HURON — Persistent. Community Pillar. Frustrat-ing. Driven.
These words and many others all fit in describing Roger Kasa, Sr., a monumental figure in the newspaper business in South Dakota and, to his eminent delight, the community of Huron. Kasa passed away Friday at Violet Tschetter Memorial Home in Huron. His obituary, listing his numerous awards and honorariums, can be found at plainsman.com or kuhlerfuneralhome.com. He was 83 years old.
For more than 40 years, Kasa worked at the Daily Plainsman, in a variety of editorial roles. But he was always happiest when he was out covering a meeting, taking in a concert or a ball game, taking notes and preparing to share the story with the readers of the next day’s newspaper. After returning to Huron in 2015, Kasa had faithfully turned in a column most weeks.
And while it is through the newspaper that many became familiar with Roger Kasa, it was through his work in the community that he will be best remembered.
“The power of the pen is a tremendous tool,” said longtime friend, singing partner and fellow community activist Barb Valer, “which can be used for the betterment of man or for its destruction. Roger Kasa chose the former.” Valer said she met Kasa when her family joined Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, where Kasa was the choir director, more than 40 years ago. “I soon found out that he was the heartbeat of Huron,” Valer said. “If you wanted anything done or needed a champion for your cause, he was the go-to guy. Roger’s motto was, ‘The train is moving — either get on board or you’ll be left behind.’”
Deannie LeRoux also worked with Kasa on a variety of events and projects in their five decade friendship.
“Roger was a very wonderful and important part of this community,” LeRoux said. “It would be nearly impossible to list all of the things in which he had a hand. He got me involved and from then on, he presumed that I would be helping him. He was frustrating at times, but I loved him and his wife Ora Lee. He expected a lot from people, but then he always expected a lot from himself too. He was a remarkable man, and I shudder to think what the Huron community would be without his hard work.
Many, if not most, of the projects that Kasa either began or helped nurture involved the youth of the area. He coached Little League baseball and was an avid high school basketball fan. Covering a game was never work for Kasa.
“Roger Kasa was very much a champion for youth sports with the idea that everyone who wanted to play should have the chance to play,” said LaRon Klock, the Parks and Recreation director for the City of Huron. “Many youth baseball tournaments were brought to Huron through Roger’s persistence and time in the announcement booth. He served on the Park and Recreation Board for more than 18 years and was always at the forefront in organizing and developing youth sports programs and facilities.”
Klock noted that it was through Kasa’s tireless lobbying that the baseball fields - which would eventually be renamed Roger Kasa Little League Complex - came to be.
“He was a key player in many organizations including Huron Hockey, Huron Little League, the arts in Huron, Huron Youth Leadership Counsel and so many others … starting several from scratch,” Valer said. “He knew how to bring the right people together to make it all work!”
Rhonda Kludt said she met Kasa when she and her husband Doug moved to Huron in 1985.
“The name Roger Kasa was synonymous with making things happen here when we moved to Huron,” Kludt recalled. He was one of the pillars of our community who simply got things done. His causes were many, yet they all had an overlapping common theme - to make Huron an even better place to call home. Kludt agreed that one of Kasa’s great passions was creating opportunities for youth, as evidenced when he and Shelly Fuller organized the Huron Youth Advisory Council. When he returned to Huron, Kludt said he reached out and said he wished to meet the students in the Youth Leadership Council and get to know them.
She added that on a personal note, Kasa also was very influential in the lives of her daughter Rachel and son Tom. “Both Rachel and Tom were involved with the Youth Advisory Council and Tom had his first job with Roger at the Plainsman. I remember Tom was in middle school when he asked me for a stamp because he had written a letter to Roger Kasa asking him for a job as a writer at the Plainsman. Roger not only gave Tom his first writing job, he gave him a column “Tom Talks” and sent him on his journalistic path. Roger believed in youth and their abilities and gave them opportunities to prove themselves.”
But Jourrnalism was Roger’s main passion. Covering a city, county or school board meeting and staying current on what was happening with the local government drove him, and he influenced the careers of several current Plainsman employees.
For current managing editor Curt Nettinga, Kasa stalking through the newsroom was intimidating at the start.
“For most people over the age of 45 who grew up in this part of the world, Roger Kasa WAS the Plainsman,” Nettinga said. “When I worked as a sports stringer back in the early 1980s, Roger was the larger-than-life presence in the corner office; of whose name I had only read, and whose picture I had only seen. But he was real.”
As time went along Nettinga said he learned that Kasa often had a kind word for the young reporters, “I worked peripherally with Roger, never directly. But when he walked through the basement (which is where the news room was then located), you knew he was there,” he said. “He sometimes stopped by the sports department to visit with the young staff about a ballgame, or a particular athlete.”
