Gleaner’s Walt Expensive remembered for his character — and as a personality
HENDERSON, Ky. − Walt Expensive, the longtime writer and finally proprietor of The Gleaner in addition to a civic chief who helped lead a number of fundraising campaigns for native nonprofits, died Friday morning at his residence in Durango, Colorado. He was 91.
“He was surrounded by household and died at residence,” mentioned his son, Bryan Expensive, who survives his father together with sisters Jennie and Elizabeth, spouses, grandchildren and a great-grandchild. The household listed a stroke and dementia as causes of demise.
A memorial service is scheduled Wednesday, Aug. 30, on the River Bend Ranch occasion venue in Durango. There are presently no plans for a service in Henderson.
His youngsters characterised Expensive in his obituary as “a devoted newspaperman who beloved music, books, journey, philanthropy, canines and cats — and, most of all, individuals.”
Expensive was energetic, high-spirited, keenly curious and, to some, greater than a bit eccentric. He beloved to entertain and amuse others.
“He was form of crammed with boundless vitality, a pressure of nature,” John Hodge, a household buddy and Expensive’s monetary advisor who visited him in Durango simply weeks in the past, mentioned. “It may very well be overwhelming, however he will probably be missed.”
Throughout his tenure, The Gleaner was each a really profitable enterprise and one of the best small each day newspaper within the state as evidenced by years of awards, starting from quite a few “Common Excellence” first-place awards from the Kentucky Press Affiliation for each information protection and promoting to a global award for excellent print high quality.
And over a decades-long interval, Expensive was deeply dedicated to causes that benefitted Henderson, whether or not it meant elevating hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for civic tasks or reaching out to assist a person in want.
“He was only a superb man,” Dr. John Logan, who typically teamed up with Expensive for tasks to assist the group. “If it was for Henderson, to assist Henderson, the reply was sure.
“I can’t say sufficient good issues about Walt. He was the appropriate man for Henderson on the proper time.”
The beginnings
Walter Moore Expensive II was born on June 26, 1932, in Jersey Metropolis, New Jersey, the youngest son of J. Albert Expensive II, a second-generation newspaper writer, and Ella Cyrene Bakke Expensive, who years later wrote a weekly column, “Washington Siren,” for the household’s newspapers about actions within the nation’s capital.
Walt Expensive graduated from the College of North Carolina, the place he majored in trendy European historical past and was editor of the Every day Tar Heel scholar newspaper. He served three years within the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant, then spent a 12 months of graduate research in Sweden earlier than getting into the household enterprise: newspapering.
Expensive’s grandfather, Joseph A. Expensive Sr., propelled the household into that enterprise in 1868 when he bought an curiosity in The Jersey Journal in Jersey Metropolis; he gained full management of it in 1907. A 12 months later, he died, and possession went to his sons Joseph and Walter M. Expensive (Walt Expensive’s uncle and namesake). They started promoting pursuits within the Journal in 1945 to newspaper and media baron Samuel I. Newhouse Sr., who finally acquired full possession.
Expensive’s father remained lively in journalism, forming Expensive Publication & Radio in 1947 and buying a number of small each day newspapers and a radio station. In 1955, Expensive Publication leased the Gleaner and Journal in Henderson; it purchased the newspaper in 1957.
In the meantime, in his first job in journalism, Expensive labored on the household newspaper in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, serving as president and promotion supervisor. There he met his future spouse, Martha, who was additionally a journalist; they married in 1958.
Expensive Publication & Radio bought the New Kensington Specific in 1960; a number of weeks later, Walt Expensive was named promotion supervisor of Gleaner and Journal Publishing, transferring to Henderson along with his spouse and toddler son, Bryan. He would go on to be named president of the corporate and, in 1963, editor of the Gleaner and Journal.
“I imagine {that a} newspaper’s first responsibility is to serve its readers,” he declared on the time, pledging to proceed publishing columns by native writers reminiscent of George Whittington and Annette Brown, a Black educator.
