Wichita TV personality passes after long career standing up for the little people | Opinion

In my long career, I’ve reported out more than my share of obituaries. And given people’s reluctance to speak ill of the dead, the phrase “he was a real character” was often coded language that the deceased was a total jerk and nobody could think of anything good to say about him.

But every rule has its exceptions.

Ronald “R.J.” Dickens was a real character. And I mean that in the best possible way.

I was out of town last week when R.J. passed at age 68. I found out about it from a Facebook post by Ron Nutt, owner of KCTU-TV, the small low-power television station that R.J. served for decades as an on-air personality, news director and public affairs manager. I was sad when I saw that and I still am.

Police found R.J. deceased of natural causes in his apartment, after Nutt and his wife and station co-owner, Sheryl, called for a welfare check on him.

R.J. had been fighting various health problems — and frankly, poverty — for a long time.

He had supplemented the money he didn’t make on broadcasting with call-center work until his health got so bad that he couldn’t even do that any more.

But as bad as things got, R.J. remained affable and optimistic. I never knew him to give up on his mission, to give a voice to Wichitans who don’t often get one.

I first became aware of R.J. shortly after moving here about 25 years ago, when he was one of the hosts of KCTU’s “River City Forum,” a local call-in show.

I was the only one I knew who watched it, being part of what was then a small fraction of Wichitans who didn’t get all their TV from Cox Cable, which refused to carry the channel.

As I was learning my new community, River City Forum, its guests and its callers gave me insight into a Wichita that was and still is often unseen — humble and hard-working folks who want to be heard but can’t afford cable TV, much less the campaign contributions that influence local government.

There was no cause too lost for R.J. to fight for.

In 1990, he was the Democratic nominee for Kansas secretary of state, running on a platform of expanding voter access — against the popular Republican incumbent Bill Graves, who would later be elected to two terms as governor.

Dickens ran a shoestring campaign, hitchhiking to at least one debate and raising funds via a bus tour to Topeka. He did surprisingly well, garnering nearly 40% of the vote and even winning four counties, Wyandotte, Leavenworth, Atchison and Cherokee. An Eagle report said he spent $980 on the campaign.

The first time I recall talking to R.J. was in 2004. At the time, one of the other hosts of River City Forum was then-state Sen. Phil Journey.

I called KCTU to do a story, because it’s a violation of federal law to give candidates broadcast airtime (even on a little station like KCTU) without offering equal time to their opponents.

R.J. and the Nutts came up with an elegant solution — they bumped a couple of syndicated game shows and gave a show to Journey’s opponent, then-Rep. Dan Thimesch, a Cheney Democrat.

It wasn’t the last time I’d write about R.J. In 2008, he sponsored a live opportunity for local Democrats to go on TV and weigh in on crafting the Democratic Party platform, as invited by Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

In 2016, my most-read story online was about R.J.

A staunch opponent of the Sam Brownback administration and the Republican-dominated Legislature, he petitioned the White House to revoke Kansas statehood, citing a provision in the Constitution requiring the federal government to “guarantee to every state in this union a republican (small r) form of government.”

At the time, Beth Clarkson, a Wichita State University statistician, was challenging Brownback’s 2014 election, saying she’d found anomalies in voting patterns and seeking access to the paper audit tapes from voting machines, which she never got.

My No. 5 story that same year was when R.J. was attacked and seriously bitten by a pit bull in the elevator at The Commodore, the sketchy downtown apartment building where he lived. So much for the old journalism adage that it’s not news when dog bites man.

In his later years, R.J. amused himself and others by running a small and quirky political action committee called the “It’s time to fix stupid PAC.” Its ads were mostly humorous, and mostly ineffective.

One of the cardinal rules of politics is to spend advertising money only in swing districts where you have a chance to win.

But that was not R.J.’s way.

Being a small-d democrat in addition to being a big-D one, R.J. ran online surveys and let the people decide which politicians to go after.

They mostly chose prominent and entrenched Republicans who had no chance of losing, like Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Koch Industries, and Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Kansans for Life.

R.J. died with no known close relatives, but KCTU is planning to schedule a memorial service in his honor. I’m looking forward to it.

I know I’ll miss him. I’ll miss his wry sense of humor, but more than that, his devotion to making Wichita a better place for those who lack power and influence.

A lot of other Wichitans will miss him too.

He was a real character.