Richard Radbourne Knowles

Richard Knowles, 81, long-time newspaper publisher and community developer, died Saturday, February 14, 2009 of pulmonary fibrosis at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines. He was born May 8, 1927 at Oelwein to Clarke and Violet (Peters) Knowles. He married Deloris (Tootie) Kern on September 12, 1945 at Oelwein. The couple had four sons: Richard R.G., Gregg, Brad, and Mark. Dick and Tootie first met in the fourth grade. She noticed something special about him -he was smart. He was also poor, dirt poor. His first steady paycheck came from delivering the Des Moines Register. He learned the value of self-reliance early on. Because it was a railroad hub, Oelwein was a bustling town with a diverse population. In his working-class neighborhood, he was as likely to hear Italian spoken as English. He made friends with people from all backgrounds. He developed a philosophy that there was no limit to what could be accomplished if you did not care who got the credit. Knowles owned the Denison Newspapers, Inc. for 50 years. He bought the last 49 percent interest of the paper for his employees as an ESOP, and in 1998 sold the company to the MediaNews Group, owners of the Denver Post. As a newspaperman, Knowles was a writer, photographer, ad salesman, pressman and technological expert - as well as publisher. In life, he was a doer. As president of Crawford County Industrial Development Corporation, he convinced Andy Anderson to come to Denison to build a new packing plant for pork by promising to raise local money to finance the facility. He headed up the capital fund campaign, raising nearly $1 million dollars using the theme, “A farmer a day moves away. Let’s build the plant and help him stay.” This plant, which began production in 1958, was called Crawford County Packing Company. In less than two years the Double Circle Co-op, now Farmland Foods, purchased the successful plant. It has been expanded and modernized many times and now employs over 1,600 workers. In 1959, he and Andy and other community leaders used the proceeds from the sale of Crawford County Packing Company to establish Iowa Beef Packers, Inc. This pilot plant eventually grew to become the world's largest meat processing company employing over 40,000 workers before being sold to Tyson Foods a few years ago. With Ralph Marten and Ernie Raun, Knowles also helped found World Wide Meats in Denison, serving as its chairman of its board. World Wide’s facility later was home to Dubuque Packing Company and Purity Farms and Premium Protein Products. In 1965, Knowles was part of a team of local leaders who established Midwestern College in Denison, serving as its first chairman of the board. Other team leaders were Dick Boeck, Thurman Aarestad and Marten. Later, the campus was purchased by the U.S. Department of Labor as a site for Job Corps, largely through the efforts of Knowles and attorney Allen Nash.. Job Corps’ mission is employment training for at-risk youth. Knowles supported Job Corps by word and deed and was bestowed its first-ever Alpha Award, accepting the award on his 69th birthday in Washington, D.C from U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, along with co-winner Lou Rawls, the famous R and B singer. The award is bestowed annually on “those who help Job Corps students shine.” It was not the only time Knowles traveled to the nation's capital as a spokesman for Denison. He served over a decade as the chairman of the Denison Community Relations Board. Knowles was also the Denison Rotary Club’s first-ever Paul Harris Fellow. (Tootie is also a Paul Harris Fellow.) He was honored as the Denison JayCee’s first Boss of the Year. He was also inducted into Iowa's Volunteer Hall of Fame during the state's Sesquicentennial year, with Iowa Governor Terry Branstad doing the honors Knowles also was cited for his community service by Governor Tom Vilsack. Knowles was a 60-year American Legion pin member and a 50- year Masonic certificate holder. He joined the United States' Navy in 1945, the year he graduated from Oelwein High. He was honorably discharged in 1948. He used the GI Bill to attend Upper Iowa University in Fayette, graduating in 1949 magna cum laude with three majors (accounting, math and business administration). Throughout his life, Knowles continued to support education, especially Oelwein High School and Upper Iowa. He was the president of the Upper Iowa Alumni Association and organized the Oelwein All-School Reunion, “The Forties Return”. His newspaper gave unwavering support to Denison High School. He also gave moral and financial support to the Norelius Community Library and the Crawford County Memorial Hospital through personal contributions and fund-raising efforts. While attending college, he worked for the Oelwein Daily Register as a pressman. At the same time, he also worked for the Chicago Great Western Railroad. He later became an advertising salesman at that paper. In 1954, he came to Denison as ad manager. He became the publisher due to the death of editor Jack DeGard and ownerpublisher Mark Cramer in an airplane crash at Denison three months later. Over time, he eventually acquired 100% interest in the company. Knowles' papers won hundreds of awards, including the coveted the Iowa Newspaper Association's General Excellence. He was named an Iowa Newspaper Association Master Editor-Publisher in 1979. He also served on numerous INA committees throughout his professional career, including serving as its Foundation president. In addition, Knowles had financial interest in papers in Carroll, Atlantic, Fargo-Moorhead and Detroit Lakes, Minn. He also founded the West Central Iowa Rocket and Today's Action and owned a shopper in Council Bluffs. He also was an original investor in KDSN radio in Denison. He mentored scores of journalists, some of whom became publishers in their own right, some with financial help from Knowles. They include the Ar-We-Va Observer's Janine Kock, plus Bill Sniffen, Paul Thompson, Del Marks, Ron Furse, Ron Slechta, Jim Taylor, Joe Maher, Dale Wagner and John Meyer, and his sons Rich and Gregg and grandson Luke Knowles. His son Brad was an award-winning sports editor working for his dad. Son Mark also worked in the newspaper industry and holds a doctorate in French.. Knowles also hired Bruce A. Binning, who became one of Iowa’s most celebrated newspaper photographers and, with Binning's pictures and the words of the writers, Knowles' newspaper documented daily life and the great projects in Crawford County. Alumni of the