Al Higdon: A Reluctant Biography Subject

Written by Al Higdon

Al Higdon: A Reluctant Biography Subject

Written by Al Higdon

This biography was not my idea. Not at all.

Rather, my long-time friend, Linda Talbott Rupe, a woman never to be denied, decided that my story deserved a telling of sorts. And off, as always, she went.

I introduced her to John Brown, another old buddy whom, I believed, might do a good job of writing such a book. So off they went to lunch. By hamburgers’ end, the two of them had devised a plan, had committed to several suspect conspiracies, had taken away from me any real possibility of negative response.

And there then came the questions, the overwhelming questions about the formative experiences of my personal, professional and civic lives. And the people who had most profoundly affected my days and ways: Judy and the kids; Bill Lear and Russ Meyer; my best friend, Wendell Sullivan; and my long-time partner, Vaughn Sink; my parents, brothers and the great teachers who gripped me strong and hard along the way and showed me the way to go.

It was a wave of information jabbing at deeper feelings of success and loss. Always loss, life an accumulation of happy memories and their slip-sliding away. Judy and Wendell and so many great friends known to so many Wichitans from over the years.

I will be eternally grateful for the entrances afforded me across those decades to the right front seat of one great airplane after another. I’m not a pilot; haven’t once said, “Ready for takeoff.”

Al Higdon with singer John Denver, one of many celebrities Higdon worked with during his time at Learjet.

But I have known other takeoffs, other takeaways that have built toward a life for which I feel an immense gratitude. A humbling knowledge that I was born in the best time, the best place to be a human being in the endless history of our sometimes sad species. I believe in freedom. I believe in capitalism as the most demonstrable, the surest path toward peace and prosperity. I believe in my country and the wondrous people who make it so unmistakably great.

I think John found in my story a bit of his own life. His late wife, Annie, worked with us at Sullivan Higdon & Sink and, through her, he became part of our extended family. His buddies worked with us too, and so many of the miraculous people at SHS found in him a true and lasting friend. Those times together, across twenty years of closeness, gave him particular and detailed insight to the company Wendell and Vaughn and I had tried so hard to build. And, by extension, to me as well. John will tell you that I stand among the most difficult of subjects about whom he has ever, ever written. He refers to the problem as “Al’s humility.” I refer to his difficulties as but the boring life of an old kid who loved baseball and bicycle tag after dark.

A man could do worse, I suppose.

For those of you with little better to do about 6 p.m. on the evening of Thursday, January 15, John Brown and I will be hanging out at Watermark Books, there at Douglas and Oliver, talking about the book, maybe even answering a few questions. Please don’t expect anything profound.