Museum display honoring Gazette founder renovated for Heritage Days

Within the newly-renovated Harry D. Strunk display at the High Plains Museum in downtown McCook, rural Indianola artist Roxann Owens and John Clapper, of JC Home Improvements, position Owens' replica of the motto that Strunk had chiseled in limestone in the east facade of the former McCook Daily Gazette newspaper building at 422 Norris Ave., straight across the street west of the museum. Steven Hoak of Hoak Exteriors created a faux column upon which Owens painted the bricks of the newspaper office.

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

McCOOK, Neb. — A new mural by rural Indianola artist Roxann Owens is the centerpiece of the recently-renovated display of the career of McCook Gazette founder and publisher and reclamationist Harry Strunk at the Museum of the High Plains in downtown McCook.

On a wall in the museum, Owens has recreated the life-guiding principle that Strunk had stone artists incise in limestone on the facade of the new McCook Daily Gazette newspaper office he built in 1926 at 422 Norris Avenue.

The motto — "SERVICE IS THE RENT WE PAY FOR THE SPACE WE OCCUPY IN THIS WORLD" — is also engraved on a brass plaque at the front door of the current Gazette office built in 1966 at 501 W. First, and is printed every day in issues of the McCook Gazette.

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

Owens' mural, complete with simulations of the Norris Avenue building's columns of buff-colored bricks, is the centerpiece of the renovation project that highlights Strunk's newspaper career and as well as his fight for the management of water resources in Southwest Nebraska.

Strunk founded the Red Willow County Gazette in 1911, when he was 19 years old, and the newspaper became the McCook Daily Gazette in 1924. Strunk died in 1960.

Strunk made newspaper industry and aviation history in 1929 and 1930 when his Gazette became the first newspaper in the world to be delivered regularly by air. Flying a 1929 Curtiss Robin C-1 airplane christened "The Newsboy," self-taught pilot Steve Tuttle of Oberlin flew a 380-400-mile non-stop route Monday through Saturday to deliver 5,000 newspapers to readers in Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas. He, and sometimes an assistant, dropped tightly-wrapped bundles of newspapers through a chute built in the Newsboy's floor to paper boys waiting on the ground just outside of 40 communities.

The Newsboy has a place of honor now at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Wash.

Strunk was founder and president of the Republican River Valley Conservation Association whose tireless efforts, spurred by the "Dirty Thirty's" droughts and the river's deadly flood of 1935, resulted in the construction by the U.S. government of dams, canals and reservoirs in Southwest Nebraska, Northwest Kansas and Northeast Colorado for flood control, irrigation, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation and business development.

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The "Service is the Rent We Pay" quote is sometimes originally attributed to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. For several years, early in the Gazette's history, Strunk added a little something to the "Service is the Rent We Pay" motto, tagging on, "And we want to pay our rent in advance."

The other principle by which Strunk lived his life was, "On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, when on the dawn of victory, paused to rest and there resting, died," believing that hesitation, second-guessing and indecision often lead to chaos and disaster.

A businessman new to a young community of McCook once asked Strunk what McCook had to offer him. Strunk turned to the man and asked, "What do you have to offer McCook?"

With a mischievous grin, Strunk often told friends and foes alike, "My goal in life is to irritate someone every day, and some days, I do a whole week's work."

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On another wall of the expanded museum display will hang framed front pages of historical events, recently donated to the museum by Harry Strunk's grandson, Grant Strunk, of McCook.

A 1950's-era bicycle, donated by Tim Monzon of McCook, will stand beside a paper boy wearing blue jeans and red high-top tennis shoes.

The Helping Hand thrift store of downtown McCook donated the period-appropriate business suit and neck tie for a new seated mannequin of Harry Strunk, as well as the clothes for the paper boy. Beside Strunk's desk are his typewriter and an Associated Press teletype.

Expansion and enhancement of the Strunk display was envisioned by Sage Williams and Emily Frenzen, who were Rural Futures Institute interns at the museum during the summer of 2018.

Much of the renovation of the Strunk display will be completed in time for McCook's 2019 German Heritage Days celebration Friday through Sunday, Sept. 27, 28 and 29.

Regular hours at the museum are 1 p.m. until 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. On the Sunday of Heritage Days, it will be open from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.

The museum and the adjacent historic Carnegie Library are located at 413 Norris Ave. There is no admission charge.