Gale Moss
BIOGRAPHY / OBITUARY
David Gale Moss was born on June 27, 1906 to Homer B. and Bonnie Eley Moss in Indian Territory, Oklahoma. The eldest of six children, he was eleven years old when the family moved to El Dorado, the family settling in a house at 205 N. Residence.
During the 1930s, Moss had quite a reputation as a welterweight fighter with a wicked left hook. Following schooling, he opened a law practice in El Dorado in 1931. He married Rosemary Turner of Topeka in the same year. The couple had one daughter, Marlene, and one son, Davis, and lived at 312 South Summit.
In September of 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, becoming a combat intelligence officer. Serving with the 50th Troop Carrier Wing in the European theatre for two years, he was involved in six major campaigns, including Normandy, Romarno and Rhineland. At the time of his discharge, he had achieved the rank of colonel.
Returning to El Dorado, Moss practiced law until in 1951 he was named as the State Highway Director. Much of the foundation for the present road system in Kansas was laid during his term in this office. In 1952, he was approached as President Eisenhower’s possible choice for U.S. District Attorney of Kansas, but he did not consider himself to be an active candidate for the office.
During his stint with the highway department, Moss held the positions of Director of Kansas Highways, a member of the Kansas Turnpike Authority (KTA), and General Manager of the Turnpike. He was also called upon by foreign governments to aid in their highway development programs.
Involved in planning from the beginning of the KTA, Moss maintained high standards for the superhighway from the start. He assumed the management position from 1954 through 1961, with L. W. Newcomer, the project’s chief engineer as his right-hand man. Newcomer, who later took over both jobs when they were combined, recalled Moss’ attention to the sheer physical and mental toil that went into planning the turnpike.
Long-time friends later noted that Moss had the ability to bring people together and get things accomplished. Making his mark statewide, Moss was the “heart and soul of the planning for the Kansas Turnpike.”
In 1954, Moss served as a member of the U. S. delegation to the Pan-American Highways Congress. He was a consultant to the highway department of the government of Haiti in 1958.
During the 1960s, he was a director for the Walnut Valley State Bank of El Dorado. Governor Robert Docking called upon Moss to serve as highway consultant and later appointed him as State Highway Commissioner for the Fifth Division in 1968. At the time, Moss probably knew more about Kansas roads, past and present, than any other Kansas.
Moss at one time served as probate judge, but during his second term in 1972, he was forced by illness to give up his judicial duties.
Moss was a member of the El Dorado Methodist Church. He was a member of the Kansas and American Bar Associations, and the American Society of International Law. He also served as president of the Butler County Bar Association.
In 1946 Moss was also appointed the national vice-chairman of the Republican Veterans League of Topeka. In 1950, he was elected for a two-year term as chairman. Also chairman of the Butler County Republican Central committee, Moss was chairman of the 1950 party council.
CONNECTION TO BUTLER COUNTY
Attending local schools, Moss was a 1924 graduate of El Dorado High School, where he was active in football, the Spanish club, and the annual staff. He hitchhiked to Los Angeles, California to attend the University of Southern California, but returned in 1926 to El Dorado. Here he was among those first to attend El Dorado Junior College, graduating in 1931. While in college, he was active in football, track, debate, and worked on the college newspaper. He went on to earn a degree from Washburn College. While attending Washburn, he worked for the State Highway Department as a blueprint machine operator.
Following graduation, Moss returned to El Dorado to open a law office. Following World War II, he re-established this practice, first located in the Truman Building and moving in 1948 to 208 ½ West Central. His younger brother, Richard, later joined him in practice under the firm name Moss and Moss.
Gale Moss’ parents owned & operated an El Dorado grocery store for over 50 yrs. Besides their own 6 children, they also took in 4 foster children, three of them El Dorado High School football stars, wanting to continue school here when their parents moved to other places.
COMING TO THE AREA
The Moss family moved to El Dorado during oil boom in 1917, when Gale was a child. His father came in search of a job in the oil fields, first living in a tent on Second Avenue near the Santa Fe track. Later the family moved into a house on Residence St. In 1918, Gale’s father opened Moss Grocery in first block of North Residence, a business purchased from Bill & Chester Ruth. This store was later moved to 1235 West Central Avenue; the store was literally picked up and moved, without knocking one can from the shelves.
