“In the regrettable chronology of lives, devotion can be the prelude to sorrow.”
Charles W. Gusewelle wrote that line in a 2015 column when his beloved cat, Mickey, died. Now the quote seems apt for all the followers of his column in “The Kansas City Star” for the past 60 years and the 21-some books he published in his lifetime.
Gusewelle died Nov. 15 at 83.
At the news of his passing, many felt like Susan Goldenberg, a violinist with Kansas City Symphony, who played at Gusewelle’s memorial.
“I got huge tears streaming down my cheeks. He was my friend, though I never met him. I just knew his writing, heartfelt, insightful. His love of family, nature — he was the most honest human being in our lives every morning with the KC Star,” she said.
Mike Fannin, “The Star’s” editor and vice president, called Gusewelle, “our Hemingway.” Gusewelle continued writing his weekly column until early last year, and was in the middle of a crowd-funding campaign to publish his last book, “Outbound: A Lifetime’s Adventures in Journalism,” when he died.
Adopted into a loving family from an orphanage in Kansas City, Kan., Gusewelle called Kansas City home. He joined the staff of “The Star” as a general assignment reporter in 1955 and, shortly thereafter, left for a two-year Army assignment as a paratrooper. He became an editorial writer on foreign affairs in 1966 and from 1976-79 served as foreign editor, eventually becoming associate editor and columnist.
Fans say Gusewelle, the recipient of many accolades and writing awards, could make readers feel, see and smell a new spring morning, or delight in a personal triumph of someone they never met, and even to cry and grieve for many of his beloved pets.
“Charles, like the best writers, was an excellent observer of all things — animals, people, the natural world around us. He was a reporter’s reporter, discovering nuggets of truth in places seemingly hidden. And he carried all of the necessary tools — anger, humor, humility, sympathy, love — to bring those truths to light. None of this is easily done,” says Doug Weaver, former publisher of Kansas City Star Books, an imprint that many of Gusewelle’s books were published under.
Phyllis Westover, a past board member of the Writer’s Place, and her husband were Gusewelle’s close friends.
“Two things come to mind when I consider what makes people relate so keenly to Charles Gusewelle’s writing. The first all good writers learn or intuitively do: render the story or memory with selected, exact detail — the body language and baleful look in a dog’s eye, blood-soaked gray feathers, the bowl of tomato soup on the kitchen table that is the essence of childhood home,” she remembers. “All these images, textures, sounds or scents zing home to us the scene and feelings. But more than telling detail is Gusewelle’s willingness to put himself out there on the page, to engage the reader in silent conversation about what it means to be human — the values that reside at our core.”
His column on the death of his favorite hunting dog, Rufus, touched all pet lovers who have had to say goodbye to a loving companion. “I’m sending you a pretty good dog,” Gusewelle wrote in “Another Autumn: The Rufus Chronicle.” The words were directed heavenward to his deceased hunting buddies. “But he isn’t given, only loaned.”
His words bring a hopeful smile to friends and fans who imagine the loan has been called in and the two are now reunited.
Gusewelle leaves his wife, the former Katie Jane Ingels of Jefferson City, two daughters, Anne and Jennie, and several four-legged furry friends.
