A Nostalgic Touch: Greensburg, Kansas, and Charley Herd

• Citation: Vol. 78 No. 3 Pg. 09
• Publication year: 2009
• Pages: 09
• topic: Business of Law

A Nostalgic Touch: Greensburg, Kansas, and Charley Herd No. 78 J. Kan. Bar Assn 3, 09 (2009) Kansas Bar Journal March, 2009

A Nostalgic Touch

Greensburg, Kansas, and Charley Herd

By Matthew Keenan, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, Kansas City, Mo.

The Greensburg tornado is now forever committed to the Kansas history books. A category 5 tornado, it took 11 lives, and seriously injured 60 in just Greensburg, while leveling 95 percent of the city. Experts say it is also the first five classification since May 3, 1999, when an F-5 tornado ripped through Moore, Okla. Those same experts also tell us that the Kansas version was at least a mile wide, which was twice the width of the Moore tornado.

The devastation brought President George W Bush to the city twice. The efforts of Steve Hewitt, city manager, earned him two trips to the White House, including being one of a handful of invited guests to Bush's farewell address to the nation in January.

But if the name of Charley Herd, Esq., isn't familiar to you, all that is about to change. You see, in a city of 1,400 people, Greensburg had just one attorney, Herd. And while with a disaster of the magnitude of Greensburg, there are countless everyday heroes, how the paths of Herd intersected with that city is a story worth retelling.

Naturally, Charley was raised in a town called Protection. Located in Comanche County, it was also the birthplace to another local, John Graue. But Graue and Herd were hardly contemporaries. John was a veteran of World War II, having served in the Pacific Theatre, then finished college and law school on the GI bill. Graue recruited Herd from Washburn University, where Herd graduated in May 1986...