P. C. Becker, of Park township, who went to Ottumwa, Ia., his old home, on a visit, we are sorry to hear, took sick of pneumonia and died. His body was brought home and buried day before yesterday. The Becker brothers are well known in this county as men of sterling worth, and his death is a loss indeed. (Wichita Daily Eagle, Saturday February 13, 1886, Volume IV, #73, page 4, column 3)
Bishop Mark Carroll, the outspoken former head of the Wichita diocese for 16 years whose ecumenical deeds matched his contributions of brick and mortar - died Saturday at age 88.
Bishop Carroll died at 8:15 a.m. at St. Joseph Medical Center, where he was admitted Dec. 14 for treatment of cancer, said hospital spokesman Mike States.
"He just stopped breathing," said Sister Mary Matthew Fergus, who was at the bishop's bedside at his death. "It was very peaceful.
Wichita Bishop Eugene Gerber, in a statement released Saturday, recalled Bishop Carroll's independent spirit and ecumenical workings with members of other faiths.
''The ma, the priest, the bishop was ahead of the times in his early years as much as he was with the times in his later years . . . ," Gerber said. "Within the community it was 'brothers and sisters dwelling together as one' that interested him in betterment of human life. Racial equality was as clear to him as life itself. The common fatherhood of God that made this so evident also put him in the forefront of ecumenism."
''I lost a good friend," Sister Fergus said. "He had a wonderful life, a happy life. He suffered, and we are happy to see him go to be with God, where he'll be forever happy. He had been ill for some time. He was ready to go."
Lew Purinton, Bishop Carroll's doctor, said the bishop had been "steadily weakening" since the cancer was diagnosed about six months ago.
Condolence calls flooded the Catholic Diocese of Wichita as word of Bishop Carroll's death spread. Bishop Gerber talked with Archbishop Pio Laghi, the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. in Washington, shortly after Bishop Carroll died.
The chancery office posted hundreds of letters Saturday inviting priests, bishops, city and state leaders, congregation members and Bishop Carroll's regular correspondents to funeral services Wednesday at St. Mary's Cathedral. The diocese office expects the cathedral, with a capacity of 1,000, to be filled to overflowing for the funeral Mass. Bishops from 15 to 20 dioceses across the country are expected to attend.
The 114 churches in the diocese will formally announce his death today and have special prayers.
Planning for the funeral started several weeks ago when Bishop Carroll's condition became critical.
During most of his clerical career, Bishop Carroll had been both chastised and applauded for his vigorous defenses of human dignity.
Late in his retirement, with his health failing, the strong-spirited man of God said in a 1980 interview that he had made his partial peace with earthly injustice.
He had begun his fight against bigotry nearly 40 years earlier and was an outspoken advocate of equal rights and social justice for much of his career. ''I think bigotry is practically gone," he said.
In addition to his social concerns, he led local Roman Catholics through the upheavals of the 1960s, when Vatican II changed centuries-old church traditions. He had been an early advocate of the changes, especially the ecumenical movement.
''He spoke at synagogues, temples and Protestant churches when that was considered to be suspect," said the Rev. William Carr of St. Paul's Newman Center and an assistant at St. Mary's Cathedral when Carroll was bishop.
The Rev. Leonard Cowan, executive minister of the former Wichita Council of Churches from 1965 to 1975, recalled that trait. He said Bishop Carroll told him at an ecumenical meeting of Catholics, Protestants and Jews at Temple Emanu-El in 1965 that "we've been damn dumb not to have done this years ago."
After Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church adopted the change of putting the Mass in the vernacular, in the language spoken by parishioners.
''I was one of the first to come out in favor of putting the Mass into the English language," Carroll said in a 1982 interview.
That attitude had cost him a dressing down by the pope's apostolic delegate to the United States in the 1950s, he said.
''I told him where to get off," he recalled. "I told him that if Christ came to speak in Wichita, he'd speak in English."
His outspokenness didn't affect his rise in the Catholic hierarchy.
For 16 years, he ran Wichita's Catholic diocese, which now covers the Wichita area and the southeast corner of Kansas, and has about 100,000 parishioners in 95 parishes. He was instrumental in starting the Dodge City diocese. He submitted his resignation in 1963 and relinquished his administrative duties, but kept the official title of bishop another four years.
In the years after his retirement in 1967, he had moved to a small book- laden apartment at St. Joseph Medical Center.
