Jim Drury

It would be hard to imagine that anyone who ever met Jim Drury didn't remember him.

I didn't meet Mr. Drury until he -- along with his entrepreneurial brothers -- had passed that life milestone called "success." By that time, Mr. Drury had developed something of a reputation in his adopted hometown as someone who was willing to use his ample resources to sway public opinion on important issues -- most of them involving tax increases.

Mr. Drury had good reason to be concerned. The tax worry at the top of his list was the sales tax on hotels and restaurants, the very slice of bread on which his prosperity was buttered.

Let's go back quite a few years. I first became aware of the Drury name when I moved to Nevada, Mo., in the early 1970s and saw the Drury Inn signs in Springfield, Mo. I thought the hotels were somehow connected to Springfield's Drury University and assumed the Drury chain was based in Southwest Missouri.

It wasn't until I moved to Cape Girardeau 14 years ago that I learned about the Drurys and their successful enterprises that spread all over the country.

I also heard all the "Jim Drury" stories, mainly from peeved city officials who mostly regarded Mr. Drury as a fly in the ointment of every progressive civic undertaking -- a claim that was clearly a stretch of reality.

So when I got my first call from Mr. Drury offering to "explain" things, I felt some trepidation. Mr. Drury came to the newspaper office, and we met in a conference room. For hours. If anything, Mr. Drury was thorough. He had stacks and stacks of papers, copies of documents, maps and advertisements he had placed to publicize his arguments. It was mind-boggling, to say the least.

While Mr. Drury tended to ramble off-point at length, he was plainly not the person I had pictured after all the stories I had heard. He was modest, casually dressed and comfortable with himself. If he got angry when pressed on a particular point, he did not show it. But neither did he relent.

Of all the people I know who had every right to regard Mr. Drury as a thorn in the side, it was newly elected Mayor Jay Knudtson, who had heard the same stories I had and who had some of the same experiences with him. But the mayor chose a different approach, one committed to understanding Mr. Drury's concerns and getting city leaders, both the elected ones and the hired help, to rally around items of agreement rather than focusing on the disagreements.

Through Mayor Knudtson's ceaseless efforts, many of us learned more about Mr. Drury than we had ever allowed ourselves to know. And, for the first time, city officials and Mr. Drury worked together. The city got what it wanted, and Mr. Drury got safeguards for city taxpayers. The result: Anyone who sees a performance at the River Campus should be thankful the mayor and Mr. Drury never gave up.

At one point in all of this, Mr. Drury invited me to his home to, once again, hear his arguments. And, once again, I was confronted with a flood of documents and an oft-repeated question: Don't you see? In some cases I did. Not in others. And that's what I told Mr. Drury. I'm not sure either of us was completely satisfied.

It is against this backdrop that I offer a glimpse into the very personal Mr. Drury. Several years ago my wife and I were on a quest at Toys "R" Us for something to do with "Blue's Clues," a popular kids' TV show. We were overwhelmed by the toy displays.

One whole aisle of the store was devoted to dolls. Fascinated, we walked along and saw Mr. Drury, perplexed, holding a doll in each hand. We exchanged hellos, and he said he had been dispatched to buy a doll for a young lady in his family. He was as overwhelmed as we were. My wife asked if she could help. "You bet!" Mr. Drury exclaimed, adding, "This almost has me whipped."

There. That, too, was Jim Drury, who will be missed by many who mourn his death this week.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.