Frank Hamilton Spearman

311 East 5th Street, McCook Neb. Frank Spearman home

The reunion was wonderfully noisy with everyone trying to catch up with each other (several of us having trouble hearing in the first place), update what is happening in our lives and our families. We still have a few that have not turned in the keys to their professions, and more power to them, but punching a time clock for most of us is done.

Two members of our class came back for the first time to a reunion and after 55 years missing, it was a great time to have them with us! The museum as a site for the gathering on Saturday was perfect, the hardiest of us out on the sidewalk watching the parade while others lingered with a cup of coffee inside the glass doors.

The Frank Spearman home, located at 311 East 5th, is for sale. Purchased in 1887 by Spearman, it has little resemblance to the original structure on the outside having a coat of stucco in place of lap board siding and none of the original latticework and entry porch, but if you look at the pictures available online, the grace and elegance of yesteryear is still apparent.

Considering that Spearman was much more than just a bank employee in McCook, one would hope that it will be purchased and returned to its glory.

How many people from McCook can lay claim to having written a book, Whispering Smith (1906), that was turned into four silent movies (1916, 1917, 1926, 1927) and then again produced in different versions in 1930, 1935, 1948 and 1952? Not to be outdone by the large screen, NBC aired a television series starring Audie Murphy on May 8, 1961, that ran for one season of 26 episodes.

Spearman, born on Sept, 6, 1859, in New York, came to McCook and worked as a clerk in the railroad’s division superintendent’s office but later went on to open and serve as bank president for the Farmers and Merchant’s Bank downtown. The bank was financed by his brother, Harry, and his wife’s mother, Mary Lonergan.

His books, the first of which was ‘The Nerve of Foley’ in 1900, were quite often about western or railroad life and particularly as with ‘Whispering Smith’ about actual UP detectives, with the title assumed to have been capturing the essence of James ‘Whispering’ Smith, a Union Pacific policeman.

Of the 20 or so books Frank wrote from 1900 until his death in 1937, only three - ‘Whispering Smith’, ‘The Daughter of a Magnate’ (1903), and ‘Nan of Music Mountain’ (1916), still carry a commercial book identification number. At one time, the McCook Public Library carried those books plus ‘Dr. Bryson’, 1902.

Frank and his wife Eugenie (Lonergan) only lived in McCook a scant eight years. His bank failed during the years of drought in the 1890s and they left McCook in 1894, moving several times and adding children (5) ending up living in Hollywood, California, in 1915.

His works include both novels and novellas collected and published in book form. If you want to read what some consider a bird eye’s view of the settling of western Nebraska, his books are considered to be good examples of how life existed then.

SWNGS library is open on Tues. and Thur. from 1-4 p.m. It is located in the historic Temple Building, 322 Norris Ave., Ste. 2-7. Our library has an amazingly eclectic collection of books and publications concerning this area plus scrap books containing obituaries from early 1895 to 2022. Our online presence is at www.swngs.org and use of either the library or our web site is always free.