This photo combo shows Katie Posten holding the front and back of a photograph she found stuck to her car's windshield on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021 in New Albany, Ind. The photo is from a tornado-damaged home in Kentucky that landed almost 130 miles away in Indiana. (Katie Posten via AP).
By Mike Schneider
When Katie Posten walked outside Saturday morning to her car parked in her driveway, she saw something that looked like a note or receipt stuck to the windshield.
She grabbed it and saw it was a black and white photo of a woman in a striped sundress and headscarf holding a little boy in her lap. On the back, written in cursive, it said, “Gertie Swatzell & J.D. Swatzell 1942." A few hours later, Posten would discover that the photo had made quite a journey - almost 130 miles (209 kilometers) on the back of monstrous winds.
Posten had been tracking the tornadoes that hit the middle of the U.S. Friday night, killing dozens of people. They came close to where she lives in New Albany, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. So she figured it must be debris from someone's damaged home.
“Seeing the date, I realized that was likely from a home hit by a tornado. How else is it going to be there?" Posten said in a phone interview Sunday morning. “It’s not a receipt. It’s well-kept photo."
So, doing what any 21st century person would do, she posted an image of the photo on Facebook and Twitter and asked for help in finding its owners. She said she was hoping someone on social media would have a connection to the photo or share it with someone who had a connection.
Sure enough, that's what happened.
“A lot of people shared it on Facebook. Someone came across it who is friends with a man with the same last name, and they tagged him,” said Posten, 30, who works for a tech company.
That man was Cole Swatzell, who commented that the photo belonged to family members in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, almost 130 miles (209 kilometers) away from New Albany, as the crow flies, and 167 miles (269 kilometers) away by car. Swatzell on Sunday didn't respond to a Facebook message seeking comment.
In Dawson Springs — a town of about 2,700 people 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Paducah — homes were leveled, trees were splintered and search and rescue teams continued to scour the community for any survivors. Dozens of people across five states were killed.
The fact that the photo traveled almost 130 miles is “unusual but not that unusual,” said John Snow, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma.
In one documented case from the 1920s, paper debris traveled 230 miles from the Missouri Bootheel into southern Illinois. The paper debris rides winds, sometimes reaching heights of 30,000 to 40,000 feet above the ground, he said.
“It gets swirled up,” Snow said. “The storm dissipates and then everything flutters down to the ground.”
Posten wasn't alone in finding family photos and school pictures that had traveled dozens of miles in the tornadoes' paths. A Facebook group was set up after the storms so people could post photos and other items like an ultrasound image they had found deposited in their yards.
Posten plans to return the photo to the Swatzell family sometime this week.
“It’s really remarkable, definitely one of those things, given all that has happened, that makes you consider how valuable things are — memories, family heirlooms, and those kinds of things,” Posten said. “It shows you the power of social media for good. It was encouraging that immediately there were tons of replies from people, looking up ancestry records, and saying ‘I know someone who knows someone and I’d like to help.’”
Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Kimberly Paige at TV network BET joined Cheddar News to talk about leadership, the projects she was pivotal in building, and her approach to leadership and "inviting" diverse audiences rather than "targeting" them. "if you think about when someone says, 'I'm targeting you,' you're generally in someone's kind of crosshairs, if you will," she said. "And so I use the notion of who are we inviting to participate in the brand in a meaningful way. I think it's a nuance, but it has huge implications."
Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter joined Cheddar News to talk about fatherhood and his solo work on a new crossover song called "Easy," featuring country singer Jimmie Allen. "What I love about country music is the lyrics, the melodies, the stories that are in them as well," he said. "And you know, you hear it's just pretty simple and pretty easy."
Oscar Stembridge, the youngest musician to have signed with Universal Music Sweden, has a passion for spreading awareness of climate activism as well as music. Cheddar News got an exclusive first look at the video for the new song, "Am I the Only One" and spoke with the 14-year-old singer about his young career and advocacy work. "Basically it all kind of started when, inspired from Greta Thunberg, I wrote my first kind of song called 'We March,' which is about my generation not wanting to pay the price of the older generations' inaction," he said.
The office real estate market might be in trouble, as vacancy rates in major cities remain across the country, even as COVID restrictions continue to fall away. Ryan Severino, the chief economist for real estate and investment management firm JLL, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss the latest office trends and why some may be concerning for the broader economy. "There are knock-on ramifications for a lot of the ancillary industries that support office workers," he said. "If you think about coffee shops, places that someone might go out to get lunch or a drink or dinner after work, those are obviously still feeling the brunt of people not being physically back in office spaces the way that they were before the pandemic."
More Covid booster shots for more adults, Greenpeace and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen want more eco-friendly bitcoin, and the federal mask mandate for transportation is challenged. Here is all the news you Need2Know for Wednesday, March 30, 2022.
According to tracking services, Americans get inundated with more than 130 million robocalls every day. One man decided that he had enough and started suing telemarketers. Daniel Graham joins Cheddar News to share how he won more than $100,000 in settlements.
Streaming giant Netflix has thrown its hat into the ring with some video game offerings of its own so far, but the hurdles to gaining market share in the space might be daunting despite recently acquiring its third game development studio. Kenny Rosenblatt, the president and co-founder of casual game maker Arkadium, joined Cheddar to offer his view of where things are headed for Netflix. "Microsoft entered the video game market in 1990, years ago with 'Windows Solitaire. It has taken them that long to become the player that they are today," he said. "So I like what Netflix is doing. Slow and steady wins the race."
U.S. stocks closed Tuesday's session near session highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 350 points, after rising more than 400 points at its session high. Shares were also impacted positively by optimism around peace talks in Ukraine. Nancy Prial, Co-Chief Executive Officer & Senior Portfolio Manager of Essex Investment Management, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
