Liberal citizens John Engel and Sarah Thompson take a look at some of the photos in ‘The Tornado of 1933’ photo exhibit on display at the Coronado Museum. The exhibit opened with a special event Sunday, and Coronado Museum Director Nathan Dowell said the idea for the exhibit had been percolating for a while. L&T photo/Elly Grimm

ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

 

May 23, 1933 was a mostly normal day for the people of Liberal.

Late that afternoon, however, the community would forever be changed as a 600-yard wide tornado bore down and caused $750,000 ($18.5 million in today’s money) in damage. Homes, schools and other city buildings would end up being leveled or severely damaged, and five people were killed.

To commemorate the tragedy, the Coronado Museum officially opened 'The Tornado of 1933' exhibit Sunday, and Coronado Museum Director Nathan Dowell said the project has been in the works for a little while.

“This exhibit, 'The Tornado of 1933,' which puts a spotlight on the tornado that hit Liberal in 1933 as recovery efforts from the Dust Bowl were starting, has been up and out in various forms for a while, but it's only been rather recently when we were able to get everything officially put together into a cohesive piece,” Dowell said. “It's going to be up in the museum for the next few months, and we hosted its opening Sunday, and along with the photos, it also included special introductions from Iowa State University professors Pamela Riney-Kehrberg and Julie Courtwright (who have some unique connections to Kansas and studying history) as well as some stories from the tornado. We started getting the first pictures shortly before our Haunted Oz event, and then Haunted Oz happened, followed by the Thanksgiving holiday a few weeks later, and there's been a lot of other work going on, so our plans for the opening were slightly delayed. Lidia Gray had come to me about doing this exhibit this past summer, and that led to the idea of reaching out to the guest professors and everything else, and it took a little while to actually pin down a good time to officially open everything to the community. But everything's fallen into place now, and we're really excited to show this part of Liberal's history here.”

With the tornado being such a big part of Liberal’s history, Dowell said he hopes many in the community will visit the museum and take the chance to learn about what happened that day.

“This is a really cool mixture of the big picture of history people get excited about as far as the Dust Bowl and how terrible everything was back then in terms of the weather and economic situation as well as the history of tornadoes in Kansas,” Dowell said. “It's a mixture of all of that plus the more personal and local history from some people whose families were there when the tornado ripped through the town. There are multiple families in Liberal who have stories from their ancestors from that time and have that connection, and it's always interesting hearing about those firsthand accounts. I think this will be a really awesome exhibit because it gives everyone not just a glimpse of the images of the destruction, but there are also many local stories from people that can be seen as revival and recuperation. It's a very interesting time because Liberal was already going through the same hard times as the rest of the country because of the Great Depression, and then the tornado hit and compounded everything, and it happened in a time before Kansas had a set disaster relief plan in place for such a situation. In spite of all of that, however, this community and some of the surrounding communities came together to help with the recovery efforts.”

Dowell added the idea for the exhibit had been percolating before he came on board as the museum director.

“Lidia had had the idea for a really long time, and I think everything just fell into place for us to be able to put this exhibit together and make it a reality for her. Lidia had the photos and a lot of the information and stories, and she knew other people in the community with more stories, so it was a matter of the pieces just falling into the right place at the right time,” Dowell said. “We would have liked to maybe had it earlier, but due to our main exhibit room being out of commission due to a burst pipe for a while, this was a great way to reopen that room. The majority of the exhibit is photos, but we do have some debris/artifacts that were found and are included in this exhibit, which people should think is cool. It'll be great having this all put together, and it should be a great educational experience for everyone who comes through and looks at it.”

Dowell said he thinks the exhibit will be a rather unique educational opportunity for the community.

“I think it'll be interesting to hear the different conversations and perspectives people have. Like I said earlier, there are many families still in Liberal who have stories from their ancestors, and there are many others in the surrounding area who have been the victim(s) of a tornado or other disaster situation, so it'll be interesting to see and hear the conversations that arise,” Dowell said. “I also find it interesting hearing from tourists who stop by because most of them, since they know 'The Wizard of Oz,' they actually ask 'Is this THE tornado from that story?' We have to tell them it's not THAT tornado, but it's a local tornado that happened to rip through what's now considered Dorothy's home that happened to occur in that same decade.”

Overall, Dowell said, he is excited to finally have the exhibit up and running.

“We're very, very excited about this exhibit, and people should be on the lookout for some of our future exhibits, because they're going to be really, really neat,” Dowell said. “I can't quite say what they are yet since there are still some details being finalized, but they'll be really neat and something we haven't had until very recently. We want 'The Tornado of 1933' to be the start of bringing our rotating exhibits back, and we have some really neat ideas for following that up. Come out and see 'The Tornado of 1933' and then keep an eye out for what we'll be up to in the future.”

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