Review by Missouri Life, January/February 2024
“The easy-to-read remembrances will delight not only other Ozarkers but also others interested in Missouri in the 1950s and ‘60s.”
Review by Missouri Historical Review, April 2025
“The Way We Were: Personal Reflections on Life in the Ozarks. By Lonnie Whitaker (St. Louis: Scrivener Press, 2024). Illustrations. 256 pp. $19.99, paper; $5.99, e-book. The number of self-published memoirs written by Missourians continues to rise, bringing new insight into the recent past in places that have received little modern treatment by other writers and scholars. Whitaker, a Missouri Ozarker who grew up in Shannon and Howell Counties during the 1950s and 1960s, thoughtfully chronicles his life in this memoir, which began as a column in the Howell County News. At a young age, he moved from his grandparents’ Shannon County farm to Willow Springs. “Playing on an actual ballfield instead of a cow pasture with firewood sticks for bases,” Whitaker marveled years later, “was a dream” (p. 5). More importantly, he came under the tutelage of teachers who had high standards as well as compassion for their pupils. Whitaker’s stories, like the one about his blacksmith grandfather, Riley Casey, who owned the only television in Shannon County, provide unique insight into mid-twentieth-century life in the Ozarks. In 1954 Casey erected a thirty-foot TV antenna he fashioned from a white oak tree, but the distance from the nearest stations in Springfield, Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee, proved insurmountable. Although Whitaker focuses most of the memoir on his personal life, he also recounts community fixtures in the Willow Springs area such as politician Wendell Bailey as well as educators, coaches, and others who made a memorable impression upon him.” (Missouri Historical Review is a quarterly publication by the State Historical Society of Missouri, typically featuring peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, and archival explorations related to Missouri and regional history.)