Randall Jessee

Randall Jessee was born on July 10, 1914, in Prathersville, Missouri, to Daniel Boone Jessee and Flora Catharine Hart Jessee, joining two sisters. Prathersville, in Clay County, was a few miles from the resort spa town of Excelsior Springs where the family moved when Randall was five. A 1932 graduate of the Excelsior Springs High School, Jessee was 1932 Missouri State Champion in Creative and Interpretative Oratory in a contest sponsored by The Kansas City Star. He attended William Jewell College in nearby Liberty, Missouri, 1932-33, on an oratorical scholarship. A victim of the Great Depression, Jessee’s scholarship was not renewed. Jessee then received an oratorical scholarship to Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Missouri, for his second year of college. Again, due to the Depression, this scholarship was not renewed. With two years of college complete and financially unable to attend without scholarships, Jessee joined the merchant marines in 1934. Employed by the Dollar Steamship Line as a steward, Jessee saw the world on the S.S. President Pierce, sailing twice through the Panama Canal to the far east including Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, from San Francisco, Honolulu, and New York. It was in the merchant marines that Randall began writing poetry later publishing a poetry book, Moonbeams in 1941 named after his future radio program of the same name. After one year, Jessee returned to Excelsior Springs where he began working for the Mineral Water System, eventually in the sales promotional department. In 1936, Randall Jessee married Fern Evelyn Titus of Excelsior Springs, and left for nearby Kansas City, Missouri, on their honeymoon. The honeymoon was also a business trip as Jessee was to man a booth selling mineral water at Kansas City’s annual American Royal Livestock and Cattle Show. While hawking mineral water from his booth at the American Royal, Randall’s deep expressive voice impressed his neighbors in the booth next to his who were advertising for a local radio station, KCKN. The occupants of the KCKN booth suggested Jessee audition as an announcer for their radio station. He auditioned the following week and was hired. In 1936, Jessee began his career in radio.

Career

Having an unusually deep voice which he attributed to a high school football injury, experience and success as an orator, and a love of performing, radio provided Jessee the perfect profession. Beginning in 1936 at KCKN, Jessee moved on to other radio stations in the next few years: KWOS (Jefferson City, Missouri) in 1937; KWOC (Poplar Buff, Missouri) where he was the youngest Radio Station Manager in the nation in 1938; KDRO (Sedalia, Missouri) in 1939, back to KCKN in 1940, then to WDAF (Kansas City, Missouri) in 1941. On a leave of absence after WWII, Jessee worked for KULA (Honolulu, Hawaii) in 1947, then back to WDAF in 1948.

Twenty-seven when the United States declared war on Japan, a husband and father of two sons with a burgeoning radio career, the desire to help in the war effort impelled Jessee to enlist in the United States Coast Guard. In 1943, he graduated from Officers Candidate School in New London, Connecticut, training on the full rigged sail ship Danmark. Eventually stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii, for the duration of the war, Randall began a life-long love affair with the Hawaiian Islands. He served as a crew member on a Coast Guard submarine chaser and then was transferred to a desk job whose duties included planning entertainment for the troops. He ended the war processing others out of the service, making him one of the last to return home. Returning to WDAF Radio after the war in 1946, Jessee took a leave of absence in 1947 to help start up KULA Radio station in Honolulu, Hawaii. Randall returned to WDAF Radio in Kansas City in 1948, where he was soon chosen to be the voice of The Kansas City Star’s new television station, WDAF-TV, the first and only television station in Kansas City for three years.

