"Good 5 Cent Cigar"----Student newspaper at the University of Rhode Island

TOM LEATHERS TRIBUTE ISSUE PUBLISHED

    The much-awaited final issue of "The Squire" is out.  The tribute to local media icon, curmudgeon and long-time publisher Tom Leathers, who passed away on September 13th at age 77, was produced by his son Dave. 

    The Squire publication was a local fixture for 46 years in suburban Kansas City and there were no sacred cows when Leathers was around.  Kansas City Star reporters and other local media folks were often stung by Leathers' darts.  Leathers was a fixture for years at Winstead's Drive-In at I-435 and Roe and at First Watch restaurant in Prairie Village.  

    The final 62-page publication features some of Leathers' classic (and frequently recycled) stories on Leawood, Bob Dole, Mike Garrett,  Hank Stram, Marshall Saper, Elvis, Ewing Kauffman, Morgana, and Tom Pendergast.  A variety of local celebrities also weigh in on Tom Leathers' life, with most of them saying it is highly unlikely anyone will pick up his journalistic gauntlet.

    A full-page ad by UMB may have summed up Leathers best: 

    "A TRUE ORIGINAL:  Every community can claim just a handful of true original thinkers and passionate activists that help to shape the world we live in. 

    "Tom Leathers worked to keep leaders accountable, his readers informed and injected a touch of humor in every day."

    He was recognized this year by the Kansas City Press Club with three gold awards and one silver for writing excellence.  His altercation with Hall of Famer George Brett was a classic.    See original BLC story and Hearne Christopher's take on his passing is below.

    One favorite story often told by Tom Leathers involved his famous confrontation with Kansas City Royal George Brett in March 1988 in training camp.  Brett, angered by Leathers' taking his photo, grabbed the camera and smashed it to pieces.

    Leathers berated Brett repeatedly over the years as being a spoiled, self-centered athlete who felt he could do anything he wished. However, the two made up at a charity event a few years ago.

HEARNE CHRISTOPHER'S TAKE ON THE DEATH OF TOM LEATHERS (9/16)

The voice of a generation of Kansas Citians has gone silent.

Squire publisher Tom Leathers died Tuesday of lung cancer at the age of 77. Just hours after having one last go ’round with this columnist. His parting words:

“The beginning of your life, the end of mine,” Leathers joked, as if to acknowledge his remaining time was short. We spoke then briefly about recently deceased television fisherman Harold Ensley, the cover boy of the current issue of the Squire and for whom Leathers published two books in recent years. And of how Ensley had been at odds for a long time with fellow TV fisherman Virgil Ward, who died last year.

“That’s very true,” Leathers said of the feud. “I never heard any good stuff about Virgil from Harold.”

Then came the inevitable topic — given his ill health — of what thoughts Leathers might wish to leave behind for Squire devotees and others to read after he was gone.

How was he feeling, I asked?

“Fair,” Leathers answered. “What happened was we were at a certain restaurant — I won’t tell you the name — and I had some blueberries that were frozen.”

It didn’t make much sense to me until his son Dave Leathers told me the next morning that Leathers had, in his son’s words, “died” two weeks earlier but had been revived by his wife, who is a nurse. Later at the hospital, the “frozen blueberries” had been retrieved from his windpipe.

After 46 years of publishing, the end was imminent for the journalist.

“I would want people to remember me for the goal I set out to do when I started out,” Leathers rasped. “And that was to inform, educate and stimulate the community to action.”

The journalistic journeyman’s high point?

“A series of high points,” Leathers corrected. “I made many, many things happen. I came out every week for 46 years and made hundreds and hundreds of things happen.”

OK, the wildest?

“Well, I spent half a day with the Beatles in 1964, and I spent an hour with Elvis Presley,” Leathers recalled. “I made it a thing to know about five of these guys … Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Elvis, the Beatles. My main contact was Tony DiPardo — he knew where they were staying and where they were going to be. And because of Tony, I managed to find my way into their rooms or wherever they were.”

The worst?

“Oh, man,” Leathers began. “Let me think. There’s been so many, so many tough things. The best was, as a 20-year-old just out of K-State I covered (former KC city manager) L.P. Cookingham for The Star on a very intimate basis. That was an education you can’t get (anywhere else).”

The Sun also rises

Longtime Johnson County Sun sparkplug Steve Rose knew Leathers not just as a rival and trailblazer but as an employee of his dad in the early days of the Sun.

“He was an original,” Rose says. “In many ways he was a pioneer because he started the concept of an alternative weekly before anybody. If he had been in a different generation he would have been the publisher of The Pitch. Tom set himself apart and was very anti-establishment, and that was very unusual at the time. Nowadays it’s very common to rock the establishment, but at the time it was very unusual.”

Did the two suburban scribes ever come to blows?

“No, you know Tom and I had a really interesting relationship,” Rose says. “We were competitors and he liked tweaking me but we always got along and he was very, very polite to me — even when he went after me or I went after him.

“I remember my father told me when Tom left (the Sun in 1959) to start his own paper, he said, ‘He’ll never make it.’ But Tom proved him wrong, he did make it. He was an original. I can’t think of anybody before or after him like Tom Leathers. You know he got Kauffman Stadium named Kauffman Stadium — he did it, man. He gets all the credit for that.”

Depression Park

Leathers’ departure weighed heavy on KC Parks and Rec commissioner Bob Lewellen.

“I just had an empty feeling,” Lewellen says. “Like the community had suffered a tremendous loss. He was not afraid to call out anybody in the community when he thought they were wrong. I mean, he called me out, and I consider him a friend. And I just don’t see anybody to take his place.

“He didn’t have the biggest read newspaper, but he had the ability to make his point. He had his April Fool’s issue and at Christmas he put everybody’s name on the cover of the Squire. But he also told stories that nobody else would tell and suffered the consequences. Like when the Chiefs kicked him out of the press box at Arrowhead (after Leathers criticized team management). He was just a unique character and Kansas City has lost somebody we’re not going to be able to replace. He mirrored what a lot of the people in the community were thinking and it made you feel good because you would go, ‘My god, that’s right!’ ”