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It's time for Positively Kansas, tonight.

Hard to believe ten years have passed by in some ways, and then in other ways, it seems like a lifetime ago.

There's never been a transformation like this.

It's been ten years since Greensburg was virtually wiped off the map.

Now it's been reborn as the most cutting edge small town in Kansas.

It's Greensburg a decade later, coming up, and.

It's a humbling experience, and I think that that's why I really enjoy it is the fact that you're not in control.

And, and all you can do is just sit back and watch.

Severe weather is a way of life in Kansas, and this Harper man is capturing the power and spectacle of those storms on video.

We'll check out his amazing time lapse footage coming up.

Also.

You have to be very careful when you're touching things in art pictures when the color is touching each other.

This young Wichita man is showing that autism is no barrier to creating amazing art.

See what he draws and find out about his next challenge, plus.

Chapman shoots, score!

They were the only major league sports team Wichita has ever had, and they took the city by storm in the 1980s.

We'll take a look back and find out why the Wichita Wings are being talked about once again.

Im Sierra Scott, those stories and many more coming your way.

Positively Kansas starts right now.

It's now been ten years.

A decade since one of the most powerful storms the world has ever seen engulfed the entire town of Greensburg, destroying absolutely everything in its path.

The Greensburg story has never been about the tragedy of that night.

Greensburgs story has always been about pulling together, overcoming and rebuilding.

Ten years later, that's more obvious than ever.

Justin Kraemer has our story.

Hidden by rain, in the dark of night.

One of the most terrifying tornadoes to ever sweep across Kansas slowly churned its way towards Greensburg.

Boy, I sure hate to tell you this, friends, but it looks like that thing is right on top of Greensburg.

So your time is up.

You need to be in your shelter right now.

Two miles wide with twisting winds topping 200 miles an hour, the storm left almost nothing behind when it slammed into town.

95% of Greensburg gone in seconds.

You didn't know where you were.

There were no landmarks.

It was hard to figure out what street was what ,and you see, they painted right there, Main Street.

When the sun rose in the morning, residents saw the damage was devastating.

Only two buildings in the town of 1400 people were left standing.

Every home was heavily damaged or just destroyed.

We didn't know where to go.

We didn't know what to do.

Confusion quickly turned to conviction.

Step by step, cleaning up the mess and rebuilding their town from the rubble.

Was never even a second thought.

You know, we were ready to just get in cleanup and get going.

Erica Goodman ran the antique store in town after she and her husband moved to Greensburg from Las Vegas.

Hard to believe ten years have passed by in some ways, and then in other ways, it seems like a lifetime ago.

She ran for city council and won, and decided to move her antique store into the only building on Main Street that survived the storm.

You know, and it became home.

And that's what it boiled down to.

We love the community.

We loved Kansas, so we were going to stay.

It was that attitude that kept Greensburg from vanishing off the map.

While half the town did leave, half stayed.

Not only rebuilding, but rebranding with an idea that got the town international attention.

What if your community literally disappeared?

As Greensburg rebuilt, they built green.

No.

Where else on earth will you find more eco friendly buildings per person than in Greensburg, Kansas.

They saw a new beginning, not only for them, but for all of us.

And with this plan came more headlines, more cameras, and even a reality TV series on Discovery.

Produced by one of the most famous movie stars on the planet, Leonardo DiCaprio.

At the time, you just you can't fully put it into perspective.

And so, yeah, so five, ten years down the road, you look back on it and you say, wow, that was crazy.

Cassie gamble spent her senior year of high school taking classes out of FEMA trailers, while being followed around by TV cameras.

The more I think about it lately, I think about how much of it was just kind of shocked the whole time.

That's just how I dealt with everything.

I think to get through it.

Was it just half the time it didn't even seem real.

Like many from this small town, Cassie is a person who values her privacy and has mixed feelings about the attention.

But she knows without it her home town likely wouldn't have had the chance to rebuild.

Ten years gives you a lot of perspective.

Before the tornado, Greensburg used its big well to draw tourists off highway 54 to bring extra income into town.

Now, the Big Well houses a museum telling the story of the tornado and Greensburg rebirth, snagging a steady stream of tourists driving through.

Oh, I think it's fantastic.

I almost didn't come in, but I'm glad we did.

Tourism Director Stacy Barnes says attendance remains strong at the big well, five years now after it reopened.

We see this as a great opportunity to update people and where we are today.

Interest around the globe also remains high in Greensburg.

Story.

The town uniquely offers valuable information about how well green tech has been holding up over the last ten years.

Now that we are 510 years since a lot of these buildings have been built, people want to know how is it working out, how is it performing?

And you know, nothing's perfect.

And we will offer that answer to anyone that you know.

Of course, nothing's perfect.

We didn't get it all right.

But we've learned a lot.

