Donald Kaul, longtime Register columnist and RAGBRAI co-founder, dies at 83

Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption RAGBRAI Director T.J. Juskiewicz on Donald Kaul RAGBRAI Director T.J. Juskiewicz reacted to the news that ride co-founder Donald Kaul has died.

Donald Kaul, a longtime Register columnist known for his passionate and unapologetic writing, died Sunday morning. He was 83.

Kaul was a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, in 1987 for the Cedar Rapids Gazette and 1999 for the Register.

He also — and check this out, Don, three whole sentences in before this came up — was a founder of the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, which after humble beginnings began its 46th edition Sunday as the world's oldest, largest and longest recreational bicycle tour.

Kaul, who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, ceased treatment after it spread to his skeleton.

Kaul’s "Over the Coffee" columns in the Des Moines Register and other newspapers nationwide typically were drenched in satire. "His readers followed with a religious zeal that few modern journalists can hope to inspire," former Register columnist Kyle Munson wrote earlier this year in a piece looking back on Kaul's career and life in light of his prognosis.

KYLE MUNSON: Donald Kaul can see the end approaching

"There’s a certain air of unreality about it," Kaul said in January about his outlook. "Because you can’t imagine what life is going to be to other people when you’re not there anymore. So, while I accept that this is coming on me, I don’t really accept it. It’s a curious thing. I don’t walk around depressed.

"What happens, happens."

His son, Chris Kaul, said Monday that it's been "a long fight" for his father since his diagnosis. Kaul said he moved his family back to Washington, D.C., to be close to his father. Family, as well as old newspaper colleagues and other friends, were able to visit Kaul in his final weeks.

"We’ve spent quality time, lots of it, laughing and reminiscing and saying the things that need to be said," Chris Kaul said. "And while it was, you know, a difficult disease at the end, the ending of it was peaceful."

Chris Kaul said his father was alert and lucid up until his final days, and he never lost his sense of humor.

"He was making jokes up until he was no longer talking," he said.

More: See all of our photos from RAGBRAI 2018

Forceful and hilarious all at once

Kaul started at the Des Moines Tribune, the afternoon newspaper companion to the morning Register, in the early 1960s, and covered public safety news and other topics. He had started writing opinion columns by the end of the decade, as many as five per week.

At his height, he was syndicated in 150 newspapers.

His work was always memorable, former colleague Norm Brewer said Monday.

"'What did Kaul write today?' was sort of a first order of business" for readers, he said.

He told Munson earlier that "Don, as much as anybody, taught Iowans to laugh."

Before Kaul took over “Over the Coffee” in 1965, it was a lighter feature that included society gossip. He transformed it, making forceful points balanced seemingly effortlessly with his barbs. Colleagues marveled at his ability to be stridently earnest and wildly hilarious at the same time.

When Richard Nixon won re-election as president in 1972, Kaul responded: "Yesterday was a great day. Not the greatest day since Creation perhaps, but a great day. It marked a turning point in our history; a day when we finally turned a long-awaited corner and the distance to the light at the end of the tunnel becomes precisely measurable. It was the day when we, the people of the United States, were given our last, our final opportunity to vote against Richard Nixon."

"He was always incredibly, courageously kind of honest in his satire," daughter Rachel Kaul, a disaster analyst for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said earlier this year. "I don’t think he ever shied away from saying the hard stuff that a lot of us were thinking."

From the archives:

RAGBRAI's Donald Kaul on a life of journalism Columnist Donald Kaul spent decades writing thousands of newspaper columns. He also co-founded RAGBRAI. Months before his death at age 83 he talked to Register columnist Kyle Munson about the ride and his journalism career.

John Karras, Kaul's longtime colleague and the other RAGBRAI founder, said Monday that Kaul's writing, and humor, were often surprising.

"He was very funny. He was very current," he said.

Karras said Monday that if Kaul was still writing columns, President Donald Trump "would be calling for his resignation" because of his cutting humor.

