The Father

Hey, Gangrey friends,

The Wichita Eagle has an unusual story project set to launch Dec. 6.

It will include an 8-part serial narrative and our first-ever hour-long narrative news documentary. We spent six months on it; we even put a musical score to the documentary.

Father Emil Kapaun was a priest who died as a U.S. Army chaplain in the Korean War. The peg for this is that there is a good chance Kapaun will become the first person awarded the Medal of Honor, and sainthood in the Catholic church.

The story describes the last 7 months of Kapaun’s life, but the sub-purpose is to explore various shades of belief in miracles. For example, the church in studying Kapaun has asked former Korean War POWs whether there were “miracles” associated with Kapaun, and by that they seem to mean Lazarus-style miracles.

The POWs said no. But they said he did many amazing things(see below) — the sort of everyday miracles we all could do if only we had his character.

Conventional thought says many newspapers (including in mid-sized markets like ours) are no longer able to think big or do long narrative, in video let alone in print. But we’ve got leadership.

Sincerely…

Roy Wenzl

Here’s the video trailer we put together on the documentary. (only about 90 seconds long)