His physician said Bishop Carroll had steadily weakened since the chest wall cancer spread to his bone. He remained "alert and clear" until days before his death, Purinton said.
Sister Fergus said Bishop Carroll had not recognized anyone for the last three days, but knew his sister when she visited from St. Louis about a week ago.
Bishop Carroll's sight had failed steadily for the past several years. He began using the hospital's elevator to avoid the challenge of stairs after he lost his depth perception. He read through thick spectacles, but his vision of a better world never wavered.
''We have our Constitution of the United States that permits everyone to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," he once said, explaining his early civil rights activism. "I was just distressed that in a great country like ours, there could be such intolerance, such hatred and snobbery."
He was distressed by racial segregation that he saw on visits to the South; distressed by the horrors he saw on a tour of post-war Nazi Germany; and even more distressed by the discrimination he saw at home - in Newton, in Topeka, in Oklahoma.
His driving force, he said, was "to preach equality of man and dignity and worth." His method: "To raise hell."
In the1940s, he traveled throughout Kansas and other parts of the Midwest preaching against injustice. He and his fellow travelers - one Protestant and one Jewish - weren't allowed in some towns, he recalled.
''I was so mad that people were bigoted and intolerant," he said.
Born of Irish-American parents in St. Louis on Nov. 19, 1896, he was the son of a policeman, one of 12 children. His ethnic upbringing provided the warm Irish wit that gave his preaching infectious impact. His sprawling family provided the humility that kept him in touch with the needs of his flock.
''I had no automobile, no style, no nothing," he said. "I was just an ordinary nice guy. Or at least I tried to be."
Nice, perhaps, but hardly ordinary. He championed fights against Prohibition in the days of rabid Kansas drys, and he preached ecumenicalism in the days when Jews were pariahs in many social circles.
His proudest memento, a gilded certificate hung above his paper-strewn desk, was a citation from the National Conference of Christians and Jews. He was the first priest in the United States to receive the award. Dated Feb. 8, 1951, it hailed him for "promoting amity and understanding among all elements of our pluralistic society." He was an honorary life-member of two Jewish congregations.
Not all his fights, however, brought such accolades. In his anti- Prohibition sermon, delivered in 1948, he said, "Prohibition is the legal attempt of the state to make people virtuous. It is an unwarrantable infringement on the reasonable liberty of the mass of people."
The response, he later said, was rabid. "I was called every son of a bitch you can think of in the letters I got."
In his later years, his white hair was too sparse for his characteristic center part. But his captivating voice would bellow through the tiny apartment at St. Joseph's as it did in the days when it reached the far walls of a massive cathedral. In his retirement, he read and studied, despite his visual impairment, because he felt that learning was the foundation for enlightened thought.
Cowan recalled that he and his wife had visited St. Joseph about a year ago and saw Bishop Carroll in the lobby. In their meeting, Cowan asked him if he remembered Mrs. Cowan.
''He grabbed her and planted a big kiss on her cheek and said 'Oh, yes, my dear little lady,' " Cowan recalled. "That's the way he was: a friendly, outgoing, understanding kind of person."
Education was the singular gift he sought to share with the children of his diocese. It reflected the stern hand of the prestigious Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis where he studied in his boyhood.
''Even now I know by heart many of the things I learned in high school," he said, reciting a few quick verses of Percy Bysshe Shelley. "In those days, we had no radio, no telephone, no nothing. All we had was yourself and your books."
The brick-and-mortar translation of his faith was more than 200 new churches, schools, convents, rectories and recreation centers erected in the Wichita Diocese during his tenure - a far cry from the cluster of wooden churches he found on his arrival in 1947.
The human translation was the Jesuits and the Christian Brothers, both teaching orders, that he brought to educate the children. "Whatever faults they had," he later said, "they were fine teachers." And he took an active role, often visiting schools to bring books and magazines.
The community responded, honoring him with Bishop Mark K. Carroll High School, which opened in August 1964. And, in 1977, Kansas Newman College created a scholarship fund in his name.
His tenure as bishop was a long climb for the boy who added $5 a week to the family coffers, working 60 hours to drive a team and deliver groceries.
Ordained in 1922, he was appointed assistant pastor at Immaculate Conception parish in Maplewood, Mo., then became assistant at St. Rose's parish in St. Louis later that year.
