There are certain dates and events that are indelibly engraved in our personal and national psyche.

November 22, 1963.

September 11, 2001.

And for many Kansans, another such date is June 8, 1966.

The tornado traveled a total distance of 22 miles, and it traveled eight miles through the heart of the city of Topeka.

It touched down at about 6:50 p.m., four miles south and a half mile east of Dover, Kansas.

It lifted just east of Billard Airport at 7:20 p.m.. 550 people were injured and 16 died.

Approximately 820 homes or businesses were destroyed and 3000 more were damaged.

An estimated 4500 people were left homeless.

More than 10,000 vehicles were totaled, with dollar losses pegged at $100 million, which is 662 million in today's dollars, the Topeka storm became by far the most destructive tornado in U.S. history.

Our Inside the Cover show featuring the book And Hell Followed With It by Bonar Menninger, initially aired on November 11, 2023.

We are excited for this opportunity for a continued discussion with Mr. Menninger on thi expanded edition of our program.

Bonar Menninge is a native of Topeka, Kansas.

In addition t And Hell Followed With It, Mr. Menninger is the author of Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK, which was published by St Martin's Press in 1992.

Menninger earned a degree in journalis from the University of Kansas.

He has worked for a range of publications, both on staf and as a freelancer, since 1984.

He has done investigative reporting for the Kansas City Business Journal and the Washington Business Journal and also has covere general business and health care for numerous online and print publications.

When I asked Mr. Menninger for additional biographical information, he replied, ‘I grew up in Topeka, currently live in Kansas City.

I'm a freelance health care writer.

I'm married and have one grown daughter.

I like to ski, ride motorcycles and cut firewood.

I can see that he is modest to the point and that we have a couple of things in common.

And Hell Followed With It was published in 2011 and is subtitled ‘Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado.

And however chilling, that certainly is an accurate descriptor.

As I noted in our initial program, I found this boo to be extremely well researched, well-written and a very important read.

I am so excited to have Bonar Menninger in the Sarachek studi with us tonight and I'm anxious to learn more about him and his writing career.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

Bonar, welcome to our show.

We're so glad to have you.

Thanks so much for having me.

And I want to give our viewers a little bit of context about the topic of our conversation.

And that, of course, is the Topeka, the tornado that struck Topeka on June 8, 1966.

And just to set the stage and this information is from your book, The tornado traveled a total distance of 22 miles, and it traveled throug the heart of the city of Topeka.

It touched down at about 6:50 p.m., four miles south and a half mile east of Dover, Kansas.

It lifted just east of Billard Airport at 7:20 p.m..

It was on the ground for 30 minutes.

550 people were injured and 16 died.

Approximately 820 homes or businesses were destroyed and 3000 more were damaged.

An estimated 4500 people were left homeless and more than 10,000 vehicles were totaled, with the dollar losses pegged at $100 million, which would be $662 million in 2011.

The Topeka storm became by far the most destructive tornado in U.S. histor and would remain so until passed by the Lubbock, Texas, tornado of May 1970.

In 2011, it still ranked fifth in terms of destructiv tornadoes in the United States.

And in a prio conversation, Bonar, you told me that you were eight and a half at the time of this tornado.

And as life would have it, you were out of town with your family.

So tell us where you were and how you learned about the tornado.

Yeah, we were in Gettysburg, of all places.

We were.

On vacation.

We just left two days befor we were headed for New England.

And my dad called his parents just to check in.

And it just so happened they were in the basement.

The tornado was just coming into the city and they said, we got to go.

And so we looked at the paper and obviously saw what had happened the next morning and then, you know, spen another month up in New England.

We had a little summer cabin up there, but obviously I was anxious to get back to Topeka and frankly, kind of disappointed that I missed it.

It came about a mile and a half, two miles from our house.

So it kind of cut down through the fields that we played in along the Shunga Creek and into the neighborhood where I went to elementary school.

I knew of friends whose homes were damaged or destroyed.

And, you know, it was a big deal.

It was when you're that age everything is sort of amplified, particularly something like a tornado that's just beyond comprehension.

So s I was always interested in it.

Well, that's going to lead to another question I have.

But your family home was not damaged.

No.

All over Topeka, southwest Topeka.

You know, for years there were shingles.

And in fact, we used to whip them at each other because they were just they just blown up and scattered into the everybody's yard.

But there was no structural damage to our home.

But there was always little tells, you know, for years.

And your grandparents there?

They they were unscathed.

They were about a half mile from Washburn University.

