MATTHEW MOORE CAMPBELL

October 5, 1959 – June 29, 2023

Matt Campbell was still a college student when he started working for The Kansas City Star writing obits part-time. Then, over a career that spanned almost 40 years, Matt became one of the newspaper’s most trusted reporters, an unassuming presence with an exceptional voice. Matt brought to his work at The Star a commitment to fact-finding and an intellect honed as a debater at Oak Park High School. Matt relished learning about history and traveling the world, and he never lost his mischievous, irreverent sense of humor. While Matt needed his alone time, he also took great joy in friendships that lasted throughout his life.

            This is the story of our beloved friend and brother, Matt Campbell, who died June 29, 2023, in North Kansas City Hospice because of a seizure that damaged his brain.

            Matt was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 5, 1959, the third of four sons born to Joan Louise Strode Campbell and Robert Thacher Campbell. Matt is survived by his youngest brother, Clay, and Clay’s wife Kesmen. He is predeceased by his older brothers Robert and Scott, and Robert’s wife Marlene. He is survived by Scott’s wife Carol and son Jeffrey. He is also survived by his stepmother, Brenda Ryan.

            Matt attended Oak Park High School, where he fell in with a rough crowd: the debate club, coached by the legendary Kay Mowry. Matt excelled both at debate and pranking his coach. He and his partner Lee qualified for Nationals in Seattle, after being undefeated at the Missouri District tournament.

Matt remained connected to debate teammates and others from Oak Park: Mark, Deb, Susan, Lee, Mike, Kendra, Liz, Kathy, Cathy, Rodney, Allen, Cindy and LeAnn. As one said, “Matt was one of those rare people who was more authentic than high-school cool. So smart. So sweet. So accomplished.”

            Matt graduated Oak Park High School in 1977 with a scholarship to the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism in Chicago. He did well but missed Kansas City and returned home after a year. Matt graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

            The Star hired Matt full-time as a clerk and later reporter. One of his first placements was in The Star’s bureau in Independence, Mo. As a colleague wrote, “Matt did a stellar job covering the city of Independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That was a rather tumultuous time in that city’s history. Matt was there to chronicle every bit of it. And he was high on the shitlist of (a particular city councilman), which is a badge of honor for journalists.”

            Around the same time, Matt began covering a group from Independence that was hunting for a steamboat. The Hawley family and friends sought the Arabia, which hit a snag and sunk, fully loaded, soon after leaving Kansas City. They found it under 45 feet of silt and topsoil in 1987 and began the salvage operation the winter of 1988. Here’s how Matt’s story started:

Rescuing remains of history: Salvage crew digs steamboat from Missouri

At the rim of the pit, teeming with generators, pumps and spotlights, it is December 1988. Below, where the bulk of a huge paddle wheel protrudes from quicksand, it is August 1858.

            Two worlds, 40 feet apart.

            A group of adventurers and entrepreneurs is bridging the gap this month with an elaborate project to recover salvageable remains of the steamboat Arabia.

            As an employed person, Matt could start traveling. His first traveling companion was Jenni, a writer he met at UMKC. They drove their decrepit cars to tourist sites around the U.S., learning, among other things, that if you must ascend Pike’s Peak, maybe don’t do it in a Chevette. In the mid-1980s, funded by an inheritance, they embarked on The Big Trip – a six-week frolic in Russia, Turkey, Greece and Egypt. Throughout their travels, they amassed an enviable collection of tacky snow globes and shared stories. While he and Jenni quit traveling together in their 30s, they never tired of reliving their adventures. After Jenni, Matt traveled in the U.S. with his high school pal Mark, and around the globe with his intrepid mother.

            Back at The Star, Matt progressed as a reporter, covering law enforcement and courts, school districts, municipal governments, federal agencies in Kansas City, the Kansas City parks and boulevard system, the Kansas City Zoo, Liberty Memorial and Union Station, as well as being a general assignment reporter.

            Matt’s former colleagues used words like steady, trusted, kind, smart and funny to describe him. Here is a sampling:

·         Matt was something of a Swiss Army knife of reporting. There was no assignment Matt couldn’t or wouldn’t tackle.

·         Matt was one of my heroes at The Star. I adored him! Such a gentleman, brilliant writer and observant of rich details.

·         Steady, unflappable, kind – Matt was a consummate pro who always found the story and never got in its way.

·         He worked his butt off, performed well and kept to himself. An admirable, vanishing breed.

·         When I first joined the city desk, I quickly learned that every editor absolutely revered Matt. A consummate professional, with outsized talent but not an ounce of the prima donna attitude that often accompanies it.

