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Community Profile > Wichita, Kansas

Kansas’ Land of Oz VIEW PDF

Despite Wichita’s humble cowtown beginnings, its residents,

from cowboys to aerospace engineers, have built a real-life
jewel of a city.

By eileen lockwood Unique Opportunities, July/August 2007

Perhaps at least partly because of the famous imagery in The Wizard of Oz, many people may have the impression that Kansas is a flat plain that is plagued by tornadoes.

The flat image was refuted by Rebecca Ketchum, a pioneer woman in an 1853 wagon train. “If when you think of a prairie, you think of a plain, level piece of ground, you are greatly mistaken,” she wrote to the folks back home. The state may sprawl flat farther west, but Wichita rises among the Flint Hills, a seemingly endless grassy landscape more like pyramids than pancakes.

The idea of frequent tornadoes comes closer to reality and has become so entrenched that Wichita was selected as the site for the 1989 film Twister. The May 4th tornado that destroyed Greensburg, 110 miles west of Wichita, was a deadly corroboration. EF5-level storms, the worst kind, have hit the state six times since 1950, but Chance Hayes, the warning coordination meteorologist in Wichita’s National Weather Service Forecast Office, says, “I’ve lived here 13 years and have never been directly impacted by a tornado.”

Tamim Qaum, MD is not worried. He says, “All I heard about was tornadoes, tornadoes, tornadoes,” before he moved here last year. “But most people who have lived here all their lives have never seen one except on TV.” Square mile for square mile, Kansas is the most tornado-prone state, but Qaum points out that the probability of any one square mile being hit is one in 10,000 years. Wichita has been untouched by an EF5 since 1950.

The Greensburg disaster gave national reporters a chance to witness the steely grit of Kansans determined to start over. One man’s declaration — “Greensburg WILL come back!” — echoed the historic sturdiness common to Sunflower State inhabitants. Within days, Greensburg neighbors were busy cleaning up for their new start.

No place like it

When the literary Dorothy was blown out of Kansas and over the rainbow in The Wizard of Oz, all she could think about was getting back home to Kansas and her family and friends. Real Kansans echo her sentiment that “There’s no place like home.”

Qaum’s decision to join the Wichita Clinic, one of Kansas’ largest group medical practices with some 160 physicians, was based on such everyday realities as: (1) a surprisingly low cost of living, (2) his two-minute commute, (3) top-rated schools, (4) “nicer people, patients and colleagues” yielding lower stress levels, (5) a small-town crime rate with large-city amenities, and (6) a myriad of activities for children as well as adults.

An ophthalmologist with training credentials from Cornell, Harvard, and Duke, Qaum (pronounced Kwahm) firmly believes he could have found work in almost any city. “But we picked Wichita—and not without a lot of research. My wife and I looked at every single job in the country,” he recalls, “about 150 altogether. We looked at the Midwest just to make sure we covered all our bases. But then we discovered what a gem it is.”

Follow the cattle road

For one reason or another, new arrivals in Wichita have agreed on that point for thousands of years. A 44-foot statue of a proud Indian stands at the confluence of the two rivers that meet at Wichita, the Arkansas and Little Arkansas (pronounced Ar-KAN-sas, unlike the state). Titled “Keeper of the Plains,” it commemorates the Wichita Indians who lived and traded here long before European “newcomers” began arriving in the 1850s. These hunters/ trappers/traders were succeeded by cattle drivers following the famed Chisholm Trail from Texas. Herds then went east by rail. The era of the fabled “Wild West” was in full swing.

The rough-and-ready personalities of those cattle-driving days included the legendary Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Wild Bill Hickok, gamblers who off and on doubled as peace officers. In those rowdy times, one city council action was far ahead of its time. It banned the carrying of weapons within city limits. Signs posted on the roads into town warned that violators would be prosecuted.

