Thea Rademacher, JD
President, Flint Hills Publishing
I love the prairie. The wide-open landscape. The unobstructed sky. The feeling of the wind rushing through me when I turn and face it while anchoring my bare feet in the soil. Probably not surprising for a Kansas kid whose ancestors have farming roots that reach back over a century.
After high school, a debate scholarship took me to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Four years of competing on the national collegiate debate circuit while matriculating toward my B.A. helped hone my critical thinking skills and taught me how to successfully juggle a busy schedule.
My college track record led to an invitation to help coach debaters at Baylor University in Waco, Texas where I obtained my Masters in Speech Communication Studies.
After marrying my college sweetheart, Steve, we moved to Minneapolis where he began his career as a CPA and I attended the University of Minnesota School of Law, graduating in 1990 with both honors and a one-year-old in tow. That son, Nathan Fredrickson, is now Editor-in-Chief for Flint Hills Publishing.
My legal career began as a social justice attorney for Legal Aid in Kansas City, Kansas. A move to Topeka in 1993 marked a return to the place where I had grown up and where we would raise our family—we have four sons. Raising our very unique tribe of children was my focus for several years, but during that time I continued to do some solo legal work, was the executive director of a non-profit that helped mothers in poverty, and I learned all about running my own business when I grew a handmade jewelry hobby to a full-time enterprise.
But it was an idea from my son Nathan that led me to the path I now know I am meant to follow. My neighbor and dear friend, Royce Fulmer, had a story to tell, and at 90, he knew he was running out of time. So, without any real clue about how I would help him write a book or get it published, we sat down together and I started interviewing him about the secret mission he participated in during WWII. He had kept these stories to himself as the Carpetbagger Operation—an incredibly dangerous plan that dropped supplies and spies, both men and women, to Resistance fighters from bomber planes that they flew at near stalling speeds behind enemy lines—had not been declassified until the late 1980s.
Interviewing Royce, researching historical information to tie his story to a larger narrative, finding original documents that confirmed Royce’s recollections, even arranging a phone call between him and another crew member (their first reunion in almost 70 years), was the most inspiring thing I had ever been a part of besides the creation of my own family.
Royce passed four months after we figured out how to publish his book. The attention he received for the book, including a huge photo of him on the front of the Topeka Capital Journal and another article documenting our later visit to the 190th Air Refueling wing at Forbes Field, was a heck of a way to end an amazing life and marked a turn for mine.
So, it was my work with Royce on A Drop in the Night - The Life and Secret Mission of a WWII Airman, that inspired me to start Flint Hills Publishing. Now, 10 years later, FHP has published over 80 books by more than 40 authors, including a Spur Award winner. I’ve dug deep into the world of indie / on-demand publishing, and while I believe it represents an important revolution in the publishing industry, it is not without its issues. These concerns inspire me to help protect the rights of authors—I spend a lot of my time teaching emerging authors about legal and publishing issues I believe they need to know.
I feel blessed that FHP has grown to include an amazing group of authors, editors, CFO Steve Fredrickson, marketing director Sandra Gore, graphics designer Amy Albright, webmaster Greg German, and of course book lovers. I know my dear buddy Royce would get a kick out of what his story started!