Recalling ‘Cactus’ Jack Call, the Man Patsy Cline Came to KC to Honor
Tribute Show for Country Music DJ Was Cline's Final Performance Share this story Published March 4th, 2021 at 6:00 AM Above image credit: Mildred Keith shot the famous "last photograph" of Patsy Cline. (Contributed | Keith family)
Almost everybody knows the Patsy Cline-comes-to-Kansas City story.
Fewer people know the “Cactus” Jack Call story.
Cline died on March 5, 1963. She and three others, flying in a private plane, crashed in Tennessee on their way home to Nashville from Kansas City. Cline and several other country music stars had performed at three benefit concerts to assist the family of a popular disc jockey who had died from injuries sustained in a Jan. 24, 1963 car accident.
MLK in Kansas City Share this story Published January 18th, 2021 at 6:00 AM Above image credit: During one visit to Kansas City during the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr. sat for an interview with longtime Kansas City broadcaster Walt Bodine and his colleague Bill Griffith. (Courtesy | LaBudde Special Collections, UMKC University Libraries)
She had been sent to get an interview and she would get it, but not without some help. Her assignment: talk to the Black minister, civil rights leader and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner – Martin Luther King, Jr. – who had just flown into Kansas City.
“I saw him in the airport corridor,” said Helen Gray, the first Black woman hired as a reporter by the Kansas City Star-Times.
Harry Trumanâs Christmas Story (Bah Humbug)
Harry Trumanâs Christmas Story (Bah Humbug)
Presidentâs 1945 Christmas Matched Mood of Stressed Nation Share this story Published December 16th, 2020 at 6:00 AM Above image credit: On the day after Christmas in 1945, President Harry Truman emerged from
his Independence home bearing gifts for his cousins across the street. His smile
suggested little of the tension inside the Truman home during the holiday. (Courtesy | Harry S. Truman Library & Museum)
He was the leader of the free world and he would be home for Christmas.
Thatâs what Harry Truman, alone in Washington, decided. In the earliest days of presidential air travel, he authorized a dicey flight through winter storms to Independence on Dec. 25, 1945.