Kansas author, columnist and lover of western music dies at age 68

Reflecting on her friend’s July 15 funeral just outside of Wichita, Martha Farrell wonders about all the groups represented there from different walks of Roger Ringer’s life.

“Roger was incredibly eclectic in his interests and his life,” Farrell said.

Music brought them together. In the mid-2000s, Ringer recorded a CD of western songs, some originals, at her late husband Jim’s studio in Towanda. The three of them became good friends.

Ringer, who died July 9 at age 68, was many things: an award winning author who wrote multiple books about untold Kansas stories (his last book is expected to publish this fall), poet, Cowtown actor, bed and breakfast owner, auctioneer and owner of auction business, Sedgwick County firefighter, certified deputy, township trustee, private detective and founding member of the Kansas chapter of the International Western Music Association, according to his obituary, family and online records.

However, he’s most known for his column, View From The Hills, which ran in publications across the state. He reached nearly 10,000 homes each week in the Rural Messenger, where he had written a weekly column since 2013.

“He was very well followed. He was wonderful,” said Tammie Hoeme, layout editor for the weekly publication, who labeled Ringer’s column conservative patriotic. People either loved it or hated it, she said, but the ones who liked it would let her know. “People truly enjoyed reading Roger Ringer’s column every week. They looked forward to it.”

A reader recently sent the Rural Messenger caricatures he drew of all the staff.

The drawing of Ringer shows him riding on a horse, wearing a cowboy hat and holding an American flag.

“While Roger might not have been able to ride a horse, and gallop around with a waving flag, I did think that was how Roger envisioned himself,” Hoeme wrote in this week’s edition. “He didn’t really care what anyone thought of his opinions and ideas. For that I will always admire him.”

As a Cowtown actor, Ringer played restaurant owner Fritz Snitlzer, according to his mother, Charlotte Ringer. An 1877 Wichita directory says: “Everybody knows Fritz ... Mr. Snitzler will pull down over two hundred pounds avoirdupois, and is fully as liberal and jolly as he is heavy.”

Roger Ringer “fit the character because of his stature,” Charlotte Ringer said.

Varied careers

Roger Ringer, who is also survived by a younger brother Rodney, graduated from Goddard High School in 1973. His love for history was stoked by two teachers: Dale Churchman and Milton Matthews, called “Mighty Milton” by students because of his short stature.

In 1975, the Ringers left Goddard and moved to a rural area between Garden Plain and Cheney. Ringer started farming with his best friend, the late Carl Koster, who went on to be a NFL photographer and Cheney mayor.

Ringer’s careers and interests mushroomed from there.

He joined Sedgwick County Fire.

In October 1975, while “fighting a major grass fire” near I-235 and Zoo, the then 20-year-old firefighter Ringer was hospitalized from smoke inhalation, according to the Wichita Beacon. He was listed in good condition.

He had a lifelong passion for reading, which his mother says started when she would read to the boys at breakfast from “The Happy Hollisters,” a series about a family who liked to solve mysteries.

The love for reading turned into a passion to write as Roger Ringer got older. In 1998, he published his first book, a poetry book called “Cowboys, Plowboys, and Country Folk.”

As he got older, he also became more involved in politics.

In 2003, he spoke to The Eagle against a Sedgwick County plan to build a local landfill. He was a Grand River trustee at the time.

‘Real country’

In the mid 2000s, Ringer and his family moved from Sedgwick County out to Medicine Lodge on what they called Wildfire Ranch.

“We had people living on top of us,” the late Ronald “Ron” Ringer, Roger Ringer’s father, said about leaving Sedgwick County in a 2008 Eagle article.

The Ringers said they loved the quiet and the 360-degree view of the Gypsum Hills. But then they added a bed and breakfast called the Bunkhouse.

“We needed to be around people after all,” Charlotte said in the article.

From the porch, Roger Ringer would often take in the view of the Gypsum Hills. It inspired the name of his column.

In a 2015 Eagle article, Ringer said the bed and breakfast hosted guests from 24 countries, 43 states and at least 174 Kansas towns.

The family would hold Western music concerts in their backyard. Neighbors would bring lawn chairs and a potluck meal.

“Real country,” Charlotte Ringer said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Marking Kansas’ 150th birthday

It was during his time helping with the ranch and bed and breakfast that Roger Ringer pulled off one of his greatest accomplishments, ensuring a celebration for Kansas’ 150th birthday, Martha Farrell says.

Ringer was angry when state officials said there would be no money for the event. Any efforts would have to be done locally.

A December 2010 Eagle article said how Oklahoma spent $60 million on its 100th anniversary in 2007 and how other states had seven-figure budgets for their events.

The article said “one of the more ambitious projects” was going to be Kansas Home on the Range. Ringer was the driving force behind that effort, Farrell said, adding he asked her and her husband for help.

That resulted in performances at Hutchinson’s Historic Fox Theatre and Century II Performing Arts & Convention Center. The Wichita performance had support from other organizations, including the city. It took nearly 100 people to pull off the show. Thousands of people attended.

“None of it would have happened without Roger and his dogged determination that we needed to celebrate the 150th birthday of Kansas,” Farrell said. “It warmed him for the rest of his life. It was a significant accomplishment. And he knew that it wouldn’t have happened without his efforts. And it ended up being a big deal and important for the state of Kansas.”

Passion to tell stories

Ringer’s passion to tell Kansas stories led him to write three books in the last five years: “Kansas Oddities: Just Bill the Acting Rooster, the Locust Plagues of Grasshopper Falls, Naturalist Camps and More,” “Eccentric Kansas: Tales from Atchison to Winfield” and “True Tales of Kansas.”

The foreword in his latest book was written by Amy Bickel, a Kansas author and journalist. She wrote how all Kansans know about the fight of John Brown to make Kansas a free state and of President Dwight D. Eisenhower growing up in Abilene.

“Those stories are in most Kansas history books,” she wrote. “However, just beyond what’s well known, written about and taught in schools, is a second history —a Sunflower State treasure-trove of fascinating characters and extraordinary events that have, for decades, gone untold or been forgotten, until now.”

She added: “Some of the best stories of our history are found beyond the margins of textbooks. That’s what makes Roger Ringer a unique historian — his ability to find the obscure tales that make Kansas amazing.”

He won the 2021 Martin Kansas History Book Award for his last book.

Problems with health and aging forced the family to sell the ranch.

Ringer lost his good friend, Jim Farrell, in February 2022. Martha Farrell said Ringer “adored my husband … and by association I became adored as well.”

Ringer’s father, Ron Ringer, died on Oct. 4, 2022. Roger Ringer looked up to his father, who taught and instilled in him lifelong passions to hunt and fish.

For years, Ringer had battled health problems. Family believes his love for reading and writing kept him going.

The funeral for Ringer was held at St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church in Schulte, which is just outside of Wichita. Ringer’s great grandfather helped establish the church, his grandparents and parents were married there and Ringer was baptized there, Charlotte Ringer said.

“Within 10 months I lost a husband and a son,” she said.

Charlotte and her son, Rodney Ringer, hope to put the final touches on their son and brother’s final book, “Kansasology,” and have it published in October.

When asked if she was very proud of her eldest son, Charlotte Ringer said:

“You bet you. Not very, extremely proud.”