Known as “Mr. TV of KC”, he gained nationwide acclaim for his coverage of the disastrous 1951 Kansas City flood (also called the Great Flood of 1951 and the Kaw Valley flood) affecting Kansas City and surrounding areas. Jessee’s television coverage was credited with saving many lives and much property for which he received many awards and honors including having a community center built by the Soroptimist Club of Kansas City in 1952, named for him for his relentless efforts in bringing attention and relief to the flood victims of the area. Coverage of the Kansas City Flood was the first time a natural disaster had been reported on television. Bringing the latest flood news and associated events to the public, Jessee worked nonstop for 72 hours, eventually falling asleep while interviewing the Governor of Missouri. The only television station in Kansas City for three years, it was said that there were only two things on tv, Randall Jessee and the test pattern. WDAF ultimately became an affiliate of the NBC television network achieving the distinction of the affiliate with the most feeds to its network. This was due primarily to the interviews by Jessee with former President Harry S. Truman who lived in nearby Independence, Missouri. This professional relationship developed into a personal friendship culminating in Jessee’s role as Truman family spokesman in the days before President Truman’s death in 1971. President Truman said that Randall Jessee was one of only three political reporters he ever really trusted. The others were Bob Nixon of INS and George Wallace of the Kansas City Star. Memories of this relationship were recorded by the Truman Presidential Library in the Mr. and Mrs. Randall S. Jessee Oral History Interview. Jessee was chosen by NBC as a floor reporter for the political conventions of 1952 and 1956, and was made popular by a quote from NBC anchor David Brinkley who from the booth pleaded with the excited delegates, “Please don’t Trample Randall Jessee!” to which partner Bill Henry replied, “Randall Jessee is the most untrampable man I know.” Other big news stories covered by Jessee during the early days of television in Kansas City were the 1953 Bobby Greenlease Kiddnapping and the 1957 Ruskin Heights tornado. Offered opportunities to move to larger television markets including NBC in New York, and a local station in St. Louis, Missouri, he preferred to stay at WDAF in his hometown, Kansas City, Missouri. In 1958, after nine years at WDAF-TV, Jessee left television when WDAF Radio and WDAF-TV were sold by The Kansas City Star due to the judgment of an anti-trust suit against them.

After working for a short time as Director of Kansas City’s Metropolitan Area Planning Council and his own public relations firm, Jessee traveled to Washington DC to attend the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1962. In the same year, desiring to be part of Kennedy’s “New Frontier”, Jessee went to work for the United States Information Agency (USIA) whose new director was famed journalist Edward R. Murrow. Jessee served as Press Attache for USIA at the American Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark, for three years, then as Assistant to the Director of Voice of America, working for his longtime friend and former NBC colleague, television newsman John Chancellor, and as Assistant Director of Public Affairs for in Washington DC for three years, and then as American Counsel in Perth, Western Australia for one year. During his tenure with the Voice of America, Jessee was a member of the White House Press Corp under President Lyndon Johnson, travelling with the press on multiple Presidential trips including the famous 4 ½ day “Round the World” trip President Johnson made in the days before Christmas 1967. In 1968, wanting to return to family and to where his career started, Jessee transferred to the Department of Interior as Public Information Officer for the Missouri Basin Region of the Water Pollution Control Administration, in Kansas City, Missouri. This organization later became part of the Environmental Protection Agency at its formation in 1970 and was where Randall served as Director of Public Affairs, and from which he retired in 1975.

In 1976, following in his father’s footsteps, Jessee was nominated to serve as Judge of the Eastern District of Clay County, Missouri. His father, Daniel Boone Jessee, had served in the same office for ten years from 1936 until his death in 1946. Now called County Commissioner, this position was not judicial, but an administrative two-year elected position. After winning the primary in August, Randall was to run unopposed in the general election in November, but never took office due to his death on October 5, 1976.

Always a popular speaker and contributor to public forums, Jessee was also the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles. At the time of his death, he was writing his memoirs, Halfway to Paradise. The unfinished book was published in installments posthumously by the Excelsior Springs' Daily Standard newspaper, in 1977.

Death

Jessee died of a heart attack on October 5, 1976, while attending a meeting at the Clay County Courthouse, Liberty, Missouri.

Awards

Missouri State Champion, Creative Oratory (1932)

Missouri State Champion, Interpretative Oratory (1932)

Nationwide recognition for coverage of the Kaw Valley Flood; first natural disaster covered on television for 72 straight hours; his reporting is credited with saving many lives and much property (1951).

