By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.
Today marks a first. Today we begin a weekly blogpost which describes examples of innovative Kansans from every corner of our state. One such special leader was Huck Boyd.
Who the heck was Huck? In short, he was a newspaperman who loved rural Kansas. McDill “Huck” Boyd came from the northwest Kansas town of Phillipsburg. After college at K-State, Huck came back into the family newspaper business where he became editor and publisher of the Phillips County Review. With support from his family, he became deeply involved in his community, working on issues of economic development, rural health care, and more.
Huck got involved. He became county chairman of his political party, and worked his way up the ranks to become national committeeman for Kansas. Senators and Presidents would call on him for advice. He was nationally influential yet he lived in a rural setting. After all, Phillipsburg is a community of 2,602 people. Now, that’s rural.
In the1980s when the Rock Island Railroad took bankruptcy, it proposed to abandon 465 miles of rail line across the heartland — including Huck’s hometown. Loss of the rail line would have been devastating to the region.
I was working in Washington, D.C. at that time, as a rookie staff member for Senator Nancy Kassebaum. She introduced me to a man who was visiting from Kansas: Huck Boyd. He was in Washington leading the fight to maintain rail service for his region. The “experts” in Washington DC said it couldn’t be done, but Huck set out to find a way. He came up with an idea to create what was called a port authority to buy the line and continue rail service. Again, the lawyers stopped the idea in its, um, tracks. “No,” they said, “such ownership is unconstitutional in Kansas.” For most people, that would have ended the fight right there, but Huck was a man who would not give up. His answer to the lawyers was simple: “Well then, let’s change the Kansas Constitution.” As unlikely as that sounds, Huck led a bipartisan coalition which proposed amending the Constitution to make this change possible. It was overwhelmingly approved by the voters of Kansas.
Today a private sector shortline railroad is operating on what would have been abandoned track. This significantly benefits the community. A farmer friend of mine says, “Whenever I hear that train go by, I give thanks for Huck Boyd.”
All this is testimony to what can be accomplished beginning with one motivated local leader. Huck had a saying that “Community service is the rent you pay for the privilege of living on this earth.”
He had a global vision, but still cared about his hometown. He served as a U.S. delegate to a United Nations’ month-long Economic and Social Council in Geneva, Switzerland — yet he found time to lead the fund drive so that the local high school band could go to a bowl game.
Huck passed away in 1987. Part of his legacy is the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at K-State, which strives to honor and replicate his legacy of service to rural America in partnership with K-State Research and Extension. I became the Huck Boyd Institute’s first and only director in 1990.In 1992, the Huck Boyd Institute began the Kansas Profile radio program to share examples of what community leaders and entrepreneurs were doing in a rural setting. Now, through this blog, we can bring those to you online.
Thank you for the opportunity to share these wonderful Kansans with you. We invite you to return to this site next week.
Let me conclude this blogpost as I concluded that first radio program back in 1992: May Huck Boyd’s example remind countless others of what is possible when local people want to make a difference.
By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development
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