Somewhere around 2010, Mike Romalis and I sat in my living room watching an old Wings game tape he had transferred to DVD. It wasn't the first time we had done this. Each time I made only one request: "Don't tell me who's gonna win." This particular time, I remember turning to Mike and saying, "Do you think the Wings could ever come back?" I had no idea how prescient these words would be. A few months later, Wink Hartman announced that the Wings would return to Wichita. Soon after, I was pitching a story to Splurge! Magazine about just that. The article I wrote would begin a circuitous path that eventually led to Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings.
A few paragraphs ago, I mentioned the 1979-85 Eagle-Beacon articles that Mike had painstakingly copied. We got to a point in our research when we knew we'd need more material from 1986-1992. It looked like Mike would need to go back to the library. This is where fate interceded. I got a call from Johnny Freedom. He had acquired a set of yearbooks that an unknown Wings fan had put together. This wonderful fan had glued Eagle articles in the yearbooks...from 1985-1990. Talk about saving the day!
I began writing the actual text of the book before we had finished the interviews or the research. This was possible because we had done most of the interviews in chronological order...i.e. we interviewed Kenny Cooper and Roy's other friends from the Dallas Tornado prior to our interviews with many of the Wings. So I began writing when the earlier research was mostly complete. This meant that I was researching, organizing, transcribing, and writing all at the same time.
I finished writing the book a year and three months after that meeting with Roy Turner and Kim Roentved at Deano's. At that point, I had to turn a Google Doc into a book. Mike and I considered trying to find a traditional publisher. However, these days, if you want to publish a book it's easier to self-publish. The biggest advantage of self-publishing is you'll retain more control over your book. I chose CreateSpace, which is the largest self-publishing company in the world. Owned by Amazon.com, CreateSpace gave us easy access to online selling and put out a product that looked just like any book from a traditional publisher. We had to pay CreateSpace a significant amount of money to format our text into a slick-looking trade paperback with a glossy cover and an interior with the right dimensions and font. A little bit more money to CreateSpace gave us a Kindle version as well. My overall experience working with CreateSpace was positive. When I write my next book I'll likely use them again. Thanks to our Go Fund Me campaign, Mike and I will not lose money on this book. We might even make a little bit of money. For that, we are grateful.
I used to tell people that "I don't like to write, I like to have written." In the case of this book, the process was difficult, but it was so educational and interesting that it was almost as important to my life as the finished product. I'm proud of what Mike and I created. I'm happy that so many people were able to have their voices heard in our text...and that the story of Roy Turner and the Wings is receiving the attention it so justly deserves. Go Wings!
Before the book came the indoor soccer obsession. For Mike, that happened in the 1980s. But for me it began with the new Wings squad. Through Facebook (where else?) I met Anthony Villegas, David Weber, and other rabid fans. I bought season tickets and would attend every single home game of the Wichita Wings and Wichita B-52s over the next four years. I was hooked.
In January of 2015, my fellow Futbol Wichita Live board member, Johnny Freedom, approached me about writing a book on the long and storied history of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings. To be honest, I don't remember my exact reaction to this idea. I vaguely recall being positively disposed, sprinkled with a dash of fear. I went to Mike and told him about the plan. He himself had thought about writing this book, but it had never quite come to fruition. Instead, he had concentrated on building a now defunct website devoted to the Wings. But sitting in Mike's apartment that evening, we agreed to write the book together, as equal partners.
Days later, Futbol Wichita Live founder Josh Kippenberger set up a meeting at Deano's sports bar with Roy Turner and Kim Roentved. I had met both men, but didn't know either very well. It was a bit surreal...speaking with these two soccer legends, telling them that we wanted to write this book about them and their experiences. But it was immediately clear that they wanted to tell their story and believed the tale of the Wings was worth telling. I didn't yet fathom how great a story it truly was.
Not too long afterwards, Johnny Freedom and I went over to Roy's house and conducted the first interview. I was a bit nervous because...well, I'd never done this before and was making it up as I went along. Johnny was filling in for Mike, who would join me for virtually every other interview we would conduct over the course of researching the book. Mike and I would interview 40 people for a total of about 45-50 total interviews. Our interviews with Roy Turner, Kevin Kewley, and Kim Roentved were in person. Though some were done individually, we found that the group interviews with those three gentlemen were particularly useful because they would feed off each other's answers, providing us with an effective interplay of comments. Plus, when talking about events that happened 30-40 years ago, it helps to have someone else there who remembers it and can therefore spark the others' memories. Roy really paved the way for this book to be a success. If he hadn't been so helpful (from getting us in touch with players to giving so much of his time for interviews) this book wouldn't have succeeded.
