling for people he often became tearful as he recounted a happy or meaningful story about someone...and these tears would soon be in all of our eyes as well, because we could feel how genuine his emotions were.”
Together, Dick and Mary Beth were the owners and publishers of the Telegram until they sold the newspaper to Steve and Cynthia Haynes in 2002 with the understanding that Dick would continue to cover local athletics. Dick continued to serve as the Telegram’s sportswriter and proofreader for another 18 years. In five decades, Dick had missed attending and covering just six Norton high school Blue Jay football games.
A Remarkable Career
During Boyd’s ownership of the Norton Daily Telegram, the newspaper and its staff were frequently recognized with awards in the Kansas Better Newspaper and National Newspaper Association contests. In 1981, Dick received the Award for Outstanding Journalism from the Nebraska General Federation of Women’s Clubs. The Kansas Wrestling Coaches Association selected Dick as Media Person of the Year in 1992, 2000, and 2009. He was honored as the Tommy Davidson Blue Jay Booster of the Year in 2001, and later was selected as the recipient of the Kansas State High School Activities Association’s (KSHSAA) Oscar Stauffer Award for Sports Writing. Dick was nominated for that award by the Norton School District’s administrators for his dedication and for “the consistent high quality of his work”.
Also during his time with the Telegram, many organizations presented him with awards of appreciation for his support of their efforts, including: the Norton County Conservation District, Norton County 4-H clubs, the Norton Fire Department. U.S. Jaycees, the Norton Future Farmers of America, the Unified School District 211, the Norton Area Chamber of Commerce, the Boot Hill All-Star Basketball Classic, and the Dane G. Hansen Memorial Museum Association.
Near the end of Dick’s life, he and his wife, Mary Beth, were touched and honored to be selected as the 2020 recipients of the Huck Boyd Award for Community Journalism. The award comes from the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at K-State and the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media in the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University. An awards luncheon was to be held, however it had to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, the Boyd family was able to receive word about the award - one of Dick and Mary Beth’s last greatest achievements together - before Dick’s death.
A Well-Lived Life
Dick was an active member of the Norton First United Methodist Church and the Harmonson-Redd American Legion Post #63. He served as the president of the Norton Area Chamber of Commerce in 1974, and received an Honorary Chapter Degree from the Norton Future Farmers of America that same year. From 1970 to 1976, he served on the Valley Hope Association’s board of directors. Dick was a member of the Norton Lions Club for over 50 years, was a past member of the Norton Rotary Club, and was also involved with the Native Sons and Daughters of Kansas for a number of years, including serving on the board of officers. He served as the president in 2006. He also served his alma mater in another capacity after he was elected to the Kansas State Alumni Association board of directors.
Dick’s interest in physical fitness led to him participating in the annual Biking Across Kansas event for 12 straight summers - over 5,000 miles! In 1990, he was awarded the Biking Across Kansas Spirit Award, having been selected from among the hundreds of bicyclists who made the border-to-border trek. He loved going jogging and walking, and was always eager to keep track of how far he’d gone and how much further he needed to go to reach a milestone. “He was never willing to give up when he wanted to hit a goal,” Larry said. “He was always looking ahead.”
Dick was also a member of the selection committee for the Kansas Shrine Bowl All-Star Football Game for many years. The Kansas Sports Hall of Fame was very important to Dick, as he was not only voted to select those who would be inducted but he aggressively urged the Kansas Legislature to pass legislation to fund the continuance of its existence.
Reflections
“Expressive of his desire to always have more time, he went through a long phase of telling us that he wanted to live to be 120,” Becky said. “Over the years, he loved interviewing the many centenarians of Norton County, always asking them for their secret in living to be 100. I know he wasn’t ready to depart this world yet, but I’m confident he didn’t take living to 83 for granted and felt so fortunate throughout this life that he wouldn’t have changed a thing. He certainly used his time well and touched many lives.”
In the eulogy written for his father’s memorial service, Larry Boyd reflected back on what an honor it was to have been part of his father’s career for so many years, working alongside him in the newspaper office and being with him at many events in Norton and the surrounding communities. Dick is remembered as loving his family, his friends, his country, his Christian faith, and the community of Norton with all his heart. “He loved giving credit to worthy causes and those who were in pursuit of such,” Larry wrote. “He played the game of football that he loved, with heart. He covered the Blue Jays and other area high school teams, with heart.”
Larry added he will miss his dad’s strong handshake. “He felt a good handshake was a sign of one’s character,” he wrote. “Those strong hands that had served him well when carrying the football as a high school fullback would later be utilized to write the pages and pages of notes on the news pads as he chronicled the events of this community for 50 years.”
On June 25, 2020, fighting against his failing health until the final breath, Dick crossed the goal line at the end of his life on this earth. “He had made a steady and strong effort to reach the end zone with time running out,” Larry wrote. “He had lowered his shoulder often, to ward off the hits as he moved forward to the goal. Always looking ahead, that was my Dad, Richard Dexter Boyd. His hands were still strong as they grasped those of Mom, Becky and I in the hospital room. Those hands that had served him so well as he used them for many years to serve others. His heart willed his body to continue on until his spirit dove forward into the end zone for one final touchdown.”
Published with permission