He said his favorite Roger Kasa story revolves around the coverage of a Regional boys’ basketball game. “I had been assigned to write the story at the Watertown Civic Center, but when I arrived, the guy at the ticket booth said there were too many people in the gym and I wouldn’t be able to get in. I tried everything to get him to change his mind, but he wasn’t budging.
“So, I wrote the phone number for the newsroom down on a piece of paper in my notebook. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Call this number and tell my boss, Roger Kasa, that you refuse to let his reporter in and why!,”
Nettinga said the man left and came back about 5 minutes later, and handed the paper back to him. “‘Sorry,’ he said, handing me the paper. On which he had written instructions to drive to the back entrance, where he did let me in.”
“I never asked either that man - or Roger - if they talked on the phone that night. I always quietly believed it was the mention of Roger’s name that opened that Civic Center door that night.”
Veteran Plainsman Roger Larsen recalled the first time that he met the man with whom he would work for more than four decades.
“I was a summer graduate from South Dakota State University, having fallen a half dozen or so credits shy of being eligible to be in the May graduating class,” Larsen recalled. “As the August commencement date drew near, I learned of a reporting job that had opened up in Huron. I called and made an appointment to see the managing editor of the Plainsman, Roger Kasa.
Larsen said that Kasa was gracious and friendly, and the interview went smoothly, after which he got in his car and headed back to Brookings, after receiving assurances from Kasa that he would call within a few days to let him know his decision.
As it turned out, it was the next day.
“‘When can you start?’ he asked. Keep in mind I hadn’t graduated yet, and I also needed to go back to California to pick up belongings, so I told him it would be a couple of weeks. He wasn’t exactly ecstatic about the delay, but said OK. He also may have said something like, ‘Get here as soon as you can. I want to take my family on vacation. Family meant the world to him.”
That first morning, after Larsen literally drove all night in a rebuilt panel truck, he was shown his desk. “‘Write your obituary,’ Roger instructed me, which came as no surprise, as it was a common way to introduce a new hire to the community. Then Roger was off on his vacation.”
Larsen said he and his co-workers were at their desks in the basement newsroom one morning a few days later, when they noticed a man with crutches trying hard not to fall as he made his way down the stairs. Yep, it was Kasa.
“He had been playing with his kids, a game of football perhaps, when he broke his ankle,” Larsen recalled. “And just in time for the State Fair, an event he dearly loved.”
That day, or the next, Kasa told him that he wanted us to go out to the fairgrounds so he could point out where everything was. “He couldn’t drive, obviously, so out we went in that old panel truck. It was a struggle, but he managed to maneuver himself into the passenger seat, high off the ground. He was back at work, cast and all, getting ready to cover the fair any way he could.
“I can still see us going around the fairgrounds in that refurbished truck, me trying to memorize where everything was and Roger clutching those crutches, pointing things out and more than likely privately hoping that his ankle would heal up in record time.”
Larsen remembers Kasa as a hard worker - for the newspaper as well as the community - and a great role model who never took himself too seriously. “That first experience with him is a great memory,” Larsen said. “It’s one of thousands I will always remember. Thank you, Roger. You taught me about journalism and you taught me so much about what’s important in life.”
Kludt closed by saying, “Roger believed in hard work and all of us have benefitted from the countless, selfless hours he devoted to so many worthy causes. We owe the Kasa children a huge thank you for sharing their dad with the residents of Huron all these years. His legacy lives on.”
Valer, who shared many musical vignettes with Kasa, closed with a musical thought. “Roger was a great family man, a great newsman, a great humanitarian and a friend,” she said. “As the song “For Good” from the musical “Wicked” says, “…because I knew you … I have been changed for good …”
“Deadline is past, Mr. Kasa,” Nettinga wrote. “Rest in peace.”
Roger Kasa, right, with the S.D. High School Activities Association’s Distinguished Service Award, presented to him by SDHSAA executive director Wayne Carney, during the 2010 Class “B” Girls’ State Basketball Tournamentt at Huron Arena. PHOTO COURTESY OF SOUTH DAKOTA PUBLIC BROADCASTING
Next, Campbell Park has been the place to be for the past several years, to hear a wide variety of musical entertainment, due mostly to a team of volunteers started by Roger Kasa.FILE PHOTO BY ANGELINA DELLA ROCCO
Huron residents choose their piece of pie during last year’s “Pie in the Park” night at Campbell Park. “Pie in the Park,” traditionally closes the summer-long Thursday evening entertainment, which Roger Kasa helped create.PHOTO BY MIKE CARROLL/PLAINSMAN
