Kessinger, Sharon Totten

Writing my own bio on deadline seems appropriate. That doesn't make it any easier. I have been plagued by procrastination and deadlines for most of my life as a journalist, and really, people don't change much,  do they?

All I can say is that I am really grateful to the Kansas Press Association who chose me to be one of 29 women, including my daughter, Sarah, to be included in the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2023.

All this requires is that I submit a bio and photos on deadline. We were notified two months ago, and the deadline is tomorrow.

Here's the bio:

I was born at home in Winifred, Kansas, on April 5, 1937, the daughter of Owen and Pearl Totten, who had started a business in that tiny town in 1929.

I grew up there, attended a two-room rural school and graduated in 1955 from Frankfort High School. My Mom taught me to be a good speller, to never give up and to tell the truth.

Things were difficult in those years of the Dust Bowl and Depression, but my parents worked, it seemed, all of the time, and things got better. The business expanded from a barebones hardware and gas station to a thriving Massey-Ferguson dealership, and I went off to K-State to earn a degree in whatever the adviser suggested.

He asked me what I liked and I said English and writing, so I chose journalism, attracted more by the promise that there were few requirements and plenty of electives in whatever field I wanted to learn and write about.

My parents supported my education, although my Dad questioned why I was wasting time reading stories for English courses. I helped out with jobs of filing in K-State’s extension office, collating pamphlets and scanning photos at the K-State Press.

Kedzie Hall was my home, and my friends were students who enjoyed the same things I did — studying Chaucer and Nabokov, history, political science and other courses that were supposed to make my education more "rounded."

I liked being ad director and then editor of the student newspaper, the Collegian, even if it meant meeting deadlines and having my best friend hung in effigy by Wildcat supporters who disagreed with our editorial policies.

Stopping for a beer at Kite’s was routine.

I met Howard Kessinger at K-State, and we shared friends and classmates, mostly with the journalism crowd. He was a veteran on the GI Bill, and I enjoyed being part of his world of people who had traveled and had terrific discussions of politics, government and the newspaper world.

He graduated in 1957, and I got my degree in technical journalism in 1959. We went our separate ways but kept in touch.

I went to work as news editor at the Pryor Creek Daily News in Oklahoma, which Clyde Reed of Parsons owned. Two years late Henry Jameson offered me a job as news editor at the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle, and I moved back to Kansas.

Howard was ad director at the Reflector, and again we shared friends and interests. But Howard changed course and took a job at the Oberlin Herald with a chance to buy the paper if he liked it and if the owners liked him.

We were married in 1962 in Abilene, bought the Herald in 1963 and soon were parents of three girls. We loved Oberlin and the newspaper business there but 12 years later were offered a chance to buy the Marysville Advocate, where I had worked for Eulalia and Byron Guise in the summer of 1958 as a K-State student.

It was a larger weekly in a little bigger community with the added benefit of being closer to my parents.

So in 1975, we moved to Marysville, where our son, Mike, was born. We owned the Advocate for almost 40 years until 2012, when Sarah, our second daughter, returned to work at the paper and bought it three years later.

Howard, who was inducted into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2006, died in 2014.

At the Advocate I was a reporter, columnist and a photographer who had started out using an old Speed Graphic at the Pryor Daily Times. I did darkroom work, proofreading, sports, reporting, column writing and lots of other jobs that needed to be filled in. And I joined Howard in trying to do everything I could for the community and region.

I was a member of the board of directors of the Association of Community Arts Agencies of Kansas and editor of the organization’s newsletter, The Ensemble, for 15 years.

In 2001, Howard and I were named Huck Boyd Leaders of the Year by the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development.

In 2003, the Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning & Design gave us a Distinguished Service Award for work in community development in Kansas.

In 2005, we were invited to be A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications Alumni Fellows. We spent a few days on the KSU campus, speaking in classes, visiting with students and faculty members and attending a banquet for University Alumni Fellows.

In Marysville, we were honored by the local Kiwanis and community as Outstanding Citizens.

Howard was selected to the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2006, so with Sarah and me getting in there now, that’s three of us.

We have been members of the Kansas Press Association for more than 50 years. Blessed with dedicated and talented staff members at the Herald and the Advocate, the papers have earned numerous Kansas Better Newspaper Contest awards over the years.

At 86, I am fortunate to live in our longtime home. All three daughters live in Marysville and son Mike stays with me while he works at Landoll Company during the week, and goes home to Hays on weekends.

Grandchildren and great-grandchildren also live not far away. And I have the great good fortune that Sarah and her staff let me fill in at the Advocate from time to time.