Information
Sheet
R Sowers, Edward Walter, 1905-1982.
135 Papers,
1942-1980 (bulk 1961-1979).
107 folders.
This collection consists of
correspondence, business papers, and miscellaneous printed material of a
newspaper editor and publisher at Rolla, Phelps County, Missouri. Topics include the Sowers family,
journalism and the newspaper business, the University of Missouri, and United
States politics and foreign relations.
Edward Walter Sowers was born on 1 April
1905 at Waverly, Missouri, the first of ten children born to William and Alice
Staley Sowers. He was reared on farms
near Hazel Hill and Mayview, and was educated at schools in Mayview and
Higginsville. He attended the University
of Missouri at Columbia, and earned a degree in journalism in 1928. Soon after his graduation he moved to
Boonville, Missouri, upon being offered a position as editor of the Boonville Advertiser. It was in Boonville that he met Alma
Skerik, whom he married in June 1937.
Sowers continued to edit newspapers in Boonville and Excelsior Springs
until 1942, when he and two silent partners bought the weekly Rolla New Era. He soon bought out his partners and reorganized the paper as a
five-day daily, the Rolla Daily News. In partnership with his wife and three sons
he continued to publish the paper until his death from heart disease in 1982.
The Sowers collection consists largely of
personal and business correspondence, with a lesser amount of printed material
and clippings. Nearly all of the
material is dated between 1961 and 1979.
The papers are arranged topically, following Sowers’s own filing system
wherever it was evident. Subject
categories include journalism and the newspaper business, press associations,
the University of Missouri, politics and United States foreign policy, and
general correspondence. A complete
inventory of the folders can be found in the Information Folder.
During his lifetime Sowers was editor
and/or owner and publisher of ten Missouri newspapers. They included the Boonville Advertiser and Central
Missourian in Boonville, the Excelsior
Springs Daily Standard, the St. James
Leader and St. James Journal, the
Fort Leonard Wood Sentinel and Gateway Guide, and the Rolla Advertiser, Rolla New Era, and Rolla Daily News. Most of the material in the collection
pertains only to the Rolla Daily News
and the Gateway Guide, but there are
two folders of correspondence and allied material concerning the Sentinel, a weekly paper published by
Sowers for one year under contract with the U.S. Army at Fort Leonard
Wood. He later founded the weekly Gateway Guide.
The collection also contains
correspondence with several press associations in which Sowers held
memberships. He was a president of the
Missouri Associated Dailies in 1968, and pursued a scheme to forward grass
roots editorial opinion to the Nixon administration through presidential press
aide Herbert Klein. However, the plan
was unsuccessful and it was discontinued after Sowers left office.
The University of Missouri was one of
Sowers’s constant concerns, particularly in regard to operations related to
its campus at Rolla. Although he was an
alumnus of the Columbia campus, and served as president of its Alumni
Association in 1962-1963, Sowers remained sensitive to the needs of the Rolla
campus. He successfully lobbied against
the separation of the Rolla campus, then known as the University of Missouri
School of Mines and Metallurgy, from the University System, although this collection
does not include material from this interesting campaign. However, the files do contain numerous
letters to and from governors, legislators, curators, and chancellors, and
they reflect Sowers's concern for the Rolla campus, especially in searches for
new chancellors.
Sowers was intensely interested in
American foreign policy, and there are a dozen folders concerned with the
topic. He traveled extensively
throughout the world on tours that were as much “fact-finding” trips as they
were vacations. His itineraries
included Europe, South America, Africa, China, and Taiwan. His impressions during these travels led him
to worry that the United States was losing its grip on world leadership to
communism, and he was convinced that the American government was pursuing
absolutely the wrong courses in instituting trade sanctions against Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe), and in opening negotiations which would transfer control of
the Panama Canal, the latter a subject of his fiercest editorials. His observations were printed as editorials
in the Rolla Daily News, and later he
published them in a three-part series of pamphlets, “Jet Hopping Up and Down
and Around the World.” Part Three of
the series describes his visit to the Orient in 1977 as a member of a “Study
Mission” sponsored by the National Newspaper Association. Several members of the group also published
their own observations on the trip, which included both China and
Taiwan. These publications are included
in the collection.
A prolific correspondent and
editorialist, Sowers had a long-standing policy of forwarding copies of his
significant writings to numerous state and federal legislators, officials, and
fellow newspapermen. His files contain
correspondence with many Missouri governors and legislators, including John M.
Dalton, Christopher “Kit” Bond, Stuart Symington, James Kirkpatrick, and
Richard Ichord. He also corresponded
frequently with officials of the Nixon administration and with Ronald Reagan’s
campaign committees.
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