Denison Newspapers include Russ Oechslin and Barry Poe, both Sioux City Journal writers, Kevin Cole of the Omaha World-Herald, and Gary Sawyer of the Quad City Times.. In the offices of the Denison Newspapers, his editor Chuck Signs laid the groundwork for the now nationally-famous Donna Reed Festival. Miss Reed was a personal friend of Knowles. Over the years, Knowles was the subject of features in newspapers from Sioux City to New York to San Diego. A halfhour documentary on him aired on an Omaha television station. He was immortalized in a Brian Duffy cartoon that championed the public’s right to know on the front page of the Des Moines Register. Along with current Denison mayor Nathan Mahrt and businessman Luis Navar, Knowles was one of the three heroes of Pulitzer Prizewinning author Dale Maharidge's book, "Denison, Iowa." Knowles ran for public office three times, in races for Denison mayor in 1981, Iowa House in the 1998 Republican primary and for Denison city council in 2005. He was a long-time activist in the Republican Party. He often crossed party lines to join hands with Democrats to accomplish worthwhile goals. He was the campaign chairman for Bill Scherle, a Republican, and Berkley Bedell, a Democrat, in their successful runs for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. As a watchdog, Knowles joined with Francis and Jim Clark to reactivate the Crawford County Taxpayers League. He gave financial and vocal support for the successful election of Don Stehr for mayor and Jean Heiden for Denison city council in 1993. He opposed the development of an 18-hole municipal golf course in the run-up to that election. After 1,800 votes were cast against the course in a straw poll conducted by Knowles, the project was halted. He actively supported the election of Tom Eller, Vergie Deiber- Henningsen and Carol Swanson for the Crawford County Hospital board of directors in 2009 and they were swept into office in a landslide against hand-picked hospital candidates. Knowles was a DeMolay Dad, Sunday school teacher, a Mason and a Shriner. Knowles was a charter member of the Crawford County's Association for Retarded Children group. He attended American Legion Hawkeye Boys State in 1944, returned as a Boys State counselor later and, at the time of his death, had served as the local Boys State selection chair, enlarging Denison's presence as the annual weeklong event for high school seniors-to-be at Camp Dodge in Johnston. His brother Clarence and sons Rich, Gregg, and Mark were also Boys Staters. He served on the nominating committee of the United States Military Academies and privately aided area graduates in attaining appointments. For years he volunteered as a VA van driver. He advised President Jimmy Carter in a White House meeting in the 1970s and attended President Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in 1981. He was a friend of Tom Harkin, Iowa's Democratic Senator. In 1975, Knowles joined with Iowa Governor Robert Ray to help relocate Southeast Asian refugees in Iowa at the end of the Vietnam War, providing job opportunities and housing in Denison. Knowles has done the same for Denison's Latinos. He was the only chairman of Denison’s Cultural Diversity board. When he died Saturday they lost one of their most ardent supporters. Knowles was an avid fisherman, a smooth ballroom dancer (especially with Tootie as his elegant partner), a boater, a water skier, a world traveler, an RV'er, and a University of Iowa football fan who attended every Hawkeye appearance in the Rose Bowl and several other post-season games. Knowles was a Boy Scout and Indian Guide leader, and was Denison Little League’s longest sponsor by a business under the same ownership with the Denison Newspapers Indians. For several years, he was also a Little League umpire. He was an expert at blackjack and played pinochle for fun. He often made complicated side bets on football games, especially with Marten, his friend and colleague for more than 50 years. He enjoyed hundreds of trips to casinos with Marten and Milt Berkley, another friend of more than a half century. Knowles loved a good anecdote, a good joke and a good glass of wine. He also loved a parade and a picnic. And in Denison, he organized many of both. First, for the Denison Newspapers’ Old Settlers, and later, for the Cultural Diversity committee. He didn’t just watch parades, he got in them. He dressed as a frog as a member of the Abu Bekr Shrine Animal Unit delighting children and adults alike. And no one has served more free hamburgers, pancakes (and more recently, tacos) in downtown Denison than Dick Knowles. Knowles owned a string of expensive automobiles - Cadillacs and Lincolns mostly - and didn't seem to mind driving them fast. He drove his motor homes to where others might fear to go - on circuitous mountain roads paved only with gravel or on the crowded streets of San Francisco's Chinatown. He liked to wear a Greyhound Bus hat when he was behind the wheel. He also had a passion for planting trees, as they are the globe's lungs and because he literally used thousands of tons of newsprint in his career. Trees he planted in the land behind his home were his Field of Dreams. He believed in the overriding power of free speech, transparency in government and the collective wisdom of the voters. He was the staunchest of human rights advocates - believing there are no illegal human beings. He was the embodiment of Service Before Self. He bought his ink by the barrel and he used his presses to promote causes that were in the best interest of Denison, Crawford County, Iowa, the United States and the world. Like the best newspapermen, he comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. He could spot a phony a mile away and he delighted at exposing them. Knowles was preceded in death by his mother and father, a brother Jim and sister Janet. And many friends. He is survived by his wife of 63 years Tootie, his four sons: Rich, Gregg, Brad and Mark; daughters-in-law Deborah Knowles and Jennifer Lee Knowles; five grandchildren: Richard Peter Knowles, Matt Knowles and his wife Andrea, Mike Knowles and his wife Sherry, Mindee Knowles Birt and her husband Jason, and Luke Knowles and his wife Jodi; and five great-grandchildren, Devan Quandt, Chelsee Susanne Knowles Birt, Hannah Elizabeth Knowles Birt, Jackson Knowles Birt, and Jada Marie Knowles. Knowles is also survived by brothers Clarke T. Knowles and Clarence Knowles, sisters Ruth Moore and Glenda Buckman and her husband Jesse; nieces and nephews. And, many, many friends.