It’s funny how you stumble across things related to home while hundreds of miles away.
On a recent trip to Colorado, I came across interesting tidbits about our Fred Funston while perusing a book about William Allen White, 1868-1944, Kansas’ most famous newspaper publisher and a Pulitzer Prize winner for his autobiography.
Funston and White were close friends, first taking up as fraternity brothers at KU’s Phi Delta Theta. For several years beginning in 1889 the two were part of a gang of 12 that hightailed it to the mountains of what was to eventually become Rocky Mountain National Park where they grew beards and tried their best imitations of Daniel Boone.
The book about White, “If I Ever Grew Up & Became a Man,” refers to those life-changing experiences out in the wild.
Funston and White were two of kind. Easy to laugh and, according to White, “indulged in no sports whatsoever.”
Funston, whom White and gang referred to as “Timmy,” was described as a “pudgy, apple-cheeked young fellow, just under five feet five” and what he lacked on the baseball diamond or football field he compensated for in his ability to shoot a gun and owning a fearless sense of adventure. White, on the other hand, gave no pretense of being adept at handling anything other than a typewriter.
White described Funston as a “clumsy but nimble” clown and told of when he broke four chairs in the fraternity’s dining room while using them as mock dancing partners. Such a tale brings to mind today’s celebration of another native, Buster Keaton.
White hailed from El Dorado and Funston, originally of New Carlisle, Ohio, moved to rural Iola when he was 4. Neither completed their degrees. White threw in the towel when the required math courses proved too steep of a barrier. And the tug of the great world beyond became too strong to keep Funston in the classroom. He signed on with the railroad for a short while before landing a gig as a reporter with the Kansas City Journal.
Two other Iolans, Schuyler C. Brewster and his younger brother, William L. “Petit” Brewster, also participated in the annual Colorado excursions with White and Funston. As a young man of 14, Schuyler is listed as a “1st Lt., Schuyler Brewster,” one of several who participated in a self-organized “militia” to defend these parts, according to the Annals of Allen County. Both Timmy and Schuyler graduated from Iola High School in 1886. Thirteen years later Schuyler joined Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston — a far cry from “Timmy” — on the war front in Manila as part of the Kansas 20th Brigade during the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902.
IN MY limited knowledge of Fred Funston, I never pictured him as a Keatonesque character. After all, he was known as “Fighting Fred” for his military exploits in Mexico and the Philippines and for his heroic efforts during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
It was fun to learn of this other side of Major General “Timmy” Funston.