And fortunately, it was moving away on the east side of the campus from them.

This is not part of my planned questioning.

But did you have an opportunit to visit with your grandparents about their experience?

Yeah.

You know, to the extent that an eight year old kid can, I mean, they were long gone when I was working on the book, I wish I would have had opportunity to talk to them about that and a lot of other things.

But you know how that goes.

I do.

I do.

Well, and that's a great then jumping point.

I never claime math was one of my skills, but I think some 37 years later you come to this book.

So why and really what was your motivation that much later to write this book?

You know, I'd written a book in ‘92 and it was a great experience and and I'd gotten into freelance writing and reporting and had worked away and sort of, you know, done what I'd been asked to do.

But I wanted to write something that I would really enjoy doing.

And the 40th anniversar of the 66 tornado was in ‘06.

And, you know, that summer, I it dawned on me, well, these people are all, you know, aging out.

And and before too long, a lot of them will be gone.

And, you know, this is a story I should write.

You want a book?

Here's one to write.

You know, it's right in front of you.

Like I said, always been fascinated by the tornado and anybody growing up in Kansas, I was intereste in severe weather, I think, and and it was a chanc to write about Kansas history, which is something that I love.

And, you know, I think I don't know if you've ever seen that John Steuart Curry mura at the Capitol with John Brown.

Oh, absolutely.

Who hasn't seen that?

Yeah, but, you know, I think as a kid, I was like, wow, tornado, Yankee, rebel soldier, John Brown, you know, wagons.

I mean, Kansas kind of gets in your in your heart, in your in your soul.

And so I wanted to I wanted to write about that.

And so I just the most serendipitous thing was because it was the 40th anniversary, the Topeka Public Library had solicited all these first person oral, you know where were you in the tornado?

What happened to you?

And they had a stack of these about 150 deep.

That was in conjunction with the 40th?

Yeah.

So I went in there in the fall of ‘06, and I was like, ‘Well, look at this.

And I find a name and I, you know, track them down in the phone book.

As long as it was an unusual name, if it was like Jones or Smith, it was a little harder, but.

Yeah, right.

But that's where I found all these incredible stories.

It was.

So I would just go down one day a week to Topeka and and try to interview three people.

And I did that for about a year and then sort of work my way across the city.

Well, I was interested in that, obviously, because, you know, so many years later, to me, it would be a daunting task to try to go back and recollect and refresh and put down on paper.

The Topeka Library really helped you.

Did you have Bonar, a specific game plan or how were you organized based on your approach or did you do it just what came to you?

Know what, a guy told me once, you know, he was a writer and when I was writing my first book, he goes, ‘you know, you got to just kind of bur your brain out on the outline.

You got to really, really bear down because if you start writing before you know where you're going, you won't get there.

And so I spent a lot of time organizing it and sort of divided into sections and then interviewing people for each of those section and sort of closing those little battlegrounds and so it I had a good plan and I just tried to execute on it and, you know once I'd knock a section down.

But, you know, the thing about reporting is you can report til the cows come home, but sooner or later you got to start writing it down.

And I was kind of like, okay, man, it's time to, you know, want to write a book.

You better start writing it.

So how long did the writing, the research and the writing process, how long did it take you?

I think I started writing...

I thin I started writing in the spring.

I think I was like this full on reporting for about six or nine months and then back up in ‘07, maybe fall of 07, I don't know, somewhere in there.

But, you know, it wa it was time to to get started.

You know, writing a book is like walking across the United States, and you got to make sure that you just keep moving or you're never going to get there.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah.

You know, and you got to g a lot to cover a lot of ground.

But it's so fascinating when you immerse yourself in something like this.

It was almost like I was living in 1966.

I mean, you know, the music that I just it was kind of a strange feeling.

It's like, okay, I got to get back into where I'm living right now and keep trying to make it real and bring it to life.

Well, thank you so much, becaus that's the kind of information I love.

And I think our viewers love that really get into the mind and the process of a writer of a successful book.

And remind our viewers that, you know, I said it on my earlier show that you write with sensitivit and you do not sensationalize.

And the book covers so many topics.

I mean, you talk about the history of Topeka, the anatomy of a tornado, the history of storm prediction and weather alerts, and also with probably most touching strength and determination o the average citizen in crisis.

Right.

And, you know, tell us about your conversation with these people who lived through this was a difficult day.

Were they forthcoming?

Did you have to prompt or you'd set the stage and they'd talk?

You know, it's interesting.

