Everyone, who knows Jack Mitchell in some capacity, the owner of the Wellington Daily News for three decades, has a story to tell.
A football player, coach, newspaper publisher, horseman, golfer, family man and the ultimate salesman, his persona was one of the largest to ever grace the town of Wellington.
By the time I met Jack, he had already done what he needed to get done in life. I arrived about the exact time he was retiring for Sun City, Ariz.
Three years later, my family bought his house.
Jack would come home about once or twice a year, and he always wanted to visit his old digs. I was always a bit nervous since we had made some considerable changes and every visit Jack didn't hesitate in giving his opinion on those changes. It was as if we had our own ongoing home improvement critic.
One time, during a visit, I thought my family and him were going to meet our demise.
For some reason, we started to discuss the fireplace in the "great" room — a big hole in a big room. The fireplace was typical Jack — big and bodacious — and probably as energy inefficient as anything out there.
Getting a fire going was always a process. When I expressed my concerns to Jack, he dismissed my thoughts as childish whining and told me I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
He said there was a natural gas line that feeds to the logs. He grabbed a utility gas line key that was on the mantle above the fireplace and turned the line on, much like a gas grill you buy at Wal-Mart.
With the gas flowing, Jack asked me if I had a lighter and started to look around for one. The room started to reek of gas. My wife and I looked at each other and thought we better evacuate. But after a few moments, Jack found the lighter.
He leaned down on his knees, and created a spark. We were dead, I was sure of it.
Sure enough a flame shot out of that fireplace like no other. It seemed to engulf the room. The thing was that flame streaked right over Jack's head almost singeing his white lock hair.
The flame returned to normality, and Jack stood up, turned around, and said, "you see there is nothing to it." He seemed oblivious to the death flame that erupted above him just seconds ago.
We then proceeded to the two bathrooms in the back of the house where he proceeded to lecture me on which one I needed to use when I needed to go.
•••••
There is probably millions of Jack stories, we all could share.
I decided to collect a few quotes from other newspapers across Kansas and Oklahoma from people and reporters who knew him much better than I. Here are a few.
"When you get right down to it, when you cut away all the pomp and personality and everything else, Jack Mitchell was a recruiter.
He was other things, too, of course. A husband. A father. A college football coach who, in nine seasons at Kansas University, led the Jayhawks to a 44-42-5 record.
But at the core of the man, according to those who knew him, was a man born to recruit. He could stride into a room, they say, his dark hair and sharp features calling to mind a cheerier Dean Martin, and convince a recruit’s mother — and thereby, the recruit himself — that her son was the next Johnny Unitas and that there was no possible way life could go on unless he was wearing a Kansas uniform come September."
—Dugan Arnett,
Lawrence World Journal.
"Like any good Kansan, meanwhile, Mitchell — who grew up in Arkansas City — possessed a healthy distaste for the University of Missouri. During halftime of a particularly close game against the Tigers, he did what he was known to do in the locker room: Spat fire and tore into the team.
At one point, in an apparent effort to grab the attention of his players, he slammed his hand into a nearby blackboard. I mean, he slugged it, before ordering everyone from the locker room.
I was one of the last ones to leave. And the minute everybody left, he grabbed his wrist in pain. He had cracked a bone, and the next day he had it all wrapped up.
But I’m pretty sure we won that game; so he was all right.'”
—John Hadl,
former KU quarterback.
"Everybody in our high school class really respected Jack. He was a natural leader. He was charismatic - a handsome man, all the girls loved him."
—Ed Gilliland,
high school teammate as told in the Ark City Traveler.
"The year was 1966 and the Wildcats were sensing their first score against the Jayhawks in 1966. But a lineman by the name of Thermus Butler was summoned in the final seconds for KU and connected on a wobbly field goal, his first as a collegian, to forge a 3-3 tie in one of the worst games ever waged in the rivalry.
'I had no idea whether Butler could kick or not,' Mitchell conceded afterwards. 'He's been kicking off and he's never practiced or kicked any field goals.'...
There was something about Mitchell — be it his heroic background as an OU star, his outgoing personality or just that he finished his working life as a newspaperman — always made him an endearing, and intriguing, figure. At least to me.
That, plus Mitchell counted on a lineman to make a 38-yard tying field goal to save the day, even when it couldn't save his job."
— Kevin Haskin,
Topeka Capital Journal.
"Mitchell always blamed his firing following back-to-back dismal seasons in 1965 (2-8) and 1966 (2-7-1) on the distractions of buying into a Lawrence bank and a Topeka insurance company as well as the purchase of a newspaper, the Wellington Daily News.
'I got so involved in those things, that I did a terrible job of coaching,' he once told me."
—Chuck Woodling,
Lawrence Journal World.
"Mitchell was dubbed 'General Jack' and seemed to move the team by the force of his personally."
— OU historian Harold Keith from the book, "47 Straight.
"I liked Jack. He was very handsome, good-looking. Married a Miss Oklahoma, a very gorgeous blond. He'd sit in the back of the bus and chew tobacco, spit it out the window.
— Barry Switzer, former OU coach in a column written by Berry Tramel.
"Mitchell had a little Forrest Gump to him. He was diagnosed with rheumatic fever as a boy and a heart valve problem. He was ordered to bed for six weeks and told he never could be active again. When he came off the bed, naturally, he barely could walk. But Mitchell started walking, then jogging, and finally the doctors told him the valve was healing."
— passage from Jeff Snook's "What it Means to be a Sooner."
"On the record, Mitchell usually resorted to coach-speak, particularly after a win but take a mic or camera out of his face and, boy, could he spellbind quarterback clubs when he got them face-to-face.”
—Bill Mayer, former KU beat writer, Lawrence Journal World.