For years, Moss’s Grocery served as a neighborhood social center and political forum of considerable influence in those days, as well as a hotbed of football lore and loyalties; the senior Moss once received the title of unofficial “mayor” of El Dorado’s West End.
ACHIEVEMENTS
In 1951, Gale Moss joined the State Highway Department, becoming director in 1953. He held this position until October of 1954, when he resigned to accept the position of General Manager of the Turnpike. The state’s motor travel averaged over nine million miles daily; each year motorists spent $600 million for car operations. Under Moss’ directorship, more Kansas highway improvements were made with federal aid than any other state. Road improvements covered 240 miles at a cost of $8,442,000, approximately half of which involved federal aid.
Believing the state needed a limited-access highway that was safe, paid for by its users rather than state taxes, Moss needed to convince legislators that the roadway would be advantageous for the state, opening up economic opportunities. There was a lot of resistance but Moss kept testifying and finally won the Legislature’s approval.
With Moss’ work at getting legislators and the trucking industry to buy into the Turnpike, the 236-mile superhighway planned to cross eastern and central Kansas originated with the passage of the Kansas Turnpike Act on April 7, 1953. Authority was given to sell bonds to private investors to finance construction costs.
What brought the truckers on board was the fact that they could go from Kansas City to Wichita and back in 10 hours. Regulations limited the number of hours they could drive without rest. Rural residents were sold on the turnpike through ads, a booth at the State Fair, and speaking with various groups, telling them “If you don’t use it, you don’t pay for it.”
Cattlemen in the Flint Hills region received special consideration, with two loading and holding facilities constructed at a cost of about $55,500 in exchange for right-of-way through their land. There were also special interchange facilities and an overpass built, allowing access for cattlemen.
As chairman of the KTA, Moss helped write the original trust agreements on turnpike bonds. He had a major hand in planning this superhighway, and handled the entire immense sum it cost to build. Later calling Moss “Mr. Highway” for the state of Kansas, former governor Edward F. Arn went on to say that no single person, in or out of office, contributed more to the progress of the state’s highway development than Gale Moss. He knew the fundamentals involved, he knew how to deal with engineers, and he knew how to put them all together to get things done.
In July of 1954, Moss left for Venezuela, where he served as an official member of eleven men attending the Sixth Pan-American Highway Congress, in Caracas. Held every four years, these meetings were made up of highway and transportation experts, brought together for the correlation of highway efforts between the Western Hemisphere countries. The other ten delegates were from the Commerce and State Depts. at Washington, D.C.
In October of 1954, Moss was named KTA General Manager. Ground was broken for the turnpike on Dec. 31, 1954. Largely due to Moss’ foresight and efforts, the project was completed on time and on budget, within twenty-two months at a cost of about $153 million.
Moss took bids from various companies who worked along the route simultaneously. One example of how he guided the project occurred when he took contractors over the entire route of the turnpike before any earth was ever turned, to make sure that they each knew and understood to the greatest extent the scope of the job before them.
When the turnpike opened to traffic on October 25, 1956, motorists lined up to be among the first to travel the 236-mile stretch of highway. Movie cowboy Gene Autry rode his horse Champion through a 10-by-20-foot map showing the route. Thousands drove at least part of the toll highway that day, with the average toll for passenger cars at 1.7 cents a mile.
The southern end of the turnpike ended abruptly in an Oklahoman oat field, proving to be an embarrassment to Oklahoma after a photograph of the “highway to nowhere” was published in Life magazine. Both states had begun plans at the same time for the highways to meet at the border. But while Kansas had completed the turnpike, Oklahoma still had not allotted money for their end of the highway. The 4 ½ mile connection extending the highway from the Kansas line to Oklahoma City was not completed until the following summer.