At first, I used an app on my phone to record the interviews. This proved to be a mistake. The quality was less than desirable. Mike and I then invested in a voice recorder that I could plug directly into my computer to download the audio file. Most of our subsequent interviews were over the phone. We would put the phone on "speaker" and then, with the consent of the interviewees, record the conversation. The quality of the voice recorder was excellent, thus our recordings were easy to listen to (even with a few accents thrown in). The interviews themselves were usually a lot of fun and easy to conduct. Generally speaking, people want to tell their story. Though some people needed prompting, others just started talking...and didn't stop until their story was told. Both kinds of interview were productive.
Some of our subjects were discussing events that touched their lives in both joyous and painful ways. That pain was evident at times. This was particularly true of Tom Marshall and Jackie Knapp, both of whom parted ways with the Wings under less than happy circumstances. Despite the pain of dredging up those memories, it became clear to me that there was a catharsis in telling that story. The book was much better for it. Because they were so honest about their experiences, it was bound to bring them pain in the telling. But that honesty made the story fuller and richer.
We heard so many stories about how much everyone loved Andy Chapman. But I didn't really understand it until we interviewed him. We spent almost three hours on the phone with him, and by the end, I understood. Andy is a charismatic man: a unique mixture of charm and humility. His story was so honest and heartfelt that we were transfixed by it. It was an honor to record it all.
Some of our interviewees struggled to remember details about those days, so long ago. And then there was Jackie Knapp. She remembered everything...every detail about every important event. Her memories were SO important to the book...not only because of the detail, but because of the honesty. She wasn't one to gloss over uncomfortable facts. The interviews with her were so heartfelt...so raw and true. I have to admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jackie. She's one of the good guys.
The best thing Frank Carney ever did after buying the Wings was to bring Bill Kentling with him from Pizza Hut. He steered the ship so expertly, and then took on the impossible job of running the MISL. Besides all that, he's one hell of a comedian. If you told me you talked with Bill and he never made you laugh...you'd either be a liar or humorless. Bill believed in our project from the beginning. When I came to him for guidance, he was always there...ready and willing to help. Most importantly, the content from his interviews was absolutely invaluable. I never would have guessed that writing this book would result in real and lasting friendships, but Bill and Jackie are prime examples.
Nobody loved the Wings more than Terry Nicholl. That's the biggest takeaway from our interview with him. His love for Wichita came through so clearly when we spoke with him. He sacrificed for the team and still loves the Wings despite losing his coaching job. I think he's a real hero for the Wings. He did everything he could for them, and they were so much better for having him...on and off the pitch.
I never felt any of our interviewees were deceptive in their answers. Sure, some of them censored themselves at times; but that's to be expected from human beings. But no one was an honest as Kim Roentved. Kim told us how he really felt on every subject we brought up. It is refreshing to hear from a man who doesn't fear speaking the truth.
But what is the truth? It is, of course, unknowable, in the fullest sense. The format of our book allowed for that. We let our subjects tell their stories. The readers can judge for themselves what rings true or hollow. I very intentionally did not want to editorialize in the italicized portions of the book. In between each interviewee's passage, I purposefully added material that I felt fleshed out the details they were discussing. That structure, with the interviewee's words preceded and followed by italicized information from me, might initially be jarring to some readers. However, it made for a better book. I owe a debt of gratitude to the authors of Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. It was from that book that I got the idea of using the oral history format for Make This Town Big. We had so many wonderful quotes from our subjects that it was a no-brainer to use those words to tell the story.