Today, more than a century after cowboys hustled their last steers through the dirt streets, the western heritage lingers, complete with nostalgic wagon rides into the nearby undulating Flint Hills, chuckwagon suppers, Old Cowtown living history museum, and a mind-boggling array of gear from boots to ten-gallon hats at the 107-year-old Sheplers, billed as the world’s largest western store. Wild West World opened in May, touted as the world’s only theme park with rides and activities all geared to the old, exciting cowboy days.

Right in their own backyard

The Earps and Mastersons would be strangers in the city that now lures physicians like Qaum and Diane Steere, MD, a family physician who’s been enchanted by modern-day Wichita since her decision “quite by accident” to practice here in 1990. She joined an eight-member medical group, Wichita Family Medicine Specialists, in 1996. “I had no intention of ever moving to Kansas,” she now recalls. But her parents had relocated to Wichita from Michigan while she was at the Michigan State University Medical School. Visiting for Christmas, Steere decided to do a “practice” interview for her residency.

At Wesley Medical Center, one of the city’s two large hospital complexes, she says, “I found by far the best family practice residency program anywhere.” Her enthusiasm soon spilled over into her professional practice. “The wonderful thing about primary care in Wichita,” she says, “is that I take care of whole families, sometimes generations of them. The family medicine residency taught me to take care of everybody, from newborns and children to men, women, and grandparents, including cases of mental

health and depression.”

Complicated cases are referred to specialists, but, she adds, “Internists (and family practitioners) here have a special relationship with specialists, and there’s not a lot of competitive feeling. I’m not sure that’s common elsewhere, and it probably happens because we all train together in the Wesley residency program.”

Sitting in the middle of a great prairie, modern-day Wichita surprises newcomers as a hub of enterprise with most of the trappings of a large eastern city.

“A lot of people think it’s still the Wild West out here,” Steere laughs. But they don’t realize that, like a growing number of other cities, big and small, Wichita has been reinventing itself for the last several years. After rounds of thriving and fading, its downtown has made a comeback, complete with some 31 bronzes that have created a kind of sculpture parade along Douglas Avenue, the main street. Businesses have moved back into renovated and new office space, creating a revived market for restaurants and shops.

In the middle of it all, the new Century II Convention Center sits on the Arkansas River bank and includes three theaters for productions large, medium, and small. A block away, a new 124,000-square-foot central library will open in 2011; smaller branches will be expanded or replaced. Wichita State University’s lively music and performing arts programs gave rise to three theaters themselves. Mega-concerts are held at the Kansas Coliseum, which also hosts ice hockey and other sports events.

Fans of major professional sports head to Kansas City (190 miles) for Royals baseball and Chiefs football games, but WSU’s highly rated basketball team is an excellent alternative. And, each year during the first two weeks of August, some 80,000 baseball fans swarm in Wichita for the super-marathon National Baseball Congress World Series. Forty-four amateur college teams from around the country play more than 85 games morning, afternoon, and night.

City leaders and agencies have carefully planted the banks of both the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers with entertainment, historical, and cultural venues. “Museums on the River” (six of them) run the gamut from the living history of Old Cowtown to Exploration Place, a wonderworld of modern-day science with sections featuring flight, human life, nature, and the universe. Highlights include a spectacular planetarium, simulated flights over Kansas and nature “rides” above waterfalls and lava vents. Also in the museum mix is the Wichita Art Museum with its impressive collection of American art, and Botanica, The Wichita Gardens, an extensive display, located within Sim Park.

Nearby Old Town, a revitalized warehouse district, has become an extension of downtown, with restaurants, a brewpub, shops, nightclubs, theaters, galleries, and museums. Musical comedies light up Cabaret Old Town, and the Museum of World Treasures in a massive ex-warehouse is one man’s mind-boggling collection of diversified artifacts from mummies, dinosaurs, and war memorabilia to crown jewels and signatures of all 43 presidents.

All of the above is sustained by America’s second highest concentration of manufacturing jobs and skilled labor—almost 65,000 strong in the four-county metro area.

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