·         Matt had an unusual interview style, which was to stand there with his notebook and say nothing, while the subject grew increasingly unnerved by the silence and eventually spilled everything.

·         He was funny as heck.

·         Matt reserved his deadpan style for the perfect moment and could leave you in stitches with the perfect retort. At the end, when assignments were getting more and more nonsensical, Matt and I could just look at each other and say everything without saying anything.

One of Matt’s favorite beats was the National WWI Museum and Memorial, created after Kansas Citians approved a sales tax to renovate the Liberty Memorial in 1998. Armored tanks were a key innovation of WWI. “They must have looked like monsters lumbering through the smoky hell of no man’s land,” Matt wrote. It wasn’t until 2007 that the museum finally got a tank for its collection. This was a big deal.

Tank with powerful story goes on exhibit at National WWI Museum

Here's the tank, here's the hole, here's shrapnel from the shell that made that hole, and here's a field gun of the type that fired that shell.

All that's missing is the blood.

That powerful story went on display Saturday at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial with the debut of a French-made Renault FT-17 tank. It is the story of a tank that was disabled by a German shell on the Western Front in France in 1918, the final year of the Great War.

Matt’s final travel companion was LeAnn, a fellow Oak Park graduate. Matt had been covering the start of WWI leading up to the centennial of the U.S. entry, she said, and it meant so much to him to go to Sarajevo to see the exact spot where Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated. After landing in Sarajevo, LeAnn said, “We rented a tiny stick shift and immediately took a wrong turn approaching the hotel. We ended up at the top of a very steep, narrow street with no outlet. It took excellent driving skills (which neither of us had) and about 15 minutes to get turned around. Off to a good start.”

            The Star, like other newspapers, struggled to survive in the digital era. When The Star sold its historic headquarters, on March 22, 2017, Matt shared his thoughts with colleagues:        

Goodbye 17th and Grand.

To my former Kansas City Star friends. Sadly, publisher Tony Berg today confirmed that McClatchy is selling the old brick home of The Kansas City Star. A century or so of history was reported and written in that second-floor newsroom.

It used to be full of smoke and bottles in desk drawers. Since I've known it there have been many makeovers. But it is still a huge space, with thick support columns and it is still a place where truth is distilled.

The group that gathered here at 4 p.m. today numbered about 100. We were told the population of the building is now 243. I don't know if that reflects the Monday layoffs. There used to be 1700-1800 people in this building.

You can almost hear the wind in here now. If you wander this building - actually two buildings that were strangely fused long ago - you find many weird spaces. It's a great place.

The first time I had to go to tear sheets it was spooky. About 40 steep steps. People used to work up there every day.

The morgue on the third floor still has all the old clip files - alas the photos are lost - but there are no longer friendly librarians there. You have to hunt for yourself. It's cold and dark and lonely up there.

William Rockhill Nelson's old office at the southeast corner of the newsroom is now a place where reporters learn how to do their own videos.

We're told the buyer of the old building wants to convert it to commercial and residential use.

We survivors are going to move to the green glass printing building at 16th and McGee. In about a year.

It won't be the same, but The Star will still be looking over the city.

A month later, in April 2017, Matt Campbell and Mike Hendricks received the Burton W. Marvin Kansas News Enterprise Award from the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications. In their series “Fatal Echoes,” they showed how failure to follow safety regulations led to the deaths of hundreds of firefighters and injuries to thousands of others. They analyzed hundreds of federal and state reports, inspection records and meeting transcripts, interviewed officials, safety experts, firefighters and families. Fire officials and safety regulators said change had been hampered by lack of training requirements, lax oversight, resource-starved budgets, and a hero culture among firefighters.

In 2019, having survived wave after wave of layoffs, Matt accepted a buyout and left The Star. He never wrote professionally again.

Matt joined the ranks of former Kansas City Star reporters, his esteemed friends and colleagues Cindy, Paula, Matt S, Glenn, Mike, Phillip, Kevin, Stephen, Karen, Yael, Jean, Christine, Joe, David, Fred, Lisa, Dawn, Lee, Bob, Judy, Larry, Kady, Mark, Debra, Randall, Keith, Donna, Michael, Melissa, Greg, Lajean, Tod, Monty, Diane, Todd, Grace, Luke, Bill, Rick, Roy, Eric, Yvette, Shelly, Melissa, Julie, Karen, Tammy, Barb, Melanie, Les, Mara, Katy, Dawn, Donna, David, and Lewis.

            Matt’s friends would like to thank his brother Clay, who was loving, responsible and wise and took such good care of his big brother during Matt’s illness. Clay and friends will hold a memorial service before too long. In the meantime, if you would like to serve Matt’s memory, read a good book, take a road trip, or support quality local journalism where you live.