He believes his friend would like to be remembered "as a solid newspaperman who wrote with humor and seriousness."

A bike ride across Iowa

At first blush, Kaul seems an unlikely parent of RAGBRAI, a decidedly non-serious event that puts rural Iowa in the spotlight. It emerged from the close friendship of Kaul and Karras, who were among those Kaul called "big city boys" in the newsroom.

The incongruity was apparent to Kaul in January, when he told Munson, with characteristic wit, "My ambition was to be a nationally known Washington columnist. Unfortunately, I would imagine the first line in my obit will read 'one of the originators of RAGBRAI.' It just took over my career — brutally."

Chuck Offenburger, who wrote the Register's Iowa column as the "Iowa Boy" for more than two decades, remembered Donald Kaul as a mentor and a friend as RAGBRAI stopped Monday in Jefferson, a few miles from Offenburger's home.

Offenburger took over RAGBRAI co-hosting duties in 1983, the year Kaul decided his back was in too much pain to ride the entire route. For at least a few years after passing the title to Offenburger, however, Kaul came back to ride a couple days or hang out in a few of the overnight towns.

Despite his recent belly-aching about RAGBRAI leading his obituary, Offenburger said that Kaul really did enjoy the ride.

“Of course, he loved it,” Offenburger said in between helping cyclists find some dinner or a warm shower. “When the bike bomb started in the '60s and '70s for adults, (John) Karras and Kaul were some of the first in the Des Moines area to ride, and they did fairly substantial rides on their own before RAGBRAI started. I mean, for people to take interest in what you take interest in and for the event to grow and grow and grow, he couldn’t help but love it.”

He loved it so much, he could make fun of the circus that — in some ways — the ride became. But in the same way you can make fun of your brother, but you step up anytime anyone else does, if anyone took pot shots at RAGBRAI, “Kaul would be answering,” Offenburger said.

The ride has changed, but not too much

Chris Kaul said his father still loved RAGBRAI and remembered it "fondly and proudly."

"He would have smiled that RAGBRAI started on the day that he passed," Chris Kaul said.

While scope and organization of the ride have ballooned, the basic structure is little different from the early rides: Seven days. Missouri River to Mississippi River.

"I can't thank him enough for what he's done for the state of Iowa," RAGBRAI director T.J. Juskiewicz said Monday.

'I'm devastated by his death': John Karras remembers Donald Kaul John Karras, a co-founder of RAGBRAI, former Register journalist and longtime friend of Donald Kaul, reflects on Kaul's legacy and how he'll miss his friend.

Karras, who has known Kaul for decades and remained in touch by telephone, said Monday that he was devastated by his friend's death. The two spoke by phone several weeks ago, he said.

"The last time I talked to him, he sounded quite pleasant and funny," Karras said.

Karras said he and Kaul were bike-riding buddies for several years before RAGBRAI began. At first, Karras said, they just wanted to ride across the state and have the Register foot the bill.

SAGBRAI, the Second Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, in 1974 This raw film footage is from SAGBRAI, the Second Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, in August 1974. It was transferred from 16mm film.

Kaul’s last major appearance on RAGBRAI was in 2012, when the ride celebrated its 40th anniversary in downtown Cedar Rapids. His face loomed over the throng in the form of a prerecorded video greeting, the same month he commemorated the Fourth of July by suffering a heart attack.

Chris Kaul remembers his father took him on the very first RAGBRAI "when it was just a couple of close friends riding across Iowa." He said he believes RAGBRAI grew into what it became in large part due to Kaul's and Karras' personalities.

"It gave everyone a chance not only to spend time with him and Karras, but it gave everyone a chance to explore and appreciate Iowa in a way that you don’t normally do," he said.

Register reporters Stephen Gruber-Miller, Courtney Crowder and Lucas Grundmeier contributed to this story.

This article contains excerpts from former Register Iowa columnist Kyle Munson's Jan. 11, 2018 column. Read the full column here.