He would relinquish the function of editor to change into writer of the newspaper and oversee it getting into a contemporary period. He oversaw the transfer of The Gleaner from an getting old constructing at 216-218 N. Elm St. to a contemporary plant on Klutey Park Plaza in 1976 that inside a couple of years would enter the pc period.
In 1986, Walt and Martha Expensive and their three youngsters purchased The Gleaner (together with 4 weekly newspapers, Audubon Printers and a radio station in Franklin, Kentucky) from Expensive Publications and Radio.
“He beloved that newspaper, however he beloved Henderson” and gave each time and treasure to the group, Logan mentioned.
Giving again to Henderson
Expensive chaired two record-breaking United Manner drives in addition to the Salvation Military Middle of Hope marketing campaign, the Henderson Group School superb arts middle constructing drive and an important early fundraising drive for the Henderson Space Financial Growth Council.
Expensive was the catalyst for the Mates of Audubon Park group, which helped win $2.2 million in state funding for enhancements to the Audubon State Park museum and a brand new nature middle.
He was instrumental within the fund drive to construct the Henderson County Household YMCA on Klutey Park Plaza and remained a serious benefactor. The early years on the new Y had been difficult financially.
The month-to-month utility invoice on the previous YMCA at Third and Essential streets, Logan mentioned, was simply $300. “The primary utility invoice (on the Klutey constructing) was $2,500,” he mentioned. “We didn’t have a dime within the financial institution. He (Expensive) and Leo King and I’d get collectively between Christmas and New 12 months’s and steadiness the price range.”
Expensive helped increase funds for computer systems for native faculties when computer systems had been a reasonably new factor. He was instrumental within the formation of the Ellis Park Basis to learn space charitable causes.
He served as chairman, president or a board member for quite a few organizations: the school basis, the hospital basis, the YMCA, the vacationer fee, the economic basis, the humanities council. In 1976, he chaired the bicentennial celebration right here; in 1997, he chaired a riverfront redevelopment committee. He and his household endowed a scholarship program at Western Kentucky College for needy minority college students.
“Something you wished do in Henderson, he would do it,” Logan mentioned.
Expensive additionally helped and comforted people — making bedside visits to the dying, studying to kids on the library, serving to staff who had issues with alcohol or different troubles.
Connie Walaskay is the daughter of Expensive’s late buddy Ray Preston. Her son, David, suffered a life-changing harm in a highschool soccer recreation years in the past. “When our son received damage, Walter got here by the home so much,” she mentioned. “One time he introduced an abacus. I couldn’t even pronounce it. However David’s mathematic skill simply tripled.” Expensive additionally organized a gaggle of individuals to go to David regularly.
Walt Expensive’s contributions to group life didn’t go unnoticed. In 1992, he was named the Henderson Chamber of Commerce’s Distinguished Citizen of the 12 months. Presenter Ron Sheffer praised him as a person “who has contributed as a lot to the soul of this group as anybody who ever lived right here.”
“For 30 years, he has been a builder of a greater life for the group,” Sheffer mentioned. “No one has any higher sense of group … for he actually loves Henderson.”
In accepting the award, The Gleaner mentioned Expensive was “uncharacteristically concise,” saying merely: “It’s nice to be a Hendersonian. I respect it.”
On to retirement
In 1997, Expensive bought The Gleaner together with seven weekly newspapers, three printing firms and a radio station to Dallas-based A.H. Belo Corp., writer of The Dallas Morning Information.
“When he bought the newspaper, it was the No. 1 greatest time to ever promote a newspaper,” mentioned Steve Austin, who labored for Expensive because the early Nineteen Sixties, finally changing into his basic supervisor after which the writer of The Gleaner. “If he waited two years extra, he would have misplaced 20% to 25% on the sale.”
That timing was partly good luck, partly Martha Expensive urging Walt to retire and revel in life, Austin mentioned. However Expensive additionally had a superb knack for enterprise.
