Rich Hayse, A Tale of 12 Houses

Rich Hayse

Originally published last September, Rich Hayse’s story has been visited more than 80 times and is one of the most frequently read on the 1960 Reunion Website. The Top 20 Stories of 2020 are being republished here this month. 

With the hallowed halls of East High behind me, I ventured north to K-State to become an electrical engineer. That plan lasted one school year until I realized that calculus and I would never be friends. I left K-State in 1964 with a BA in speech and an emphasis in radio-television.  Having interned two summers in the news department of WIBW in Topeka, I was relieved to accept a full-time position after graduation.

Linda Fairchild (Wichita Southeast ’60) and I were married in Wichita on August 8,1964 with two fraternity brothers holding up the groom. The newlyweds moved into a furnished second floor apartment in a house just south of Topeka High. (That’s home #1.) As a young newscaster, I did mostly radio news and television clips on local stories, such as covering the Kansas Senate and National Guard summer camp at Camp “my mosquitoes are bigger than yours” Ripley, Minnesota.

On August 8,1966, the biggest news story to ever hit Topeka arrived in the form of a massive tornado that ripped diagonally from one corner of the city to the other. My broadcast colleague Bill Kurtis was on air telling viewers, “For God’s sake, take cover” – five words that launched his national career. Meanwhile, Linda and I were vacationing in Colorado, thus allowing me to miss the historic event until I arrived back in Topeka in time to cover the cleanup. Fortunately, our newly renovated town house apartment (home #2) was largely undamaged even though it was in the direct path of the tornado.

By 1966 I had concluded that, lacking the Kurtis golden adenoids, there wasn’t much of a future for me in broadcasting. But I could enroll in law school at Washburn while continuing to voice the evening radio newscasts. In the summer of 1968 I participated in an 8-week law school trip abroad to study comparative law in England, Germany, France and most of the then-provinces of Yugoslavia, an experience that would later lead us to an interesting fork in the road.

Upon returning to law school, I took up the duties of editor-in-chief of the Washburn Law Journal, to guide publication of three volumes of pretty boring legal research and commentary. The position opened some doors and, after law school graduation in 1969, I was hired as an assistant Kansas attorney general under Kent Frizzell, to write legal opinions on state civil law issues. Linda and I bought our first house in West Topeka (home #3). 

Kent Frizzell ran for Governor in 1970 and I was assigned out of the AG’s office to write some of the campaign speeches. Apparently, my writing lacked what the campaign wanted because my speeches were never used. When Frizzell lost the election, I wondered if the result would have been different if he had used my hard-hitting prose. In any event I was headed for unemployment.

However, seduced by my previous foreign travels, I had applied for a position with the U.S. Information Agency by touting my broadcast degree and experience. My application was surprisingly accepted as the Agency tried to expand its ranks beyond traditional Ivy Leaguers. In January 1971, we moved to an unfurnished apartment (home #4) in Arlington, Virginia, and I entered junior officer training, including daily French lessons. Our daughter Adrienne was born in the District of Columbia in September.

In October 1971, I was assigned to Brussels to continue junior officer training. This was a great posting because I worked in all three U.S. diplomatic posts there: the U.S. embassy in Belgium, the U.S. Mission to NATO and the U.S. Mission to the European Community. We lived in an apartment overlooking the city (home #5), furnished with embassy hand-me-downs.

We awoke one morning to learn that I had been assigned to London as an Assistant Information Officer. The Agency moved us to temporary quarters (home #6) for several months while more appropriate housing could be secured in a three-floor “maisonette” just north of Regent’s Park (home # 7). My principal duty in London was to create from scratch, edit, publish and distribute a glossy bi-monthly magazine showing influential Brits how great the U.S. was.

This challenge was difficult because of two factors. First, after British news the Number One subject in English media was already America. And second, our little publication was edited and laid out on photo-ready boards in London, which were then air-shipped to an American printing plant in Beirut, from which the final product was shipped by sea back to London for distribution. Under these conditions, nothing in Insight USA was timely, and the Agency killed the project after six issues.

Our son Toby was born in London in 1973. Thus, neither of our children was born in a state of the U.S. but both are natural American citizens. In the infinite wisdom of the U.S. Foreign Service in 1974, I was assigned as Information Officer/press attache’ in the U.S. embassy in Dakar, Senegal, at the tip of west Africa. Our family moved into a “villa” surrounded by a high masonry wall (home #8). We settled in with a gate, a cook, a maid, and a night watchman/gardener who kept evildoers away by sleeping in the garage all night.

Despite these great postings, I grew extremely frustrated with U.S. government bureaucracy and wrote to Topeka law firms about employment. Accepting an offer from Eidson, Lewis, Porter and Haynes, I resigned from USIA and we moved back to Topeka in November 1975. Linda asked; “Are you hoping to make enough money to come back and visit the places we now live?” We moved into a fixer-upper 1877 house in College Hill (home #9) as middle-class Americans, working, raising kids and renovating the house. Linda returned to the teaching she had begun in 1964.

Entering private law practice for the first time, I worked mostly on insurance and railroad defense cases. Every case tells a story, and I had a mobile home explosion, a railroad derailment from a trailer truck across the tracks, a gas explosion in a Lawrence donut shop from an improper pipe coupler, and a showboat blown over by a tornado on Lake Pomona. Over time, I took more satisfaction in working with small businesses and professional practices and especially in customized estate planning for folks.

In 1988 we purchased the large home (home #10) once owned by Kay and Dr. Will Menninger, one of the founders of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, renowned for the study and treatment of mental illness. The house had been used by the Menningers for entertaining, and we did our best to continue the tradition. In 1989 the law firm dissolved (after 125 years) and I entered solo law practice. The clients who stuck with me earned my undying gratitude.

As luck would have it, the Wichita firm of Morris Laing Evans Brock and Kennedy needed an experienced generalist to staff a Topeka office, and I merged my practice with Morris Laing in 1991. I continued a general civil law practice with the outstanding lawyers of Morris Laing until full retirement on December 31, 2017.

Along the way, I tried to do my bit for the community, serving as President of the Topeka Lions club, Cornerstone of Topeka (low income housing),  Topeka Youth Project (preparing young people for employment), the Topeka Symphony Society, and as Commodore of the Shawnee Yacht Club. More harrowing was a stint as Chapter Advisor to a Washburn fraternity in an era of tightening alcohol controls. In 2005-06 I was president of the Kansas Bar Association, a wonderful experience that reinforced my belief in the value that lawyers give back to society and their communities.

In 2010 I was diagnosed by a couple of neurologists with Parkinson’s disease. One doctor cheerily said, “You’ll probably die of something else.” So far, his prognosis remains thankfully untested; I have had only mild symptoms without serious hindrance of activity except that I will never realize my dream of being a jazz pianist.

Downsizing for convenience, we moved into our present maintenance-provided home (#11) in 2013. As we survey our accumulation of stuff, we say our next move will be horizontal. Before the pandemic we divided our time unevenly between Topeka and Linda’s small condo in Kingston, Washington (# 12), when we were not cruising on an Oceania ship.

Life has been good to even an eternal pessimist like me. Linda’s health is generally good: No one believes she is a septuagenarian. Ady and Toby are bright, engaging people in their late 40s, and we have the two most brilliant, beautiful granddaughters anywhere – one in Bellingham Washington and one in Topeka.

I preach to anyone who will listen that the Beatles were only half right: All you need is love . . . and a sense of humor. Many thanks to our class leaders for undertaking this project in the face of continuing pandemic challenges.

Rich Hayse
September 2020
(My apologies for the length)