Green tours are a popular attraction, and you get preferred parking if you drive an eco friendly car.

But scattered around some of the most amazing buildings in Kansas.

Empty lots and for sale signs.

Some sitting out so long.

The number to call to buy the property has long since faded away.

Half the town stayed to rebuild, but half left and never came back.

The population has remained at 800 since the tornado.

Greensburgs biggest challenge over the next ten years will be bringing more jobs to town.

And the tornado has made that task even more difficult.

We don't have old buildings, so if a business wants to come in, it's going to require us to to build a new site which has some high costs.

While the new downtown business incubator has seen some success creating new shops, services and jobs.

The business park on the edge of town remains empty.

City leaders say for Greensburg to survive decades into the future, the town will need to figure out some way to grow.

But one thing about Greensburg they dug by hand into the earth further than anyone ever did, and then built up their town when no one thought they could.

Kansans here have experience making impossible things happen for Positively Kansas, I'm Justin Kraemer.

Greensburg continues to add attractions with a new sculpture memorial, as well as free tandem bicycles to use for touring the town.

Nothing rivals the power and spectacle of severe weather, and here in Kansas, we have plenty of it.

Take a look at some of this time lapse video shot by Jacob Walter of Harper.

Walter has been chasing and photographing storms for several years.

My prime primary goal is to shoot it cinematically and to show a storm a way that it's never been seen before.

A lot with my time lapse you can see a lot of great motion in there, and I take really high quality stuff.

So you can see the clouds building the movement of the storm.

The building of the rain shaft and or the hail or the tornado.

When severe storms are in the forecast.

Walter takes off in his Toyota Corolla and figures out just where to go, and where to stop to set up to get the best view.

Then he decides where to point the camera, start snapping pictures, and lets Mother Nature do her thing.

But typically the average is, I will take a photo every 1 to 5 seconds, over the course of about an hour or an hour and a half.

So over about an hour and a half span, I have about 8 or 8 seconds worth of usable footage.

Walter says he's always been fascinated by the unstoppable nature of weather and the way it moves so deliberately across the sky.

I live in a small town, USA, you know, and Harper and and we have plenty of storms per year.

We live in Tornado Alley, so it's kind of a part of our community.

So even from the get go, that was a part of my life.

And storms scare me.

I mean, you know, I and to this day, I still do.

It's a humbling experience, and I think that that's why I really enjoy it.

Is the fact that you're not in control, and, and all you can do is just sit back and watch.

If you'd like to see more of Walter's stuff, you'll find a link on the Positively Kansas page at KPTS.org.

In these days of such political divisiveness, a Valley Center man is trying to teach his daughter a different way of feeling and behaving.

Actually, he's hoping to have an impact on his entire community and beyond.

And this is how he's doing it.

Matt McCreary is taking his six year old daughter, Addison, out by the Valley Center grain elevator to pick up rocks.

Then they're getting out their paints and turning those rocks into uplifting, inspirational works of art.

It's the simplest of messages.

But it's from a six year old, so, you know, it's whole hearted, you know?

The McCrearys place, the rocks and different spots around town.

For example, the park, the local subway and Larry's Barber shop.

So the whole idea is just, to just paint a rock, hide it, “hide it ”, you know, we put it out in plain sight, and just hopefully create a smile by whatever passer by comes by.

And, you know, especially if they're having a rough day and you never know., just the simplicity of it can.

Yeah.

The simplicity of it can change your day or your week.

It's it's very, very special to you.

Then you can keep it.

Yep.

Otherwise what do you do?

Go out and hide it.

You can go out and hide it.

So you you know, if if you see one, if it has a special message to it that just hit you, otherwise it wouldn't, you know, then you can keep it.

Take it home.

Whatever you'd like to do.

Or if you want to leave it for the next person, you can leave it, or you can go re hide it.

People who come across a rock are encouraged to take a picture and share it on Facebook.

The hashtags on the rocks make it easy to search and track the movement of the rocks around town.

Once you sit down with your kids and they create something like this and you know if it makes you proud, makes you proud.

Matt works at the Valley Center Middle School and has been encouraging students to get involved.

He hopes to work with the school district and the city to create a mural of rocks set in concrete that are painted by students and have that on permanent display somewhere in Valley Center.

You never know what somebody is capable of.

Wichita Teen is demonstrating that people with autism can have talents that are just as amazing as anybody else.

A lot of people go through their whole lives and not really know what what makes them special.

But, you know, for Cole, it was just it's always been art.

At a very young age, Cole Bullock showed signs of being a very gifted artist.

Finding out that he could do these great drawings on the sidewalk is where it all started with sidewalk chalk.

And on nice days, you know, we were always outside with the sidewalk chalk.

You know, he didn't like playing ball and all that.