In October, Moss’ contract was renewed for three years. Then at the end of 1960, politics overruled common sense regarding the KTA. His directorship was terminated when Democrats gained control of the KTA under Governor George Docking, replacing Moss with Democrat John Kirchner. On January 23, 1961, Moss was hired as a consultant but this job was terminated three weeks later under Governor John Anderson’s reorganization of the KTA.
During the following year, Moss served as an advisor to other highway entities, including trips to Panama. In January of 1967, he was appointed to the board of directors of the Great Plains Life Insurance Co. in Wichita.
In May of 1967, in an effort to end political bickering over two newly proposed Kansas toll roads, Democratic Governor Robert Docking asked Gale Moss, a Republican, to serve as his consultant on turnpike matters until it could be determined whether the roads authorized by the 1967 legislation could be built. The governor had been accused to trying to stall the sale of bonds for one of these proposed routes, from Kansas City south to Galena on the Oklahoma border. Another toll road was being considered with a route from the greater Kansas City area, through Johnson and Wyandotte Counties, to Mid-Continent International Airport in Wichita.
As advisor to the governor, Moss found that there was no market for bonds to construct the proposed turnpike from Kansas City south to Oklahoma. Although it was authorized by the 1967 legislature, lawmakers refused to back the proposed bonds with a pledge of state highway revenues which was needed to make them salable. In September, he helped develop a plan for a step-up in state highway construction, encompassing freeways and turnpikes.
Moss thought, with the existing tax burdens on people, that more favorable attention should be directed to turnpikes to solve the state’s highway improvement problem because turnpikes were fully guaranteed by the highway fund. Where traffic was heavy enough to support a turnpike project, the expense could be borne with minimum risk. All other proposals required funding by taxpayers through gasoline taxes, motor vehicle fees, etc. Moss suggested that other road projects might be built on a revenue bond basis, with the state guaranteeing the projects by its highway fund, allowing Kansas’s traffic to flow more smoothly without taxpayers shouldering the cost. The suggestions he offered were embodied into a program submitted to the legislative session of 1968. That body, however, turned them down, in a Republican-Democrat melee.
In June 1968, Governor Docking appointed Moss to the state highway commission, as commissioner for the Fifth highway division, a position vacated by Fred W. Burr becoming Federal Highway Safety Director. Democrat Docking appointing a Republican to a major post set a precedent for bipartisanship on this six-man commission, which set policy for the $150 million per year highway function of government in the state. Moss went on to serve three terms in this post.
AWARDS, RECOGNITION
In December of 1974, friends and former associates met to pay tribute to Gale Moss. Sponsored by the El Dorado Chamber of Commerce and the Kansas State Highway Commission, the gathering included two Kansas governors and past and present officers of the Kansas Highway Commission. A handsome plaque listing Moss’ accomplishments in his years of service to the state highway program was presented to him.
In November, 1997, friends and relatives gathered for a dedication ceremony at the Towanda Service Area on the Kansas Turnpike, unveiling a memorial honoring the work of Gale Moss. This is part of the Flinthills Tourism Regional Memorial Garden. Featured are two fiberglass informational signs telling about Gale Moss and giving a brief history of the Kansas Turnpike. Two other nearby signs describe the Flinthills and the Tallgrass Prairie.
BIBLIOGRAPHY / SOURCE LIST
L. P. Klintworth, The Kingdom of Butler – Her People; BCHS, El Dorado, KS, 1980; pp 153
Book 8, Family Files; Clymer Library, BCHS, El Dorado, KS; originals in archives
Subject Files; Clymer Library, BCHS, El Dorado, KS
The Wichita Beacon, October 18, 1956; Women’s Section, pp 1, 26
The El Dorado Times, Dec. 31, 1980; pp 1
The El Dorado Times, Jan. 5, 1981, Section A, pp 3
The El Doradoan; El Dorado High School annual, 1924; El Dorado, KS
The Grizzly Growl; El Dorado Junior College annual, 1928; El Dorado, KS; Thompson Bros.
The Grizzly Growl, El Dorado Junior College annual, 1929; El Dorado, KS; Thompson Bros.
El Dorado Junior College “magazine-form” annual, 1931