“He may see it coming, I feel,” Austin mentioned of the precipitous drop in enterprise that has devastated newspapers because the web disrupted promoting and the idea of paying for information.
In a column on the time, longtime editor Ron Jenkins praised Expensive’s management over the a long time. “It’s honest to say that, on a number of events throughout these years, The Gleaner discovered itself within the eye of the storm. In every case, Walt has remained true to his occupation, refusing to compromise the integrity of the newspaper, regardless of the strain from highly effective establishments or people.”
At age 68, Walt moved with Martha to Durango, Colorado, to be close to two of their three youngsters. After Martha died of breast most cancers in 2007, he created a most cancers analysis chair on the College of Colorado, Denver, in her honor. That they had been married 46 years.
Throughout his greater than 20 years in Durango, he turned a part of group life there — contributing to causes, changing into a member of a so-called “geezer” group and serving to sponsor concert events.
‘He was a doozy’
If all Walt Expensive did was run a profitable newspaper and provides again volumes to his group, he can be deserving of reward. However his persona made him unforgettable. He was colourful, even mercurial.
Austin mentioned he was 19 years previous when he and Expensive every performed on volleyball groups on the previous downtown YMCA within the early Nineteen Sixties and Expensive employed him primarily based on a single query: “Are you aware kind?” An evening job typing up ballgame scores referred to as in by correspondents in Union and Webster counties led to a virtually half-century profession for Austin at The Gleaner that finally included operating its day-to-day enterprise and making strategic suggestions, reminiscent of to purchase a newspaper in Benton, Kentucky that had a colour printing press that will go on to generate $2 million of income per 12 months for Expensive’s firm.
“He was a distinct thinker,” Scott Davis, chairman and CEO of Area & Essential Financial institution, mentioned of Expensive. “He simply checked out issues in another way. He had that uncanny skill to see a distinct perspective. It made him a superb newspaper man as effectively. He wasn’t afraid to problem the established order.”
“Undoubtedly a singular particular person with many, many abilities,” mentioned David Dixon, who served as managing editor for The Gleaner for about 20 years whereas Expensive was on the helm. “He was a doozy. He had a really inquisitive thoughts. He’d come into the newsroom and ask questions that had by no means occurred to you earlier than.”
In about 1980, when Chuck and Donna Stinnett had been younger reporters at The Gleaner, Walt invited them to return to his residence on Horseshoe Drive for dinner with he and his spouse, Martha. There had been some well mannered pre-dinner dialog in the lounge when Expensive instantly leapt to his toes, scurried over to his World Guide encyclopedias and pulled out the “F” quantity.
“Let’s be taught all the things there may be to find out about Millard Fillmore!” he declared, apropos of nothing.
To make sure, Expensive was endlessly curious, together with concerning the state of affairs in his adopted hometown of Henderson. One anecdote remembers the time he was filling his automotive at a self-service station when, most likely bored and impatient, he popped over to the opposite aspect of the gasoline pump to ask one other motorist, a whole stranger, “What do you concentrate on our group school?”
“I used to be at all times fascinated by his breadth of curiosity,” Davis mentioned. “Even after he moved to Colorado, he’d name me — it would solely be quarter-hour, simply 10 minutes — he’d provide you with 100 various things to speak about: Rails-to-trails. What’s being performed with the riverfront? What’s occurring with the Preston Basis and the way’s the financial institution doing? It was actually one thing.”
David Thompson, the retired longtime government director of the Kentucky Press Affiliation, recalled a not-untypical first encounter with Expensive.
“As for Walt, my first introduction to him was throughout a KPA Summer time Conference at Kentucky Dam Village State Park,” Thompson recalled in 2019. “Throughout some down time one afternoon, Walt went fishing, one in every of his favourite hobbies. That night, as others had been within the eating room starting their meal, this vociferous particular person walked in, informed the waitress he wished to see the chef instantly. A big bass in tow, Walt marched proper into the kitchen, informed the chef to wash and filet the fish and repair that for him for supper.”