He would be, even if we were outside and the kids were out doing something else, he'd be over there just laying on the sidewalk drawing these, these little masterpieces, and our neighbors would come by and go, “Wow, who did that?

” And I'd be like, Cole did it.

Some people thought it was all the more amazing, given the fact that Cole was diagnosed with autism at age five.

His mom says Cole's story should be a lesson for how families, schools and society view people with autism.

You know, when kids are, labeled with a certain disability, like, not that it's the school's fault, and I think it's great that, you know, they help kids, but I think they like to just push them into certain things and they don't, you know.

There's theres something great about everybody, I think, and a lot of kids that have a disability, some sort of, label, they, you know, put them in some menial kind of task, and I just didn't want that to ever happen with him.

I wanted to find out what it was that his gift was.

You know, like, through the schools and things, they'll have them stocking shelves or sacking groceries or, you know, doing some kind of a maintenance job.

Whereas I know that a lot of these kids have some gift.

And, and I'm lucky, and I think he's lucky because I have a spouse that supports me and and gives me the time and, the, ability to, to help him.

Some of the most in-demand prints of Cole's work include WuShock and the Kansas Jayhawk.

People just started going, I want one, you know, responding, please, how do I get one?

And so that's kind of what started the the whole, Facebook page and just showing people some of his other work.

So now at age 19, drawing has become Cole's career.

He's taking art classes at Wichita State to experiment with painting and other mediums.

Meanwhile, he keeps cranking out these oil pastels.

Now, Cole tends to draw things he likes, including dogs, and I am making sure that the blue doesn't touch the the inside of the dog.

You have to be very careful when you're touching things in art pictures when the color is touching each other.

With Cole being such a great artist, the obvious question is, does that talent run in the family?

Well, I can draw and I. I mean, mom doesn't really know anything about art.

Okay but I can, like, I used to draw Disney figures for him and I, you know, I, I can't do what he does.

So Cole is doing all the artwork for their children's book the two are collaborating on.

It's based on something he first wondered about when he was little.

What if your lips were made of chocolate?

As I thought about it, I thought, well, that would make a cool book and it's something that we can do together.

So I wrote the words and he drew the pictures.

This one is called, “No more wiping off kisses from your grandma or Aunt Betty.

Right now they're looking for a publisher, but whether the book takes off or not, Cole is establishing himself as a gifted artist and an example of what's possible., no matter what label you carry in life, Cole has a great Facebook page that anybody can look at.

You can keep up to date on his latest projects there and see photos of his work.

You can find the link on the Positively Kansas page at KPTS.org.

When you think of huge crowds of excited sports fans in Wichita, you think of the Shockers.

But there was a time when the city had another team that was just as popular.

It was the only major league professional team Wichita has ever had, and it's back in the news.

Jim Grawe is here to explain.

If you're not old enough or were not around Wichita in the 1980s and early 90s, you may not be familiar with this part of the city's history.

It was a time when the fastest growing sport in America had taken Wichita by storm and right there on national television was a team called the Wichita Wings.

Fast paced and action packed.

There was a time when indoor soccer was the hottest ticket in Wichita.

One of the most exciting things I've ever witnessed.

It sort of just grab me up, and I just wanted to get involved more and more.

Best thing ever happened to Wichita.

We don't miss a game.

Fans dressed in team colors of orange and blue raise the roof off the jam packed Kansas Coliseum for every game.

Chapman shoots.

Scores!

He scores!

Chapman has won it for the Wichita Wings!.

Wichita appeared on a national sports stage.

Finally a major league city.

It's unbelievable.

The idea of a team in Wichita that's competing against New York City, LA, Chicago, Houston.

It was such a big deal.

because of that.

The Wichita Wings took off in 1979 and soared in what was the nation's premier professional soccer league.

Let's get some music.

Let's get some disco lights.

Let's get some cheerleaders.

Let's make this a big event.

They made the playoffs their first year.

Tim O'Bryhim and Michael Romalis wrote a book about this team which holds a unique, powerful, and endearing place in Wichita sports history.

And conjures many glorious memories.

Professionally its the most important franchise in Wichita history by far.

Because they were the first major league professional team in Wichita.

The Major Indoor Soccer League was, the highest level of soccer in North America in the 1980s.

The Wings, in a lot of ways, it was my childhood.

My family went to our first game in November of 1982.

It was opening night.

I had never been I had never been taken to an event like that in my young life.

The Kansas Coliseum, sea of orange blue scream loud.

I couldn't believe what my parents were doing to me.

My my ears were just popped by then.

But it began a love affair that lasted through my elementary school years until my early high school years.

If you saw me at a game in the 80s, chances are I was wearing this very hat.

I think we got the hat originally sometime in about 1982 or 83, but over the years a lot of my allowance money went to buying all these little pins and I would put them on the hat.

The hat was originally called a hat trick hat.

