The Long And Winding Road To Castle’s Commentary
By Eric Huseby, News Director
Vernon Castle, the writer who brought us that great historical look at the history behind Missouri and Kansas, essentially tells how old he is in his post. You’re free to do the math if you wish. He is now a crusty ol’ construction supervisor in El Paso, TX. He has no writing background, other than what came with a well-rounded education, back in the day when you could get that just by going to school and studying hard. He has a jolly laugh, and could play Santa convincingly if he ever decided to grow a beard. His son, Curtis, was a starting offensive lineman for UTEP a few years back. I thought the story of how we got Vernon’s article was nearly as good as the article itself, so I’ll go ahead and share it with you.
I guess before I go any further, I’m obligated to mention that you can watch this year’s game, between 11-0 second-ranked Kansas and 10-1 third-ranked Missouri in high definition on ABC7 at 6pm Saturday.
Anyway, I’ve worked at KVIA since 1990, and have known Vernon for maybe a decade or so. KVIA’s General Manager, Kevin Lovell, has known Vernon a lot longer than I have. They’ve done some fishing and such over the years. Vernon presented himself yesterday at our TV station with his little epic written out in LONGHAND.
Vernon is not a Mizzou alum himself. He went to Colorado a couple years, then transferred to Texas. I asked him why on earth he would go to the trouble to write that story out. Turns out his dad, the former Tiger halfback, took that loss back in ’60 a lot harder than he did. Vernon, Sr. lived well into his 80s, and at some point near the end of the line, Vernon Jr. realized how much it still bugged him, and made a promise that some day he’d verify all the facts he remembered and write up what happened back in 1960 so those who weren’t there would know how good the Tigers were that year, and how they got robbed. Not quite a deathbed promise, but pretty close.
Vernon does own a computer, but I gather he doesn’t use it a whole lot, and when he tried to save the story he had typed out, he either hit the wrong key, or the program malfunctioned or something, and POOF! He lost it ALL. So he started fresh, put pen to paper, and rewrote the whole thing, and then came to KVIA asking how he could go about finding an audience for his essay. Since he’s an old friend, of course we published it on kvia.com, but my boss, Kevin Lovell (not to be confused with the rookie kicker of the same name who was in camp with the Rams this summer) knew there was an audience out there in the Heartland that would be more appreciative than the good folks of El Paso, Texas. They set out to figure out how to publish it in the Kansas / Missouri area.
Kevin is slightly more computer literate than Vernon, which is about like saying Kansas coach Mark Mangino is slightly more thin than a sumo wrestler (chances are he isn’t). The two of them are the Keystone Cops of the Cyberworld. They managed to get it typed up as a Word document but didn’t have a clue how to submit it to a website or anything. But they knew longtime friend and rival Fred Albers at KTSM is a Mizzou alum, and Fred volunteered the web addresses of a couple of Missouri fan sites in that part of the world. The whole registering and emailing thing proved too complex for Vernon and Kevin, which is how I entered the picture. I managed to set up an account at the St. Louis Post Dispatch and get Vernon’s story posted there, and where it’s taken on a life of its own with Mizzou fans paying tribute to Vernon’s prose and memory.
For what it’s worth, there’s unusual interest in this game at KVIA. The station is owned by a great family in St. Joe, Missouri, the Bradleys. The wife of the managing partner is a Jayhawk alum (he doesn’t have a dog in the fight, having gone to Syracuse), but our company president is a Mizzou grad who lives and works in St. Louis. I’m hoping to escape having to publicly take sides, if I can. But no matter what happens, this is a great week to be a college football fan.