Americanism” Award from the Veterans of Foreign War

“Service to Mankind” Award from Sertoma International

Red Cross Humanitarianism Award

Knights of Columbus, Distinguished Service Award

“Outstanding Community Service” Award from National Television Program Publications, for “bringing before the television cameras of Channel 4 representatives of many faiths and national origins so that each in his community might better understand his neighbors… For maintaining the highest standards of good taste… (and) for his wholehearted aid in all charitable enterprises.”

“Randall Jessee Community Center” built by the Soroptimists and named for him in recognition of his fundraising efforts for flood victims in “trailer” city after the Kaw Valley Flood in 1951 (1952).

Cited by NBC for excellence in reporting (1953, 1954, and 1956)

“Man of the Year” Award from B’nai B’rith for promoting better understanding between races and cultures (1956)

Lifetime Achievement Award from William Jewell College, Liberty, Missouri (1956)

Subject of “Dolls for Democracy” used to teach diversity, religious and racial tolerance, and democratic values to young people (sponsored by Heart of America Chapter, B’nai B’rith, Kansas City, Missouri)

(circa 1955-58)

All American Family from Missouri (sponsored by the Grolier Society) (1957)

Appointed Honorary Colonel for the State of Missouri by Governor James T. Blair (1958)

Randall Jessee Poetry Fair, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center, Kansas City, Missouri (posthumous) (1977)

References

Bill Moore,“Trips with L.B.J. ‘Old Hat’ to Him,” Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO), Dec. 28, 1967.

Brian Burnes, High & Rising: The 1951 Kansas City Flood (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star Books, 2001).

“Earth day memories recount the start of a movement,” Greenability, April 22, 2015, https://greenabilitymagazine.com/blog/2015/04/earth-day-memories-recount-the-start-of-a-movement/

James W. Symington, Interview by James H. Williams, March 18, 1992 [transcript], Harry S Truman National Historic Site, United States Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/hstr/learn/historyculture/upload/Symington-James-W-1992-1.pdf

Jana Jessee Becker, Don’t Trample Randall Jessee! (Kansas City, MO: n.p., 2019).

“Mrs. Daniel Greets 300 Dignitaries after Services,” Kansas City Times (Kansas City, MO), Jan. 6, 1973.

“Perspective,” St. Louis Globe Democrat (St. Louis, MO), Dec. 29, 1972.

Randall and Fern Titus Jessee, Interview by Philip C. Brooks, May 19, 1964 [Digital recording and transcript], Oral History Interviews, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/oral- histories/jessee

“Randall Jessee Is Dead; Collapsed at Meeting,” Kansas City Times (Kansas City, MO), Oct. 6, 1976.

“Randall Jessee,” Image, South Central Business Association Records, The Kansas City Public Library.

Randall Jessee, Moonbeams (Burton Publishing Company: Kansas City, Missouri, 1941).

“Randall Smith Jessee (1914-1976),” Find A Grave Memorial, accessed June 10, 2020, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/57532892/randall-smith-jessee

Richard D. Ralls, “Simple Rites Recall Man of Many Talents,” Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO), Oct. 9, 1976.

Walt Bodine, My Times, My Town (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star Books, 2003).

“Walt Bodine, Randall Jessee, and Harry S. Truman have a conversation at the WDAF station,” Image, LaBudde Special Collections, Walt Bodine Collection, UMKC Digital Special Collections, https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/umkc/islandora/object/umkc%3A36230

“WDAF-TV,” The Annex, Fandom, https://annex.fandom.com/wiki/WDAF-TV.

“Tribute to Jessee,” Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO), Sep. 18, 1977.

External Links

“Mr. and Mrs. Randall S. Jessee Oral History Interview” with Philip C. Brooks, National Archives, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum

“Randall Jessee”, the Kansas City Public Library

“57: Randall Jessee,” YouTube, uploaded by Fox 4 News Kansas City

Randall Smith Jessee (1914-1976), Find A Grave Memorial

“Randall Jessee Is Dead; Collapsed at Meeting”, Newspapers.com, Kansas City Times

“Walt Bodine, Randall Jessee, and Harry S. Truman have a conversation at the WDAF station”,UMKC digital collection