The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 103, No. 2, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 14, 1993 Page: 4 of 20
twenty pages : ill. ; page 14 x 10 in. Digitized from 35 mm. microfilm.View a full description of this newspaper.
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opinions expressed are those of the editors unless noted
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Measuring up a goodjriend
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by smiley
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JIM POLLARD, Personal Financial Planner
506 South First Street
Canadian, TX 79014
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THINGS I can tell you about Ben
A Ezzell’s shoes. The first is the size of
them: 9-A. I learned that about 18 years ago, not
long after meeting the co-editor and co-publisher
of The Canadian Record, widely recognized as
one of the best weekly papers in the state.
I recently had gone to work at the Pampa
News and, finding myself one day in the nearby
town of Canadian, I made time to drop into the
Record to get acquainted and talk shop.
A big-city journalist has plenty of contact with
a variety of other journalists, but in a small town
in the sparsely populated Texas Panhandle a
newspaper person sometimes hankers to visit
with others of his ilk, beyond the few he works
with day to day.
But it wasn’t during the initial meeting with
Ben that I learned anything about his shoes. All
I remember from that time is how much I liked
him and his wife, Nancy, the Record’s other
co-editor/publisher.
The Ezzells quickly became good friends. As
luck would have it, Pampa sits on the road be-
tween Canadian and Amarillo, so sometimes Ben
and Nan would stop to visit my wife and me on
their occasional trips to the area’s big city.
It was once when they came by on their way
back to Canadian that I noticed a pair of light tan
shoes Ben was wearing and said how comfortable
they looked.
Made of deerskin, he said. Soft and light as a
feather. Just bought them a couple of hours ear-
lier.
Oh, would I love a pair like that, I said, but it
is hard finding shoes in my size: 9-A. He laughed
and said he knew what I meant because that was
his size, too, and he gave me the name of the
store.
If too much time passed between Ezzell visits
to our house, we might take a Sunday drive over
to their town, a pretty place of about 4,500 people
alongside the river of the same name. Canadian
has more trees than other Panhandle towns and
it isn’t as flat. There are, topographically speak-
ing, many pleasant ups and downs there.
As I got to know Ben, I learned his career as
the town’s news monitor and editorial voice since
1948 also had some interesting contours.
Something that happened just about 40 years
ago demonstrates the kind of newspaperman he
was. A local banker got into a dispute with the
school board. When he found out Ben planned to
print a story about it, he tried unsuccessfully to
stop him.
“At that point, a decision had to be made,” Ben
wrote about 35 years later. “Either I would run
the paper or the bank would. It wasn’t a happy
choice-I owed money to the bank...but not my
soul.”
The story ran.
A few months later, Santa Fe Railway closed
its shops in Canadian and some 600 people left
town. Ben organized a dinner meeting of leading
businessmen to discuss the crisis and the future.
He needed the banker there.
“So I screwed up my courage and walked into
his office to issue the invitation in person,” Ben
wrote. “I told him I knew he wasn’t feeling very
warm toward me, but I needed his help and
wanted him to come.”
He did.
Ben believed in his town, and when he
believed something he spoke out about it.
Whether it was popular or not. Like he did about
Vietnam. “I am ashamed of what my country is
doing in this war, in my name and in the name
of all of us,” he wrote in his column.
He took that stand early, and it was not
popular in Canadian. One local businessman
was so mad he said he would quit advertising in
the Record and urged everyone to join him in a
boycott.
Guess how he spread the word. Ben sold him
a half-page ad. But the Record didn’t lose any
other advertisers and the fellow eventually
cooled off and came back.
In the early days of the John Birch Society,
back in ‘61, Ben managed to get into an organiza-
tional meeting in Amarillo. He was disturbed by
what he heard and wrote what may have been
the first newspaper piece to criticize and expose
the workings of that ultraconservative society.
The piece was widely reprinted and Ben got
hundreds of letters from all over the country-
about half of them supporting him and the other
half criticizing him.
He took criticism in stride. Even that time in
the mid-‘50s, when an unsuccessful mayoral can-
didate busted Ben in the face and left him with
injuries that required hospital treatment, Ben
wouldn’t press charges.
“Maybe,” he said, “the guy was trying to ex-
press a legitimate editorial opinion the best way
he knew how.”
Ben always expressed his opinions the best
way he knew how. And that brings me to the
second thing I know about his shoes: No one will
be able to fill them.
Ben died Tuesday night after emergency
heart surgery. He was 76.
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This tribute to the late Ben Ezzell was
written by Jenna V. Ownbey of Amarillo,
a well-known Panhandle poet and
author of Cloud Trails, Clouds' Moods,
Star Moods and Fate's Brew.
He told of lives lived and lost,
Vlations rise and fall
find the glory of the cross,
fl ear as the rfucyon call.
He laid down his pen at last—
l~tis copy filled with truths:
find when he reached heaven s gate,
The Lord said, THint’s news?
JENNA V. OWNBEY
A\iuRECORD
CANADIAN, HEMPHILL CO., TEXAS
THURSDAY 14 JANUARY 1993
In Wlemory Of fin Editor
He laid down his pen at last,
But his copy was always
rjood and true.
The news was never scandel-sheet
Vlor the print dingy and Hue;
He wrote with history in Ins hand
find genealogical press
Of woes and storms and wars
find eternal blessedness!
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Ezzell, Nancy & Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 103, No. 2, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 14, 1993, newspaper, January 14, 1993; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1262785/m1/4/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hemphill County Library.