What Has Taught Me: Deb Goodrich

Deb Goodrich, a native Virginian, lives in northwest Kansas where she serves as the Garvey Texas Foundation Historian in Residence at the Fort Wallace Museum. She chairs the Santa Fe Trail 200 (2021-2025) and has appeared in numerous documentaries on topics from Bleeding Kansas to Jesse James. She has hosted syndicated radio and television shows, including Around Kansas. Her alter ego, Dixie Lee Jackson, is a popular emcee and authored the book, Cookin’ and Kissin’. She is a producer of Sod and Stubble (Bailey Chase, Barry Corbin,, Buck Taylor), a film by Ken Spurgeon, slated for release in early 2025. She has served on the boards of Western Writers of America, the Kansas Music Hall of Fame, the Kansas Hall of Fame, and as president of the Civil War
Roundtables of Kansas City and Eastern Kansas. Her most recent book, From the Reservation to Washington: The Rise of Charles Curtis (TwoDot) was published in October.

My favorite place in the West is…the sky. I started out as a reporter when I was 15 years old, at the local paper in Stuart, VA. My high school journalism teacher was exceptional, and I got the basics in that class. When I got out of high school, I worked all over the business—newspapers, radio (news director at the legendary WPAQ Radio), magazine ventures. Later, I moved to Topeka and attended Washburn University as a non-traditional student majoring in history, graduating 20 years after I finished high school. I think my biggest break came when I found the Historic Topeka Cemetery. While attending Washburn, I would walk through the cemetery and match the names to the streets or buildings. But when I literally tripped over the grave of Cyrus K. Holliday, founder of Topeka and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, memories of the movie Santa Fe Trail came back to me. That’s when it hit me—Cyrus Holliday, Jeb Stuart, John Brown, etc., etc., had all been here, right here! I was hooked on the history of Kansas, on the history of the American West. Don’t get me started on being referred to as a history “buff.” This is what I do for a living! For my money, the best history is found standing on the ground where it happened. Most people don’t know I have had characters based on me in three fiction books by two authors, lost three homes to fire (all unrelated causes and unrelated to the four marriages), was a newspaper reporter covering court, which meant reporting on about 20 murder trials, and had my portrait painted for inclusion in an exhibit on “Interesting Women.” When I was growing up my favorite TV shows were Superman and Daniel Boone, and The Virginian. I wanted to be Lois Lane, or Jemima, or Betsy. I was born to talk. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone gets history wrong, really wrong. History has taught me to be humble. Great people have great flaws and there is no cure for human nature. Our accoutrements change over time, but not people. Our pride should be tempered with the knowledge that accomplishment is fleeting. Likewise, when studying history, we tend to be arrogant and possessive. We must remember we do not know it all and never will. The best way to host a TV show is enthusiastically. Nothing replaces passion for the work, the subject, the desire to share with people. I got my gig when the Fort Wallace Museum was expanding and hired me to help with exhibits, I am so grateful. The best cowboy I ever knew would have to be R. W. Hampton. If I could go back in time, I would kiss Buffalo Bill Cody. My next big challenge is writing a limited feature series on Charles Curtis. What this country needs is a reminder of how incredible it is, how amazing its people are, how much we have for which to be grateful.