What Was Then

The staircase steps were small and closely spaced on purpose, designed for children. Taking them one at a time felt like a lot of work without much visible progress. Two or more at a time was just as uncomfortable.

The comfortable balance was never found.

The broadcasting operations owned by what was then Stauffer Communications (one TV station, two radio stations, and three radio networks) were housed in a building that started life as a schoolhouse for Security Benefit Association orphans on what was then the Menninger Clinic campus, high atop hills in northwest Topeka that sloped down to the Kaw. The actual original orphanage was a building right across the parking lot, what was then used as the Menninger psychiatric outpatient unit.

When I got there in the spring of 1985, I was an anchor/reporter for a Wichita-based statewide radio news network that had just been purchased by Stauffer. I was a throw-in to the deal, which also included a farm news network and a sports network. Back then, I liked to think of myself as a pot sweetener. Regardless, at 27, my self-image as a young, upwardly mobile professional was cemented when Stauffer picked up our moving costs from Wichita to Topeka.    

Middle management in Stauffer Communications, arguably what was then the glossiest, most influential media company in Kansas. Their purchase of the radio networks was a natural. Success was all but assured.

 A little history seems in order. Security Benefit was founded in the late 19^th century as a fraternal society and provided social welfare, taking care of orphans and old folks. Around mid-century, SBA vacated the hill in favor of new corporate digs and the Menningers supplanted them.  

The back door to the broadcast building opened to the north, affording a view of Menninger’s historic clock tower building, originally the SBA hospital, designed to evoke Independence Hall. What was then the Menninger campus featured many of the original SBA buildings, interspersed with sleek, new, modern Menninger-built structures.

Many of the campus structures could be seen from the newsroom’s east-facing windows and it was not uncommon for the broadcast journalism professionals to gaze out on individual or pairs of Menninger patients, strolling the grounds.

“Nut — or not?” was a favorite, though admittedly politically incorrect, newsroom game. Yuppies will be yuppies and we had our share of office/newsroom drama/romance in the old school. I recall a pair of colleagues availing themselves of the station manager’s office desk for one such rendezvous right before the 10 o’clock news. 

By the time I walked out of the building for the last time in 1994, I had transitioned from radio middle management to everyday TV news, covering politics and government for WIBW-TV. It was a purposeful tradeoff. That gig opened the door to career success that would transcend broadcasting.

The old school went up in flames in 2012. By then, the radio and TV broadcasters were long gone, on to shinier new environs. For the better part of a dozen years, the building sat vacant, visited only by vandals and ghosts of broadcasts past.

The decade I spent in that building was the heart of my career, honing my journalism, learning the ways of the world. Even though I had long since left the business, when the building burned down, I couldn’t help feeling a little orphaned myself.

These days I return to the hill a few times each year as chair of the Board of Trustees of the Sunflower Foundation. In recent years, we’ve re-purposed and retrofitted a pair of the historic structures, just downhill from where I learned how the cookie crumbles. Our meetings are held in the “Menninger Board Room.” On occasion, when the investment reports tend to drone on, I find myself glancing out the window and up the hill.   

I find myself thinking about the orphans and wondering what became of them. Reflecting on my career choices, the bricks and mortar of our shared history, and what for me, has become a comfortable balance.  

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ weekdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN.