A legendary Garden City, Kansas, newsman died this month. The Wichita Eagle Wilbur Eugene “Bill” Brown “the consummate journalist – elegant and always to the point.” Brown, the Eagle added, “loved accuracy and good writing and freely admitted to a dislike of Truman Capote.”
Brown became editor and publisher at the Garden City Telegram in the spring of 1959. Six months later, his small-town job would enter the national spotlight when four members of a Holcomb farm family were murdered. In his masterpiece In Cold Blood. Truman Capote described Brown as “plain as his name: a thin, rumpled man with mud-colored eyes and a beige complexion.”
Scott Kraft is the deputy managing editor at the Los Angeles Times and a former student. He said, “After meeting Mr. Brown for the first time, I knew I wanted to be like him. We ALL wanted to be like him.”