When Martha Deardorff Shields and Edwin W. Shields began building Oaklands, they had been married for more than a dozen years and were the parents of a daughter and a son. Edwin was a grain dealer. Martha’s father had been a lumberman, and her maternal grandfather had been a judge. In July 1909, the Kansas […]

Who remembers Alexander Woollcott? For some, what comes to mind is that he was a member of the Algonquin Round Table and a writer for The New Yorker magazine during its fledgling days. In 2021, Mark Peikert suggested in Town & Country magazine that Aleck had been an influencer for an earlier generation: “He was […]

The third floor of Emery, Bird, Thayer was the site for a May 1937 fashion show featuring everything from beach togs to gardening overalls to bridal dresses, as they were termed. In charge was Murrel “Muriel” Finley Groves (Mrs. R. Dinwiddie Groves), herself a recent bride – and quite possibly the only former Ziegfeld Follies […]

Harold D. Rice learned about community service at an early age. The son of Atha C. Dewees Rice and O. Lee Rice grew up at 4735 Virginia Avenue, in a neighborhood filled with children. In 1935, Harold and his sister, Mary Lee, and a group of their friends, including members of the Haake and Polsky […]

January 1970 saw the launch of a new soap opera on Channel 9, Kansas City’s ABC affiliate: All My Children, created by Agnes Nixon. One of its stars was Ruth Warrick, who had roots in Our Town. Film aficionados may argue that she should be best remembered for her part in Orson Welles’ film Citizen […]

We’re familiar with bling and swag. That said, we’ve never been to a dinner party where the guests received diamonds as souvenirs of the evening. Alas, we were born too late to be on Eleanor Massie Hope’s invitations list.  According to a marriage record report filed in Colorado, Ella Massie and George D. Hope wed […]

“I work quickly, without trying to put any message into my painting,” Gertrude Freyman told the Kansas City Star in 1959. She added, “I don’t think too much about what I am doing. Perhaps, unconsciously, I seek a kind of design, but I paint what I feel.”  Her artwork, and particularly her whimsical pictures of […]

Two of the most significant events in Carolyn Oechsli Doughty’s life occurred during a very short span of time in 1918. That August, she was widowed after nearly 14 years of marriage. Within weeks, she had accepted the position of executive secretary of the Women’s City Club.  Carolyn was exactly the right person for the […]

Robert Ellis Scott was primarily known as Mark Roberts during an acting career that lasted more than 50 years. To his friends in Our Town, he remained Bob Scott. It wasn’t Bob’s fate to become a household name with an instantly recognizable face, but he did achieve a fairly astounding résumé. The International Movie Database […]

Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport is located on Lou Holland Drive. Dr. Wheeler, physician, lawyer, and former mayor, is well-known to residents of Our Town – but who was Lou Holland? He is the man who was largely responsible for the creation of the Municipal Airport in the 1920s.  Nothing about Louis Edward Holland’s childhood […]

Winifred Wittmann Lunning turned heads in New York – and probably everywhere else she went – back in the 1930s. Long before fashion models were celebrated as superstars, she graced the pages of  both Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. As the Kansas City Star described her in November 1936, “She is a tall blonde, rather pale, […]

What can you tell about someone just by seeing their picture? In October 1939, in a feature titled, “Names in the News in the World of Kansas City Business Women,” our scribe wrote, “Faune Leask, whose investment activities have kept her well to the front in financial circles for a number of years, is probably […]

Geneve Lichtenwalter (originally known as E. Geneve Lichtenwalter – her first name was Eva) was an esteemed piano teacher for decades in Our Town. She was born in Iowa on Valentine’s Day in the late 1860s. Geneve graduated from The University of Kansas with a degree in music in 1892, and a bachelor’s degree in […]

It’s a near certainty that any wedding planned during the past few years has involved challenges that would have taxed the minds of the finest screenwriters during the glory days of Hollywood.  We like to imagine that true love conquers all. Prior to the pandemic, wedding planning was often chronicled in the media as a […]

Frank Fitzhugh Buckner Houston (as an adult, he pronounced his last name “Hewston,” although his brother Sid, a newspaperman, preferred “Howston”) was born in December 1899, near the tail end of the 19th century. He was a native of Mexico, Missouri. His father was Algernon Sidney Houston, a lumberman much involved in Masonic activities. His […]

Wanda Młynarski Labunski and Wiktor Labunski came to Our Town with their two sons in 1937, 17 years after their marriage and nine years after they arrived in The United States. For the couple and many of their relatives, the desire to lead a life focused on music and culture was overshadowed by the wars […]

When Anna Curry and E. Kemper Carter – the E. stood for Evlane – were wed on Washington’s Birthday in 1936, they no doubt hoped to be together for the rest of their lives. They got their wish. Alas, some lifetimes are shorter than others.  Kemper, who was sometimes known as Kemp, hailed from Saint […]

During the past 50 years, The Parker Foundation has granted funding requests of more than $56 million to improve the lives of people living in San Diego, California. On learning this, we knew to smile bravely and murmur, “How nice,” while stifling a shriek. It’s not just our envy of Southern California weather and proximity […]

The death on August 18th of Maria Magdalena Habsburg von Lothringen, Archduchess of Austria, Baroness Holzhausen closes the chapter on the story of four members of the royal family of Romania who formed strong, though unlikely, connections to Kansas City. Magi was a member of the class of 1957 at Notre Dame de Sion. Her […]

Richard Liggett owned and operated several movie theaters and then, at the behest of his brother-in-law, he went to work for a company that made and sold vacuum cleaners.  You’re not riveted? Let’s try this: One of Richard’s theaters was the Gene Gauntier in Kansas City, Kansas. He named it after his sister, who was […]

Are you as big a fan of Humphrey Bogart as we are? Is The Big Sleep one of your favorite films? In the movie, which is based on the book by Raymond Chandler, the elderly General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) sends for Phillip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart), a private detective, because he is being blackmailed – again […]