From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 21, 1915:

“Prof. Lewis Lindsay Dyche, one of the best known members of the University faculty, died at Stormont hospital in Topeka, at 3:45 o’clock yesterday afternoon, after a week’s sickness, characterized by his physician as heart disease. Prof. Dyche became ill a week ago today…. Two weeks ago Prof. Dyche had been bitten by a gila monster, which years ago was considered one of the deadliest things in the animal kingdom. Prof. Dyche had fooled with them for years and perhaps had done more to do away with the old fear in which they were held than any other man. He did not take the bite of the monster seriously and for a week attended to his business as usual. When Prof. Dyche was taken seriously sick many persons at once connected the fact with the bite of the monster, but the physician says that it in no way contributed to the causes of death…. Dyche was a lovable man. You might at first find it hard to agree with him or to believe some of the radical statements that he would make concerning ordinary things, but when one remembered his wide experience and his method of learning things at first hand, he had to respect his opinion and there was no greater pleasure than to sit with him and listen to some of the many experiences through which he had passed…. Dyche was a word painter of great ability and could present his experiences so clearly and with such a wealth of detail that one could forget the present and live with him and the open…. Prof. Dyche was one of the most unselfish men the world has ever produced. He gave his life not to the purpose of enriching himself, but to enrich the University to which he came as a struggling youth and for which he has done so much. It has been said that the collection of American mammals in the museum of the State University of Kansas is second only to that of the Smithsonian Institute and practically everything in it, or at least its greatest treasures, were the gift of Dyche. After winning a reputation world wide for his explorations into every nook and corner of the most inaccessible parts of the United States for the purpose of securing specimens, and also having explored the far north, Prof. Dyche then took up the work of fish and game warden for Kansas and in the few years that he has been in charge has made the state fish hatchery the largest in the world and has stocked the streams of Kansas with myriads of fish…. The life of the man who in the space of a little more than a generation rose by his own efforts from an ignorant country boy to one of the most widely known men of his profession is a story of adventure as well as hard work…. Dyche, from the time he was able to follow four yellow dogs up and down Wakarusa creek, showed his love for the open and for wildlife. When he was 12 years old, it is said that Professor Dyche was unable to read. A few years later he became angered upon being twitted of his ignorance and entered the preparatory department of Kansas University and began his education. Thrown entirely upon his own resources, young Dyche was compelled to live in a tent when he first entered the university, and do his own cooking. A bit more of romance was added to the story of his life in the fact that the place where he pitched his tent was the site of the great museum of Kansas university, made famous by the collection of mammals. He made from every corner of North America, while a member of the faculty a few years later…. When young Dyche entered the University, J. W. Gleed was then a tutor in the preparatory department. He has often told how the young man did eight years of preparatory and college work in five years, and became a member of the University faculty…. Of his twenty-three expeditions, Prof. Dyche’s greatest was the trip in which he headed the party that rescued Commodore Peary in the far north…. The trip to the point where Peary and his party were found, nearly starved, was so full of adventure that it furnished material for a long series of lectures by Professor Dyche when he returned.”