Rex Stout

Rex Stout was a babe in his mother's arms when he came to Kansas. The family settled on a 40-acre farm near Wakarusa in 1887. Before his seventh birthday young Rex had read all 1,200 books in his father's library, which included the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Holy Bible. Rex's father, John Wallace Stout, taught school in Shawnee County for six years. In 1895 he was appointed county superintendent of schools and moved his family to Topeka.

Young Rex, who later achieved fame as creator of the Nero Wolfe detective stories, was short of stature but long on brains. He took delight in correcting his teachers or challenging them to furnish proof of certain statements, which hardly endeared him to teachers. Rex's biographer, Dr. John McAleer of Boston College, dubbed his subject during his high school years, 1899 - 1903, as "Mr. Know-It-All in Knee Pants."

In 1905, two years out of high school, Rex enlisted in the navy as a yeoman and was assigned to the presidential yacht, The Mayflower. His duties there were purely of a clerical nature but when home on leave, he gave the Topeka Daily Capital an account of his exploits in the navy that indicated Rex's flair for fiction.

Buying his early discharge from the navy, Rex started writing short stories and poetry while living in New York City. When Nero Wolfe first appeared in 1933 the great detective was kitchen-testing Prohibition beer, and 42 volumes later, he was deploring the outrage of Watergate. During the last decade of Rex Stout's life, he had more books in print than any other American author. Rex Stout died October 24, 1975, at the age of 88.