The art of storytelling is in almost everything we touch - even the weather.
Frank Waugh is a meteorologist at KAKE-TV. He and filmmaker Lester Rowe recently produced a short film, “Echoes of the Storm.” It recounts the 1955 Udall tornado in which 80 people died.
Torin Andersen talked with Waugh and Rowe about how they turned weather into art.
Frank Waugh says Paul Threlfall, from Wichita, was the cameraman in Udall that night in 1955.
“His neighbor was the fire chief in Wichita, and he said, “Hey, we're sending units down to Udall.” So Paul found out about it, so he grabbed his camera gear and he goes down there.’ said Waugh.
Threlfall was one of the original hires for KAKE, so it would make sense that the station still had all that original footage — but no. Lester Rowe explains.
“So we are aware of a lot of filming and recording of this moment, but we don't have it,” he said. “We have scripts of it. We have different documentations of it, but we don't have the physical part.”
So where did the film go if it’s not archived at the station?
“In 1955, we were the only TV station that had a … news gathering operation,” said Waugh. “All the major networks, ABC, NBC, CBS in New York, wanted film from Udall. So he said, we cut film. We literally cut it, and we sent it to them without making a copy.”
Some of that original film that was cut then got shipped back to Wichita to be played on other networks’ newscasts.
“Channel 12 here in town has footage that they've aired before that is ours because it's our news director doing the interview,” said Waugh.
Finding the missing Udall film was a creative journey all on its own. It was different from the film the two did on the 1958 tornado in El Dorado.
“So one of the major themes of this, this particular project, more than our others, is, I would say, discovery,” said Rowe. “Because when we did El Dorado, we discovered stuff at the end. This is us discovering stuff in real time.”
Waugh and Rowe had already made a 10-minute film called “Dawn of Doppler” about how Doppler radar came into being after the El Dorado tornado of 1958. At the end of producing that film was when they donned their archivist hats before starting work on “Echoes of the Storm.” Some of their discoveries were just a few feet away from their work area.
“I think we all got collected goosebumps because this is just found we've had a box,” said Rowe.
“We found a folder that just said, ‘Udall disaster’ on it,” said Waugh.
That folder contained many pertinent images that were used in the film. But finding all this stuff, sometimes randomly, can make it hard to understand where the trail is leading.
“We were crafting [a] 1000 piece puzzle that didn't necessarily have a picture on it,” said Rowe.
Rowe and Waugh found a guide post.
“One of our main goals was, can we find this little girl that we talked to back in ‘55,” said Rowe.
Their research turned up images shot by KAKE of a young girl being interviewed.
“Greg Gamer is in a hospital room interviewing this little girl who's 11 years old,” said Rowe. “Her face is all … cut up, and I search her name, and through some research, I found out she was still living. She was here.
“Echoes of the Storm” has interviews with people who were there along with images Waugh and Rowe dug up from the KAKE basement all the way to the state archives in Topeka. Their hard work was rewarded.
“It was very well received,” said Waugh.
All because their aim as journalists is to put you in the seat of their subject.
“Because you can't listen to it and not feel, like, what these people felt,” said Rowe.