Hence it's kind of round like a frisbee.

When a player would score three goals, in a game, you would throw the hat onto the field and they would collect them, and then you could go down to the wings ticket office, a couple days later and pick it out of a bin and hope it was there.

My name is still in there, in fact, from when I wrote my name in there so I could claim it again.

But yes, this.

But it wasn't.

But I wasn't the only one that had such a hat.

It was a popular thing to buy a hat, and you know, you'd go to the souvenir stand and they, they would have a display of little pins.

So you'd have wings, pins and orange army pins.

The Orange Army was another name to the thousands of diehard fans who packed into the Coliseum for every game.

Live from the Kansas Coliseum in Wichita.

The Central Division final, the Wichita Wings, host the Houston summit.

The wings made the playoffs almost every season in the early years.

2 to 1 The wings lead it, Barton back on the return and rebound in front.

Chapman is there a drive and a goal!

But it wasn't just winning games that made them so popular.

The wings didn't just play for Wichita.

They were part of Wichita.

They're involved in almost every phase of community activity that I can think of.

They they're tremendous.

They go around all the schools and for soccer clinics and and communities like Newton Hutchinson, Augusta, El Dorado run soccer clinics all year.

And they they have done it for the past two years.

And the kids just love when they come out.

And it's very different to go to a school yard.

And it used to be all your heroes were in New York, Miami or anywhere else in the world but here and now you go out there and everybody wants to be Jimmy Ryan, Norman Piper, Mike Dowler, whoever they want to be somebody that plays right here and right in their own town.

I think when we were growing up, we all had heroes.

But it's nice to know the heroes.

You know, you don't get to know the the players like George Brett or Hal McRae or somebody like that.

But here you get to know the players, they know you by name.

And even at my age, I still enjoy it.

Despite their popularity, the team never made a profit.

After all, these were the world's best soccer players.

They earned six figure salaries, but the team's owners, who included Pizza Hut founder Frank Carney, were not in it to make money.

If you were anybody in Wichita, you owned a piece of wings when people would invest in the wings, a lot of times it was like investing in the opera.

When you make a donation to the opera, you don't really expect a return and that's the way they kind of approached it with people.

They said, look, this is good for the city of Wichita.

It brings us publicity nationwide.

But this is not something that you're probably going to make money on.

Wichita has taken a one nothing lead.

The owners were happy.

The fans were happy.

So what happened?

Later in the 80s and into the early 90s, the MISL, no longer had a national television contract.

Turns out many of the teams in other cities were not as popular, and national TV ratings lagged.

They had been on USA network and on ESPN when they lost that contract, they lost a lot of the, you know, you know, publicity nationwide, fewer people started going to games.

and then it became sort of like, the ball rolling down the hill.

The best players started moving over to America's new outdoor soccer league that formed in 1993.

That quickly became the majors indoor soccer League was suddenly the minors.

The Wings lasted another eight years.

By the time the team folded in 2001, it was the longest running professional soccer franchise in U.S. history.

It was a pretty good accomplishment for Wichita.

Now, all that's left of Wichitas only major league sports team are some aging players and coaches who still live in town.

Some old souvenirs and many memories.

But for many people, those memories are glorious ones.

And O'Bryhim and Romalis say the story of the wings is about more than just soccer.

This is such an important part of Wichita's history in the 1980s, because it really I mean, the story of the wings is the story of Wichita coming together to support this local, soccer team that did wonderful things on a national stage.

It's a moment in time in Wichita's history where I think it brought out the best in this city, because the wings, it was a community effort.

It needed everybody's involvement.

One of the goals with our book was to show, you know, what this city was capable of.

And, you know, why can't it be capable of something similar in the future, whether it has to do with a sports team or anything else that this city could get by.

O'Bryhim and Romalis are now making a documentary about the Wichita Wings.

Meanwhile, their book called “Make This Town Big ” is available at local bookstores and online.

That's all for this week.

You can email me at jgrawe@kpts.org.

That's jgrawe@kpts.org with your story ideas.

See you next time.

Thank you Jim, and thank you for joining us, on the next positively Kansas.

Kansas used to be the land of Teetotalers.

The home of Carrie Nation, the birthplace of prohibition.

The times are changing.

The number of beer breweries in the Wichita area has exploded recently.

You'll find out why.

And who doesn't love a good magic trick?

Well visit this master illusionist in Derby who's now teaching his tricks of the trade to a new generation.

Those are just some of the stories you'll see next time.

I'm Cierra Scott, thanks for watching.

Brought to you by Central Security Group, your experts in home automation, security and peace of mind.

View video on your smartphone and control your home's lights, locks, heating, cooling and more.

Security app compatible with Apple Watch and Amazon Echo.

The preceding program was brought to you by tz productions, offering 40 years of media experience.