He was raised to the rank of papal chamberlain by Pope Pius XII in 1939 and in 1943 was named pastor of St. Margaret's parish in St. Louis. He received his appointment on Feb. 14, 1947 as fifth bishop of the Wichita diocese. "It was a strange Valentine," Bishop Carroll would say later.
After his retirement in 1963, he was honored by the Wichita City Commission, which unanimously adopted a resolution saying he "served as an exemplary leader, administering not only to the spiritual need of the church, but serving as a vital and active leader in civic and community affairs as well."
Although Pope John XXIII accepted his resignation, he allowed Bishop Carroll to keep the title of Bishop of Wichita. But he was no longer administrator of the diocese. In 1967, Pope Paul VI accepted his resignation of that title.
He said in an earlier interview that since his 1967 retirement, he had found time for reading and praying, two activities that he said sometimes didn't receive enough of his attention during the hectic days as bishop.
Despite his close ties to St. Louis, he remained in Wichita until his death, proudly watching the graduates of his parochial schools rise to prominence, amazed at the growth of the city that he could see from his hospital apartment window, at the growth of a hospital that wasn't even standing when he had arrived here.
''It's lovely here," he said of Wichita. "I'm happy to be here. If God wanted me to be someplace else, he'd have sent me there."
Bishop Carroll, one of 12 children, is survived by two sisters, Catherine Schiller and Marie Alterkruse, both of St. Louis.
Memorials have been established with The Bishop Mark K. Carroll Trust for St. Mary's Cathedral, Bishop Mark K. Carroll Fund for Holy Family Center and Bishop Carroll Fund for Holy Savior School. (Wichita Eagle, January 13, 1985)
CLARK, MARY ELIZABETH (MRS. HOWARD)
Mary Elizabeth (Mrs. Howard) Clark, 69, of 615 E. 57th St. S., died Tuesday. Service 10 a.m. today, Culbertson Mortuary.
The name of a sister, Jonny Hair of Walsh, Colo., was given incorrectly to Thursday's Eagle and Beacon.
(Wichita Eagle ~ Friday, 12 May 1978)
EKLUND, MYRTA VALENTINE (BOMAN)
Eklund, Myrta Valentine (Boman), 94, retired Eklund Paint & Wallpaper owner and operator, died Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2003. Memorial service 11 a.m. Friday, Beth Eden Baptist Church.
Survivors: son, King Davenport of Los Lunas, N.M.; daughter, Myrna Davidson of Milton, Wash.; five grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; two great-great-grandchildren. Memorial established with Gideon International of Wichita, 1637 W. May, Wichita, KS 67213. Hillside Funeral Home East. (Wichita Eagle, January 9, 2003)
Filbert, John, 87, farmer, died Wednesday, March 23, 1994. Service 2 p.m. Sunday, United Methodist Church.
Survivors: sisters, Pauline Kleweno of Dodge City, Dorothy Ely of Bazine; two grandchildren. Memorial has been established with the Lane County Long Term Care Unit. Boomhower Funeral Home. (Wichita Eagle, March 25, 1994)
Mrs. A. J. Fowler, 44, wife of an oil operator, was found dead in a bath tub at her home, 3215 East Douglas, Wichita, Thursday night. Evidence that she had taken chloroform was reported. Relatives said she succumbed to a heart failure attack. She had been ill for several years. She was an aunt of Roy Fowler, who has been working in the El Dorado field. (Walnut Valley Times, January 17, 1917)
Bert Paul Jones simply loved Wichita.
Always inquisitive, he loved collecting pieces of Wichita history and then sharing stories about what he knew.
"He was a born collector," said longtime friend Hal Ross.
"He would get interested in various subjects - from advertising buttonho oks, to Wichita festival buttons and postcards. I don't think he saw anything that he didn't like to collect. He was very knowledgeable, and his house was filled with things he collected and loved."
Mr. Jones, owner of Jones-O'Neal Shoes and later manager of Andrew Shoe Fitters, died Tuesday in Tampa, Fla. He was 94 years old.
Services will be at 3 p.m. Friday at Old Mission Mortuary.
He was born Oct. 3, 1906, in Oklahoma Territory.
When he was 12 years old his father died, and he began working in a hotel, shining shoes.
He then managed and owned several dry-goods stores and shoe stores in Oklahoma before moving to Wichita in 1952.