The Expensive household was lively within the Presbyterian Church of Henderson. There, in response to the obituary his household ready, he “alternated singing boisterously with dozing within the pew.”
In retirement, he made a brand new residence in Durango. On his journey to see Expensive a couple of weeks in the past, John Hodge mentioned he talked about to some locals that he was visiting a buddy. Who, they requested. Hodge shrugged and informed them.
“Oh, Walt Expensive! He’s a legend in Durango,” he was promptly informed.
“He left an impression wherever he went,” Hodge noticed.
Walt the entertainer
Walt Expensive beloved to entertain individuals. He started enjoying the piano at age eight, the beginning of a lifelong ardour. Guests to his residence had been ceaselessly handled to spirited performances of him tickling the ivories. Throughout the Nineties, when the Dave and Connie Walaskay owned and operated Planters Espresso Home on Essential Avenue, he would come by about as soon as a month to play an upright piano to entertain clients.
“Oh, he was proficient,” Connie Walaskay mentioned.
Walt and Martha began a household custom of an annual Christmas caroling occasion, with him on the piano; his youngsters recalled him singing with their miniature schnauzer, Rita, “howling alongside from his lap.” That caroling custom, they mentioned, continued into his 90s.
“One time, I don’t know if it was a vacation, he referred to as me from Colorado and performed the piano over the cellphone for me,” Austin mentioned. “Anytime he may do it in entrance of individuals, you possibly can guess your butt he was going to do it!”
On the annual three-week-long Music within the Mountains live performance collection in Durango for which he was a serious sponsor, Expensive annually would sit at a piano dressed formally in crimson sports activities jacket and a bow tie to carry out a few songs.
He didn’t thoughts being a comic book determine. One previous photograph confirmed Expensive posed in entrance of the Audubon State Park museum with binoculars in hand and wearing mountaineering shorts and knee-high socks, scanning the skies for birds, seemingly oblivious to 4 geese (really, decoys) proper at his toes. In one other, he carried out on stage, vaudeville-style, in a garish striped jacket and straw hat, his head thrown again as he crooned some music.
One Halloween, Walt and Martha Expensive recreated the nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice,” with Walt within the function of a rodent and Martha, in a grey wig, because the farmer’s spouse chasing him with a carving knife down Essential Avenue in Henderson. The stunt introduced a crowd into Planter’s Espresso Home, a favourite hang-out of the Dears.
Connie Walaskay has pictures of Expensive dancing enthusiastically at Planters with a white-haired Marty Branaman, a household buddy and spouse of a well known lawyer right here, and him and Martha belting out a music on the restaurant. Might Martha sing, too?
“It didn’t matter,” Walaskay mentioned. “He may.”
A bodily life
Expensive led a vigorous life-style all through his life. He jogged and biked. When he performed racquetball on the YMCA, it was a contact sport; he defended his area on the courtroom like an NBA energy ahead.
Like his mom, he swam into his 90s. Expensive biked the mountainous Iron Horse Bicycle Basic in Durango twice in his 70s, in response to his household. He climbed the 14,058-foot Handies Peak within the San Juan Mountains at age 78.
And an extended life
Walt Expensive got here to Henderson with almost a century of printer’s ink in his household’s veins. He arrived as an outsider, a Jersey child by means of North Carolina and the U.S. Navy, however quickly wove himself into the material of Henderson group life. He was confounding but in addition got here to be beloved. He made life attention-grabbing.
“I beloved working for Walt Expensive,” Dixon mentioned.
“A peculiar fellow however a really good-hearted fellow,” Austin, his longtime second-in-command, mentioned. “He appreciated individuals and appreciated to speak to individuals and he appreciated his businesses he labored with.”
“Walt was an exquisite man,” Logan mentioned.
“He was somebody who deserves to be remembered effectively,” Davis mentioned. “He had a huge impact on our group.”