The Alliance Heritage Days celebration has come and gone.
So has the 135th-anniversary open house of the Alliance Times-Herald.
Two memories – from a long time ago – of both the Times-Herald and Heritage Days.
As the 1987 Heritage Days celebration drew closer, more and more people kept warning me – in my role as director of the Alliance Chamber of Commerce – that I needed to be prepared for an onslaught of complainers.
I couldn’t get a firm grip on why yellow caution flags were being waved in my face, because in five years of working at the Cozad Hay Days celebration, I had only dealt with one unhappy person.
At the time, one of my favorite chamber board members was Jerry Stricker (1937-1998).
Jerry was a no-nonsense Alliance police officer proficient at speaking his mind. When I asked Jerry about the significance of Heritage Days, he gave me an R-rated response.
“That’s when all the (expletive deleted) whiners and moaners come out of the woodwork.”
A few weeks later, I learned what Jerry meant.
During the Thursday of my first Alliance Heritage Days, I fielded more complaints in one day than I did in five years of working with the Cozad Hay Days festival.
Here is a sample:
“We don’t like the carnival workers.”
“I hate where the carnival is located.”
“I can’t get to the post office.”
“The Ferris Wheel is too close to a power line.”
“I dislike Pizza Hut being downtown.”
“How dare you compete with Oregon Trail Days!”
“The date is too close to the county fair.”
“We don’t want our children near the bars.”
“It’s too hot. Do something about the weather.”
“Why don’t you get rid of this festival?”
“Move the parade off Third Street.”
“The parade is too short.”
“The parade is too long.”
“You’re screwing up my child’s emotional stability by allowing more than one Santa in the parade!”
Oops, wrong parade. I heard that one during my first Alliance Christmas Parade in November 1986.
Thanks for the warning, Jerry.
Fast forward to March 1988, and the Alliance Centennial.
Even though Alliance was experiencing one of its most celebrated years, the KCOW Home Show provided another example of Alliance being anything but an Alliance.
Because I believed the home show would be a quality community promotion, I inserted a flyer promoting the show into the chamber’s monthly newsletter.
As I walked into my chamber office the morning after the newsletter was mailed, the phone was ringing. At the other end of the line was the Times-Herald’s managing editor, who reamed me out for five minutes for helping KCOW promote its home show.
The editor accused me of showing favoritism toward the radio station and making concessions for one specific business.
The attacks caught me off-guard, as I had thought I was simply promoting an event that had the potential to be beneficial to the community.
A few hours later, the paper’s publisher, Keith Kemper (1936-1996), called and informed me he wanted to meet with me.
I liked Kemper, and we had a good relationship. He was the type of guy who had a gruff exterior – but a huge heart.
Kemper was always giving me good-natured grief, but this time, I could tell he was upset.
I met with Kemper and heard a repeat of his editor’s business favoritism spiel.
I responded to Kemper’s accusations by telling him that I was simply trying to promote an event that would benefit Alliance, and that I believed that his editor was way off base.
Kemper smiled, said he understood, and stated that the main reason he called me was that his employees were upset.
“I had to respond to their complaint,” he said. “It wouldn’t have looked good if I hadn’t.”
Keith Kemper and Jerry Stricker are both buried in the Alliance City Cemetery.
I will never be able to bury the memories of these two men.
And I don’t want to.