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By Linda Mowery-Denning
Last Updated: November 17, 2009
Years after he climbed out on a political limb to strengthen public education in Kansas, former Gov. Bill Avery, a Republican, offered this assessment of his action:
“I don't have any regrets if I had to do it over again, I've told people. Even though withholding tax defeated me it was the right decision and I would still make it."
Avery's comment came during a 2003 interview edited by Bob Beatty, an associate professor of political science at Washburn University.
I reread the interview this past week, after learning about Avery's death at age 98. The title of Beatty's piece was “You Have to Like People. A Conversation with former Gov. William H. Avery."
It brought back memories of a man I met a decade after he left politics. I was young and dumb and assigned to interview a former governor of Kansas. Having arrived from another state two years earlier, I knew little of Kansas history and even less of Kansas politics.
It didn't seem to matter. Avery was patient, explaining the issues that defined his political career.
His entry into politics came with his opposition to the construction of Milford Reservoir. “Big Dam Foolishness" it was called at the time. For Avery, the fight was intensely personal because the proposed dam was to be built at the expense of his family's farmhome.
Milford became a reality and Avery was elected to the Kansas House in 1950 and later to Congress from the Second District. He was in Washington, D.C. for a decade before returning to Kansas and running for governor.
At the time, the governor's term was two years and, for Avery, it was an eventful 24 months.
“In education, the governor pushed through legislation that increased the state's share of elementary and secondary school funding from 25 to 40 percent and also expanded state services in areas such as mental health," Beatty wrote.
To pay for these services, Avery endorsed a package of income and sales tax increases, including the establishment of a state income tax withholding system in 1966.
During that first interview, I was mostly lost talking about a past that had little meaning for me. But, over the years, I interviewed or visited with Avery on several other occasions, as did many reporters. One time he showed me the draft horses he continued to use for farming. Another time, he led a photographer and I on a trip to the point in Junction City where the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers join to form the Kansas River. Avery was in his 80s at the time and he navigated the bank down to the river with amazing agility.
During yet another of our visits, we drove into the county, to a small one-room schoolhouse, which dated to the area's earliest settlers.
His grandfather, who was single at the time, helped raise money for the school because he believed in the importance of education and the responsibility of each generation to educate those who followed.
It was something Avery believed in, too, and he had the political courage to follow his convictions. His support of a state income tax withholding system probably cost him a second term as governor and forced his retirement from politics. And yet he stood his ground, doing what he thought was right for Kansas and its citizens.
William Avery was a remarkable man. In his public life, he wasn't as much a politician as he was a public servant.
That doesn't happen nearly enough anymore.
Linda Mowery-Denning is editor-publisher of the Ellsworth County I-R.
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