Some of them had never talked about it before.

And I came to I knew I mean, I knew intellectually that you got to be sensitive.

You got to be careful.

Oh, absolutely.

But that became clear to m when I started talking to people and they'd say, you know ‘I've never told anyone this, bu and then they' start getting really emotional.

And I realized that this memory, you know, memories don't have a half life.

They just are there.

And they get if they're too horrible or difficult a memory, they get walled off.

But if you kind of access that, then it's just it's just as real as it wa the day it happened to them.

And it was intense.

And I would come out of these interviews and I'd be kind of like reeling from just the trauma that these people experienced or, you know, the fear or or just more, more often than not just amazed at their their ability to think quickly and make good decisions.

And that was something that fascinated me.

How do you respond and when you know it's do or die?

And in most cases, peopl would make the right judgment.

But then they you know, they like one guy said, you know, tha he worked nightshift at Goodyear and his wife woke him up and she said, come on, there's a tornado coming.

We got to go.

So he gets the baby and they get in his Chevelle and they go down the street to a community center and it's locked.

And he's like, Well, okay.

So they go back the other wa and they turn onto Gage Street.

And the tornado's right there.

It just as big as life because they've been going along this tree line and they turn and it's there.

And he kept going.

He goes and he told himself You idiot, you're driving right toward it.

This is what he' telling himself in the moment.

So they pull over, they skid off to the edge of the road and they bail out and they slide down this bank and get under a bridge in the Shunga Creek.

And, you know, he said the noise was like it just was so loud.

He said it was like carpet bombing.

It was like boom-boom-boom.

And he said, you get that scared and everything slows down and you're afraid you're going to lose control of your bodily functions.

And he just like you're going to die.

And so many people would tell me that.

And, you know, I was like, wow, okay, man.

Like one woman said, you know, they were looking out the window and she goes and she looked at her husband and goes, ‘Tornado's coming, we're going to die.

And he's like, ‘I know.

How did you keep yourself emotionally uninvolved?

I mean, I just let the tape recorder run and I just let them talk and just ask them, you know, really, ‘what was that like?

You know?

But but again, on the other side of it, I was kind of, you know, those conversations, they have an impact.

I had dreams at night about it.

I bet.

But it was great because it was lik I captured what I wanted to get.

Well, and, you know, one of th things that I thought, there's so many individual stories in your book and again about so many different topics.

But I thought that you really captured people's personalities and their feelings that came across in the book.

I wanted to make sure that that people could connect with these people or, you know, what's the point?

I had a good friend, a write in Kansas City, Merrily Jackson.

She said, Bonar, if you do this book, just remember it's about people, you know, ultimately that's what people care about is people and what what they went through and how they think and how they live.

So I always ask people, you know, Id spend 10 minutes or 50 minutes, just ‘what do you do for wor and where did you go to school?

And and I love that in the book.

And ‘what kind of car did you drive?

‘I had a push button 62 Dodge Dart.

It's like, okay, ‘what color was it?

You know, and just get those details about who they are.

And then you're much mor as a reader, much more inclined to invest in their story because I feel like, you know them a little bit but you know, as a writer, I didn't want to waste people's time.

I have so much respect for readers, and I kind of felt like there was always this impatient, really intelligent person.

‘Yeah.

Okay, okay.

But, you know, where is this going?

You know so you always have this feeling like you got to keep on the pipe, so to speak, and keep the thing moving and keep it rocking along and not fall off into digressions or not get self-- You know, you know, ‘as I'll point out later or as previously... you know, self reference, right.

You know, it's just it' all about respecting the reader.

At leas that's how I feel.

Were there...

I mean, there's so much we could talk about, Bonar And our time is limited.

Were there stories of about people that you definitively left out for a reason?

You know, there was a young boy that was very badly wounded, injured.

And, you know, one of the things that made me want to do this was tha I knew there was this incredible repository of photographs that the Capital-Journal had put together.

And I said, man, if I can get those photos, I can write this book.

And and one of the photos was this young-- I remember, that boy coming t the hospital covered in blood.

Well, this is a different one.

He was in the back of a station wagon and they were getting him out of there.

Anyway, he didn't make it.

And I wrote his folks and I said, you know, ‘I don't know if you want me to use that picture just so people understand what your son went through or if you don't, you know, either way, it's your call.

And they said, ‘we appreciate it, but thank you, if you would just leave that out.

‘Okay.

So that was you know, that wa the one time where I felt like that was an intrusio because that paper, that picture had run for years.

