Fred Farris found his niche as a fiction writer after he retired from the Galvin/Farris Advertising Agency and joined the Kansas City Writers Group.

"Now I write for fun, not profit," Farris, 88, said with a laugh. "I write short stories— mostly fiction—and a few non-fiction essays. It's my way to prevent the onslaught of Alzheimer's. I try to write a little every day."

Since he joined the group, writing has become his one and only hobby. Several of his stories have been accepted by local and national publishers, and a collage of short stories, Bridges of Life, was published. But "most of us write for personal satisfaction and enjoyment, not big money," he said.

When Farris was growing up in St. Louis, Mo., he sold newspapers on the street, earning one-third of one cent for every paper he sold.

"When I tell my grandchildren how much I made, they think I'm kidding," he said.

After a stint in the Army during World War II, Farris graduated from Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., and landed his first job as an advertising salesman at The Kansas City Star in 1949. Two years later he was writing advertising copy for Pay Way Feed Mills in Kansas City, coining slogans such as "Don't Feed the Old Way, Feed the Pay Way."

From there he moved to the Consumer Co-operative Association, later Farmland Industries.

"We put out the association's house organ, which had a circulation of around 200,000," he said. "I did a lot of writing there."

In 1955 Farris and a friend, Jerry Galvin, founded the Galvin/Farris Advertising Agency; it became the fourth-largest agency in the Kansas City area. Galvin died not long after the agency was established and Farris took over as chairman of the board, a post he held for 45 years.

"I enjoyed the work. It was a fun way to make a living," he said, noting that the business had national and international clients as well as local companies.

"The advertising business is very competitive, so of course there's some stress," he acknowledged. "You'd lose a client and gain another. There was something new every day."

Galvin/Farris had political clients, too, both local and statewide. Farris worked on the gubernatorial campaigns of Bob Bennett in Kansas and Warren Hearnes in Missouri.

"Hearnes appointed me an honorary Missouri colonel, so I bought a colonel's uniform to wear at state functions," he said with a chuckle. "I went from a tech sergeant to a bird colonel overnight."

The ad business was exciting, "maybe a little like writing fiction, if the truth be told," Farris pondered. "You need an imaginative and inventive mind."

The Kansas City Writers Group, founded in 1965, has about 40 members, some of whom are charter members. Leaders of the group are professional writers who share their knowledge with writers at all levels of experience and achievement. The group observed its 45th anniversary in 2010. Members submit articles, fiction, non-fiction, and poems to be critiqued by the group.

Farris said he submits 10 to 12 articles, mostly short stories, to local and national publishers each year. He framed the $30 check he received from his first published story.

"I get rejected a lot; most of us do," he said. "In fact, we give a trophy each year to the member who receives the most rejections."

The Best Times has published two stories by Farris about his experiences during World War II. "The Ides of March: A Remembrance" (March 2011) is about crossing the Rhine River on a pontoon bridge near the old Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, Germany, in the Battle of the Ruhr pocket. "Rhine Wine" (November 2008) was a short story about Farris and three comrades discovering a cache of what they thought was fine wine labeled Mineral Vasser. It turned out, to their later dismay, to be a laxative mineral water.

Farris served in the 86th Infantry Division, the first combat unit to return to the United States in June l945.

"As we passed by the Statue of Liberty, we were greeted by about 50 small boats waving welcome-home banners. We assumed we had a general on board to rate that," he said with a laugh.

But their stay in the states didn't last long. The soldiers received a 30-day furlough that included traveling to San Francisco, where they shipped out to the Philippine Islands for the next seven months "to begin training for the invasion of Japan that, fortunately, never occurred."

Farris and his wife, Joann, live in Leawood. They've been married for 62 years and have three children and eight grandchildren.

For more information about the Kansas City Writers Group, e-mail Mary-Lane Kamberg: mlkwriter@yahoo.com.

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