The Press: The Clapper Era

As childhood sweethearts, Olive Ewing and Raymond Clapper lived a block apart in Kansas City's (Kan.) packinghouse district. The grocer's daughter and the laborer's son went to the same Sunday school, the same high school. One day when Olive had just turned 17, they kept a date on a streetcar. She told him her father's ultimatum: stop seeing-that Clapper boy, or you'll be sent away to stay with relatives. Said Ray: "Let's get married."

Their partnership lasted 31 years, until Clapper's death in an airplane crash in the Pacific in February, 1944. They worked...

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