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The final Walt Bodine Show aired on April 27th, 2012, celebrating 72 years of originality and honesty across print, television and radio platforms, as pioneering journalist Walt Bodine retired from KCUR. Walt died at the age of 92 on Sunday, March 24, 2013.MORE ON WALT:Walt's Beat: A Multimedia Journey Through Walt's CareerThe Walt Bodine Audio DocumentaryMarr Sound Archive Walt CollectionKansas City Star: With Bodine’s final show, KC will miss a good friendStoryCorps in KC: Walt Bodine and Tom BodineA TRIBUTE TO WALT FROM MARILYN MAYE:http://kcurstream.umkc.edu/CENTRAL/blog/maye.mp3

Walt Covers KC's Worst-Ever Tornado

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-902041.mp3

Kansas City – Tornadoes raked Kansas and Oklahoma a week ago, killing 5 people. But those storms were minor compared to the one that hit Kansas City on May 20th, 1957. The Ruskin Heights Tornado was among the most powerful ever recorded. It obliterated the new neighborhood that it's named for, and killed dozens of people. KCUR's Walt Bodine was there before the dust cleared.

For more about Walt Bodine's life and career, check out "Bodine's Beat," a multimedia retrospective.

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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