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.’”
Actor Bethany Joy Lenz joined Cheddar New to discuss her new supernatural thriller "So Cold in the River," coming to theaters March 25. The film is based on the bestselling novel of the same name, and Lenz noted that there was some pressure in bringing the story to the screen. "Just wanting to make sure that we did justice to the story that everyone loves was it was a little nerve-racking, but I think we pulled it off," she said. Lenz also talked about the 10-year reunion for the show "One Tree Hill" on the set of former castmate Sophia Bush’s show ‘Good Sam’ on CBS. "Part of being an actor is just being able to carry with you all the experience that you've had in life and in other roles," Lenz noted.
Ignite works to recruit and train women to run for elected office.
As a part of Cheddar News' celebration of Women's History Month, CEO Sara Guillermo joins Cheddar Politics to discuss her organization's work ahead of the 2022 midterms.
Awards season is underway and the Oscars are right around the corner.
But with the 'best picture' nominees barely breaking the box-office bank, why do we tune in to hours-long broadcasts for movies we don't even watch? The answer is we don’t. Ratings for award shows have plummeted in recent years but it seems everything these organizations do to try and keep viewers isn’t working. This year the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences decided the answer was to cut eight awards from the live broadcast to help with time. Now it’s facing backlash from nearly every angle in the industry. Cheddar's own JD Durkin reports.
Uber Lyft and Doordash are all set to spend $1 million dollars on a campaign and efforts to stop lawmakers from classifying their gig workers as employees. The campaign features TV and online ads highlighting Washington area workers who say they prefer the flexibility of being an independent contractor rather than following the model of a company employee. Professor at NYU. Stern School of Business and author of the sharing economy, Arun Sundararajan, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Rachel Van Nortwick, CEO and Founder of Vinylly, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how this dating app is designed with music lovers in mind, pairing matches based on each individual's unique taste in music.
Russia expands its attacks on Ukraine, baseball players and owners cut a deal, and the age-old question: should New Jerseyians pump their own gas? Here is all the news you Need2Know for Friday, March 11, 2022.
The Broadway musical “Six” tells the stories of the six wives of King Henry VIII, featuring a diverse cast and musical crew comprised entirely of women. Andrea Macasaet, starring as Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, joined Cheddar News to talk about what theatergoers can expect from the new musical take on English history. "You have a group of women from different walks of life retelling the story of these women in history, these queens, and they're far beyond the moments of their marriage, or their divorce — or their beheadings," she said.
