Long before baseball legend Walter Johnson was ever known as the Big Train, he had a moniker more geared to his southeast Kansas roots: The Humboldt Thunderbolt.
The Humboldt native grew up to become one of the most dominant pitchers the world has ever seen, winning 417 games, pitching 110 shutouts and creating a mythical legacy that persists still today.
And while many have noted the fireballing sidewinder’s ties to Kansas, perhaps none did as much as the late Dick Davis, perhaps the closest thing this area had to a human encyclopedia of baseball history.
Davis, who died in 2011, was the driving force behind a number of celebrations that drew such dignitaries as Hall of Famer Buck O’Neil and Hank Thomas, Walter Johnson’s grandson, to Humboldt.
Even as multiple sclerosis sapped Davis of his strength, he retained a fortitude to accomplish pretty much anything he set his mind to, friends recalled.
“Anything good you ever could say about Dick Davis was probably true,” noted Bob Johnson, a long-time Iola Register scribe and lifelong friend of Davis’s. “He had a heart for people.”
Davis helped get a monument in place to mark the farmstead where Johnson was born in 1887. He was integrally involved in getting a newly built baseball diamond named in honor of George Sweatt, another Humboldt native and Negro Leagues baseball star.
And it was Davis who led a group effort in 2002 to erect a billboard along U.S. 169 noting Humboldt’s designation as Walter Johnson’s birthplace.
The billboard stood proudly over the next two decades, before the harsh Kansas weather began to take its toll. The wooden sign — which Davis helped paint — had begun to fade.
Allie Utley, Davis’s granddaughter, took note a few years back.
Rather than see her grandfather’s work continue to erode, Utley, an Iola native now living in Overland Park, took matters into her own hands.
Over the next three years, Utley spearheaded another group effort to see a new billboard placed along the highway, an effort that stretched from Kansas to Kansas City, and Brooklyn, N.Y.
The project culminated Wednesday afternoon.
With Utley watching intently, a team of workers erected the new billboard in honor of Johnson on the west side of the 169, roughly 5 miles south of the K-224 turnoff to Humboldt or a quarter-mile north of Arizona Road.
The billboard — on the original frame put in place in 2002 — features a 5-foot by 7-foot portrait of Johnson, along with his early nickname, The Humboldt Thunderbolt.