In downtown Wichita, he first worked at Henry's Department Store and later opened Jones-O'Neal Shoes. He retired in 1972 as manager of Andrew Shoe Fitters.
After his retirement, Mr. Jones became actively involved in various community groups. He was one of the founding members of the Wichita Postcard Club and was the group's first president.
He had a postcard collection that included thousands of rare cards that showed scenes of Wichita, Kansas and national history from the 1890s through the Depression and World War II. There were postcards like Eugene Ely making the first airplane flight over Wichita on May 4, 1911; scenes of Wonderland Park - an amusement park located on a long-gone island in the Arkansas River; and the Civil War cannons that were once located in Riverside Park but were melted down during a World War I scrap-metal drive.
"When I founded the local history section in 1971, he started drifting into my office," said Bill Ellington, retired historian from the Wichita Public Library.
"He knew we had a common interest. I remember he was a cordial fellow who was enthusiastic about Wichita and Wichita history."
Mr. Jones was a collector of stamps, newspapers, photographs, maps and, yes, even buttonhooks - those devices used in the old days to button up high-top shoes. Old newspaper clippings indicate he had even collected a buttonhook from Wichita's Earp and Wickersham Shoe Store. The Earp represented in the shoe store was a relative of none other than Wyatt Earp, a fast-sho oting gunman who, in 1875, was a Wichita police officer.
Many long-time Wichitans will remember Mr. Jones as the bald guy who during Wichita River Festivals wore a blue leisure suit and a red sash draped around his neck covered in River Festival buttons. At the end of each year's festival , when most people would throw away their buttons, Mr. Jones kept his and just kept adding each year to his collections.
His buttons represented not only every year of the Wichita River Festival but also four earlier Wichita festivals dating back to 1899.
When his wife died in 1997, Mr. Jones moved to Tampa, Fla. to live with family.
Mr. Jones is survived by his son, John of Tampa, Fla.; and his grandson, Steven, also of Tampa.
Memorials have been established with the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum and College Hill United Methodist Church. (Wichita Eagle, June 21, 2001)
Walt Keeler, who turned his father's small concrete business into a ready-mix bonanza and became one of the foremost builders of Wichita, died Monday. He would have been 83 on Thursday.
''He had been out to his lake house, sat down in a chair, petted the dog and never got up," said Earl Callison of his father-in-law's sudden death. Mr. Keeler was pronounced dead at St. Francis Regional Medical Center at 8:30 p.m.
Funeral services will be 2 p.m. Thursdayat the West Side Christian Church, 1819 W. Douglas. Resthaven Mortuary is in charge of arrangements.
Mr. Keeler was Wichita's mayor in 1953 and 1954 and twice was elected to four-year terms on the City Commission, last serving during the turbulent years of 1967 to 1971. He ran for re-election four more times, but was rebuffed by the voters in favor of younger choices.
''He was one of the builders of this community, both literally and figuratively," said Grover McKee, who was the city's director of economic development during the last two years Keeler served on the commission.
''As a kid, every place I went, just about every sidewalk in town had Walt Keeler's name on it. Many people live in houses that have basements poured with Keeler concrete."
Keeler's father, Levi Keeler, was a small contractor who built sidewalks and poured basement floors. When the elder Keeler died in 1938, his son took over the business, which became the Walt Keeler Company.
Shortly before the U.S. entered World War II, the ready-mix business was in its infancy. It took off in a big way when Keeler's company won the contract to furnish all the concrete for Boeing's Wichita bomber plant.
''We paved continuously for three years," Keeler said in 1976.
Because Keeler was so closely aligned with the construction business, it was common for his critics to question his motives for sitting on the commission. ''A lot of people felt he greased his pockets because he was on the City Commission. That was not true," Callison said. "We lost a lot of money because of it. Probably still do because once in the public eye, you make enemies."
Callison worked for Keeler for 25 years and has been president and chief executive officer since Keeler's retirement in 1976.
McKee recalled that Keeler "always stood up for the construction industry and did so proudly."
''He had great esteem for the builders of this city. He would really get riled if people threw rocks at the builders," McKee said. "He had his own very definite ideas."
Keeler staunchly promoted the Urban Renewal Agency's plans for downtown Wichita that saw Century II and the public library rise from the site of rundown buildings on the river's edge.
Among the problems he confronted while on the commission were riots over racial discrimination and protests against the Vietnam war.
