- Nickname
- Uncle Walt
- Walt Mason was a Canadian-American humorist and poet famous for his "Rippling Rhymes" column. Written mostly in prose, Rippling Rhymes" was one of the most widely read newspaper columns of that period.
Walt Mason was the son of John and Lydia Sarah Campbell Mason. He was born in Columbus, Ontario. His father was Welsh and was employed at a local wool mill in Columbus. When Walt was five, his father was killed in an accident while at work. His mother was the descendant of Scottish immigrants. She loved to read books, poetry and sing old songs. She passed away when Walt was only fifteen. After her death, he moved to Port Hope, Ontario where he found work at a hardware store. When it came time for him to part company with the hardware store, the proprietor told him "It was the proudest and happiest day of his life".
In 1880 Walt moved south, first to New York and then on to the American Midwest. He supported himself by working odd jobs, mostly in agriculture. In St. Louis he found work at a printer's office where he claimed he kicked a printing press through the hottest summer ever invented. It was in St. Louis that Walt first submitted material to be published in a paper. The editor of the Hornet, a local weekly humor publication, was so impressed with Walt's work that he offered him five dollars a week to write, proof read and sweep floors. Walt stayed with the Hornet until its demise sometime later. Over the next few years Walt would work on a series of newspapers and farm jobs until he found a home in the mid 1880s with the Atchison Globe. Later he would move on to work on several other American papers. In 1907 he was brought to Emporia Kansas by publisher William Allen White to write for the Emporia Gazette. It was not long after his arrival in Emporia in a broken-down Phaeton horse buggy with his typewriter desk made from discarded sewing machine parts that his rhyming columns would be picked up by the George Matthew Adams Newspaper Syndicate Service. "Rippling Rhymes" would eventually gain the largest daily readership of any newspaper column in North America.
Walt was also remembered for his poems "The Little Green Tent", "The Journey" and "The Eyes of Lincoln"
In 1893 Walt married Ella Foss of Wooster, Ohio. Ella passed away on 19 October, 1936 following a heart attack. Walt died three years later on 22 June, 1939 after an illness of several weeks. A daughter, Mary Ellen Mason, survived. Both Walt and Ella died in their home at La Jolla, California where they had lived since 1921.- IMDb Mini Biography By: John F. Barlow
- SpouseElla Foss(1893 - 1936) (her death, 1 child)
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