Radio days

Education | Homeschoolers’ twist on real-life drama takes top prize | Lynn Vincent

A radio crackles and an official-sounding man issues a shocking report: "Hallam is gone . . . I repeat, Hallam is gone."

So goes one climactic moment in "The Hallam Tornado," an original radio play that took first place in the 2006 Make-Your-Own-Radio-Show Contest, a competition sponsored by Homeschoolradioshows.com. The winning entry, written and produced by the Claesson family of Lincoln, Neb., dramatizes the terror and aftermath of a record-setting Nebraska twister.

On May 22, 2004, a reported 18 tornadoes stormed down from boiling Nebraska skies. But the one that hit the farming town of Hallam, population 235, was the most vicious. Measured at 2.5 miles wide and at times reaching an intensity of F4—207 to 269 mph, according to the Fujita Damage Scale—the funnel was reportedly the largest ever to hit the United States. It bit off the corners of several small towns, but wiped Hallam nearly from the map. The storm flattened homes, mangled grain elevators, blew over buses and railcars, and shredded Hallam's business district into kindling. One person, Elaine Focken, 73, a lifelong homemaker, was killed.