And it's like, well, there's, you know that's coming back bad memories.

Yeah.

That's a hard thing for a parent.

Well, let's talk about that because-- the cover of the boo and we'll show the folks at home this is the book we're talking about, ‘featuring award winning photos from the Topeka Capital Journal.

And I just recently looked back through those.

Those photographs are stunning.

I now they're like-- You've talked about one you didn't put in.

Were there are others that you didn't put in?

No, I tried to get all of them in there becaus I thought they were all so good.

You know, they had the award winning photography staff and they all deployed right after.

And, you know, there was not I mean, they were takin pictures in the emergency room, you know, which is probably something you couldn't get away with today.

But that series, this these picture that were taken from Countryside Christian church up on Wanamake Road as a tornado's coming in, you know, this is before videos, before phone video.

And it's incredible to watch, to look at those pictures and realiz this is what people were seeing.

And, you know, you can see people running for cover in the foreground and it's intense.

So that's the one I put on the cover.

The pictures, I mean, again, they're the pictures showing in a single photograph, human emotion, of despair.

But there are some that show determination, but the illustration of damage is just spectacular.

Yeah.

You know, one thing one thin about writing a book like this, you think you know what you're going to learn, and then you suddenly realize there's a lot of things you didn't know that are going to become part of the story.

And and one of those probabl the most interesting aspect, at least for me, was that, you know, this was an F-5 that went through a major metropolitan area.

It only killed 16 people.

Well, as it turns out, Topeka had probably without doubt, the most advanced tornado-preparedness culture system structure in the United States.

And that was due to one man, Richard Garrett who was the head of the office of the National Weather Bureau in Topeka.

And he, since the fifties, had made i his mission to-- since the Udall the terrible tornad in Udall in ‘55-- He had made it his mission to make sure that that there was spotters, that law enforcement and media communicated properly, that that, you know, citizens were aware what to do and that the sirens would be part of this.

So he was way out front and it was almost like, you know, he did all this work.

And then the test, you know, the day of reckoning came and the tornado came through.

And it's just a remarkable story about one man's vision and the success and how many lives he saved.

Well, and that' a wonderful part of the story.

And of course, again, we could highlight so many different things.

Bonar, the whole Bill Kurtis story and what was it?

‘God sakes, take shelter.

Bill Kurtis was a WIBW TV anchor and his wife lived in student housing over by Washburn and, you know, he was like, he always told her, ‘well if anything comes up, you know, real bad, I'll call you.

Don't worry about it.

But he was on the air and he couldn't really break away and call her, and he said, you know, he heard that the tornado go over gone over the Burnett's Mound heading for the southwest edge of town was chewing through these big apartments and was headed for Washburn.

And and he said, you know, ‘tornado's coming across southwest Topeka, for God sakes, take cover, you know, which is not in today's parlance, not that big a deal.

But back then, everybody was so much more staid, much more Walter Cronkite kind of mode.

And so it was a ‘what did he say?

You know, and I it's amazin how many people I talked to said ‘when he said that man I got, you know, I went ahead and-- I know, it's a classic part of the news production.

Right.

And I didn't realize it.

But you pointed out that Kurtis was a law student, graduate law student studying for the bar and already had a job.

And was it going to be television or was it going to be the law?

Right.

And your information about Chief Burnett and that all the mystique of Burnett's Mound is just fascinating.

Yeah, that was another story.

I had no idea I was going to stumble int in that the story of the Indians in Kansas and the Northern Tribes, The Woodlands, Algonquin and Sac and Fox and Huron that were relocated to Kansas, the 1830 Indian Removal Act.

I didn't know that.

I didn't know why Pottawatomie were in Kansas when they were from up in the Great Lakes region.

But they just kind of like the Trail of Tears.

But this was fo the Northern Tribes, and that's how Potawatomi got here.

And that's why Chief Burnett was was a figure in early Topeka history.

And I love learning about him and, you know, Bonar, this has been a fascinating conversation and we're running out of time.

What I wanted to do, because it struck me as such a powerful few words that you wrote about.

So I'm going to close with this quotation from page 18 of the book.

‘For men and women, young and old, rich and poor, memories of all that preceded June 8 soon would be locked behind a barrier of new recollections, images, sounds and emotions shot through with unimaginable violence and terror.

And I think that captures so much.

Bonar, thank you for bein on our show, great conversation.

Appreciate your book.

And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching.

We'll see you next time on Inside the Cover.