Keeler called on the Wichita clergy to help stop the racial violence, but he was widely criticized for not supporting a strong fair housing ordinance and moving too slowly to correct other social injustice.
He supported widening Kellogg through the city and, in 1973, urged support for a $1 billion highway program in the state. One of his plans, the construction of a curved roadway to the west and south of Century II came to be labeled "Keeler's Curve." It was never built.
Former Wichita Mayor Donald Enoch said he and Keeler often disagreed on city issues. "But it was so comfortable to disagree with him because we had such high regard for each other," he said.
Keeler is survived by his wife, Irma; a daughter, Karol Callison of Wichita; a brother, Ralph of Palm Springs, Calif.; two sisters, Alice Keeler and Gladys Freeze, both of Wichita, four grandchildren and three great- grandchildren.
Memorials have been established with West Side Christian Church and the Shrine Burns Institute, c/o Shrine Midian Temple in Wichita. (Wichita Eagle, May 23, 1990)
William L. Lugrand, 59, of 1712 N. Kansas, owner and operator of Bill Lugrand's Trash and Hauling Service, died
Wednesday. Service 11:30 a.m. Saturday. Riverlawn Christian Church.
(Wichita Eagle ~ Friday, 12 May 1978)
Daniel A. Powers, 54, of 2625 S. West, Lot 512, composer for The Wichita Eagle and Beacon, died Thursday. Service 10 a.m. Monday, Resthaven Mortuary.
Survivors: son, Daniel A. Morgan of Montgomery, Ala.; daughters, Mrs. Donna R. Causey of Birmingham, Ala., Lia
of Montgomery; stepdaughter, Amelia Long of Henderson, La; mother, Mrs. Bessie O. Powers of Wichita; brothers,
Joseph of Cheney, David of Phoenix, James of Westminster, Colo., Eldon of Tulsa, Donald of Salina, Kan.; sisters,
Mrs. Mary Baker, Mrs. Ruth Marler, both of Wichita.
(Wichita Eagle ~ Friday, 12 May 1978)
REAKSECKER, LENA M. (MRS. FRED A.)
Lena M. (Mrs. Fred A.) Reaksecker, 84, of 1958 Everett, died Thursday.
Survivors: sons, Virgil of Pensacola, Fla., Earl of Sedalia, Colo.; daughter, Mrs. Mildred Blosser of Wichita;
brother, F. Milford McNally of Salina, Kan.; sister, Mrs. Florence Mueller of Gardens, Calif. Cochran Mortuary.
(Wichita Eagle ~ Friday, 12 May 1978)
Paul V. Snyder, 60, of 2201 S. Anna, former Cessna Aircraft Co. employee, died Thursday. Service 1:30 Monday, Clearwater Church of the Nazarene.
Survivors: widow, Virginia; sons, Virgil of Dallas, Stanley of Troy, Kan., Ricky of Wichita; daughters, Mrs. Mary Boman of Goddard, Mrs. Terri Burtchett of Wichita; brothers, Glenn of Lancaster, Calif., Wayne, Kermit, both of Wichita; sisters, Mrs. Neva Titus, Mrs. Opal Saunders, Mrs. Fern McCool, all of Wichita. Webb Mortuary, Clearwater. (Wichita Eagle ~ Friday, 12 May 1978)
The funeral of Mr. SPARKS, who died from acute rheumatism Friday morning, was held at his late residence on South Main street, yesterday afternoon. He leaves a wife and three children. (Wichita Daily Eagle, Sunday, February 14, 1886, Volume IV, #74, page 4 column 4)
News was received in the city yesterday from the West side of the death of Mr. Geo. Tudors at 8:00 a. m. The funeral will be from his late home this morning at 10 o'clock. Father Tudors was full of years, a sheaf, fully ripened, unto the eternal garner, being seventy-three years, four months and two days old. He came to Sedgwick county in 1870, among the first settlers. Remembered be his name, and many kindly acts, and peace to his ashes. (Wichita Daily Eagle, Thursday, February 11, 1886, volume IV, #71, page 4, column 4)
Ervin Wynn, Jr., 45, of 2302 E. Murdock, former Mid-Kansas Construction Co. employee, died Tuesday. Service 2 p.m. Saturday, St. Matthew C.M.E. Church. (Wichita Eagle ~ Friday, 12 May 1978)
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