It’s impossible to interview Dorothy Grothusen without learning something about the history of Ellsworth County.
Grothusen, who grew up as Dorothy Neuschafer on a farm southwest of Ellsworth, celebrates her 100th birthday Dec. 1. She lives in Salina now, in a retirement center, but most of her years were spent in the county, first with her parents and then with her husband, Dale, and their three children at Dale’s homeplace north Ellsworth.
In those years her natural curiosity and interest in others led to an education of sorts, knowledge that would serve her well when she went to work for the Ellsworth Reporter in 1967.
“Her curious nature led her to find interesting stories that might not otherwise be told,” her daughter, Ruth Obadal, wrote in an introduction to a book of Dorothy’s stories the family plans to have published.
“In all of her work, she endeavored to show her subjects in a favorable light and never to criticize or embarrass anyone.”
The community will have an opportunity to thank the Reporter’s recorder of family histories during the Saturday morning Cowtown Days parade. The Ellsworth Reporter, which celebrates its 150th birthday this year, is the grand marshal. Dorothy, who worked for the newspaper for 20 years, will join Garnell Hanson, another long-time employee, on the reviewing stand. Past and present employees will follow on a trailer. After the parade, a group photo will be taken in the gymnasium at Ellsworth City Hall.
Grothusen family history credits son Bill, who now lives in Phoenix, Ariz., with introducing Dorothy to newspaper work. The Reporter was across the street from Bill’s school — about where John Whitmer’s insurance office is now. He encouraged his mother to apply for a job there, mainly so she would not need  to pick up her youngest child after school and he could walk to and from school “like the town kids.”
“I started at the bottom and did a little bit of everything, from getting the court news to selecting the old news from old Reporter issues for the ‘From Our Files’ section,” Dorothy said of her early years at the Reporter.
But then her deep knowledge of Ellsworth County and its families kicked in and Dorothy wrote a retirement story on Joe Svoboda, who played the bass horn at dances for 70 years. Music, especially the Bohemian tunes of their Czech ancestors, had always been part of the lives of the Neuschafers and Grothusens.
“We had music all the time. I think from the day I was born, we had music in the house,” Dorothy said.
Karl Gaston, who with his wife, Dorothy Gaston, eventually purchased the Reporter, was impressed with his employee’s handling of the Svoboda story.
He called Dorothy Grothusen into his office and invited her to start writing. He later gave her the title of Family Living editor, a job she held for 15 years until her retirement in 1987. Even after she officially retired, Dorothy continued to do freelance writing for the paper.
Few Ellsworth County families escaped her attention in those years. Just ask Ruth.
When Dorothy and Dale, who passed in 2020 at the age of 101, left their farm several years ago, their children found boxes of newspaper clippings Dorothy had saved and stored in the hay loft.
As they looked through the articles, the children realized their mother’s stories reflected decades of history — not just in Ellsworth County, but throughout Central Kansas. That’s when the idea for a book began to take shape.
“A lot of the people aren’t around anymore, but their kids are, their grandkids are,” Ruth said.
Ruth volunteered to take charge of the boxes, which she had shipped to her home in Eugene, Ore. Her goal was to retype Dorothy’s articles so they could be accessed on a computer.
As she typed, Ruth thought to herself, “Wow, this is really good stuff. There is such good writing, such good information.” Each morning, she sent copies of the stories she had typed the day before via internet to her mother. It became a ritual and something Dorothy looked forward to as she reread the many stories from her career.
Even after sorting through the stories, Ruth expects to have typed well over 500 articles or more than 300,000  words by the time she finishes.
This day, Dorothy sat at her computer at Salina’s Presbyterian Manor. In front of her was a computer screen filled with a story on the late Les Pacey and one of his many collections, which included jugs and watch fobs. His son, Larry, still lives in Ellsworth and is retired after operating a construction company for many years.
“She had the basic tools and the interest and the Reporter put it all together,” Ruth said of her mother’s storytelling skills.
Ruth and her sister, Marsha Drebelbis, who lives in Dallas,  were away from home by the time their mother started working at the newspaper. However, Bill was at Dorothy’s side many times as she traveled across Ellsworth County for stories. The two studied photography together with Bill becoming what Ruth describes as Dorothy’s “right hand kid.”
At least two of Dorothy’s subjects achieved recognition beyond the Ellsworth Reporter.
One subject was Mildred Schindler Janzen, who in 2020 recounted her own story in “Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin: One Woman’s Remarkable Escape from Nazi Germany.” Janzen, who has traveled across Kansas telling her story, was married to Lorraine farmer, the late Leon Janzen. She also worked at the Lorraine State Bank for many years.
Another frequent subject was the feisty Mildred Holt, who put Ellsworth on national television in 1987 when she traded barbs with Johnny Carson, the King of Late Night, and sipped a highball from a coffee mug as millions watched from their homes. Mildred was 105 at the time and would live to be 108.
It was Dorothy who lobbied the Carson show to invite Mildred to California. After her appearance, the quick-witted daughter of a Civil War veteran was asked to appear on The Match Game and other shows.
Mildred turned them all down.
“She just wanted to stay in Ellsworth, the town she had lived in all her life,” Dorothy said.
In 1999, Dorothy came out of retirement to write for the Ellsworth County Independent, a weekly newspaper that competed with the Reporter for more than a year before the two merged into the Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter.
Once again, she used her extensive knowledge of Ellsworth County to acquaint I-R readers with area history. Her Then and Now column, which took a place or family and traced them to current times, was one of the paper’s more popular features.
This week, Ruth is in Ellsworth to visit her mother and to search the archives of the Ellsworth County Historical Society for photos to accompany Dorothy’s stories.
The planned book continues to be a work in progress.