Of course, you don't have a coherent story unless you have an author to write it. But what if you have two authors? Our method was to stick to our strengths. Mike was the Wings expert. I was the writer. The book wouldn't have worked with just one of us. First off, before we even started this project, Mike had spent countless hours in the WSU and Wichita Public libraries making digital copies of every single article about the Wings in the Wichita Eagle-Beacon. He had succeeded in getting everything from 1979 to 1985. Thus, we had a treasure trove of information to use. Additionally, Mike had copies of dozens of Missile Magazine and The Wichitan magazine articles about the Wings. We developed a system for writing the book: Mike would come up with a list of important events in each season that he thought we should cover. I would use that list, the newspaper/magazine material, and our interviews to write a chapter. Then I'd send that finished chapter to Mike for his thoughts. He would then point out errors, additions, and changes that needed to be made. I agreed with his changes about 95% of the time. We won't talk about that other 5%.
But I get ahead of myself. Before I could even start writing, I had a monumental task ahead of me: transcribing 100 hours of audio interviews. If there is a Nobel Prize for transcribing...I deserve it. Each hour of audio recording takes approximately 3-4 hours to type out. That comes out to between 300-400 hours of transcribing. It. Was. Exhausting. I tried an automated program that supposedly would take the audio and type it out for you. It was trash. So I did it all manually. Though the pain of this Herculean effort (though I felt more like Sisyphus at the time) made me want to bore a hole in my skull, I gained so much from it. I knew their words backwards and forwards because I had taken part in these conversations and then typed them out, word for word. I learned A LOT. It made me a better author.
But transcribing that material was only the beginning. Once I transcribed it I then had to organize it. By the end of the transcription process I had a couple hundred single-spaced pages of material. I then divided the material into sections based on Wings seasons (i.e. 1984-85) or topics (i.e. thoughts on coaching, the Hatch Cover, summer camp stories, etc.). I waded through each interview transcript, copied the passage and then pasted it into the relevant section in another Google Doc. I would then color that passage from the transcript yellow so that I would know it had already been placed in the "Organized by Topic" Google Doc. Slowly but surely I made my way through all the transcripts until they were completely yellow. The result was two Google Docs full of organized transcription material.
I bet you didn't know that a Google Doc has a maximum number of characters. And I bet you never had to worry about reaching that maximum. For the record, it's 1 million characters. I got a little nervous towards the end of the book...I think I finished at somewhere around 950,000 characters. I wrote this entire tome on my Toshiba Chromebook, using Google Docs. That means I had to forego some of the luxuries of Microsoft Word, like automated endnotes/citations. All my citations were manually inserted. Besides that, I think you'll find that your Google Doc starts to get a little clunky after about 100 pages. In the end, the only thing I used Microsoft Word for was the editing process (which I did on a different computer). I regret nothing...not even the umpteen pages of citations in the back of the book. I decided if I was going to write this book, I wanted every source to be documented. Go big or go home. Academic writers spend a lot of time worrying about style, i.e. APA vs. MLA vs. Chicago style. Because I was writing for a general audience, and not just for academicians, I decided to bend the rules here and there. Thus, this book was written in what I call "Schaumburg, Illinois Style"...not quite Chicago, but pretty darn close.
Some of our subjects were discussing events that touched their lives in both joyous and painful ways. That pain was evident at times. This was particularly true of Tom Marshall and Jackie Knapp, both of whom parted ways with the Wings under less than happy circumstances. Despite the pain of dredging up those memories, it became clear to me that there was a catharsis in telling that story. The book was much better for it. Because they were so honest about their experiences, it was bound to bring them pain in the telling. But that honesty made the story fuller and richer.
We heard so many stories about how much everyone loved Andy Chapman. But I didn't really understand it until we interviewed him. We spent almost three hours on the phone with him, and by the end, I understood. Andy is a charismatic man: a unique mixture of charm and humility. His story was so honest and heartfelt that we were transfixed by it. It was an honor to record it all.
Some of our interviewees struggled to remember details about those days, so long ago. And then there was Jackie Knapp. She remembered everything...every detail about every important event. Her memories were SO important to the book...not only because of the detail, but because of the honesty. She wasn't one to gloss over uncomfortable facts. The interviews with her were so heartfelt...so raw and true. I have to admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jackie. She's one of the good guys.
The best thing Frank Carney ever did after buying the Wings was to bring Bill Kentling with him from Pizza Hut. He steered the ship so expertly, and then took on the impossible job of running the MISL. Besides all that, he's one hell of a comedian. If you told me you talked with Bill and he never made you laugh...you'd either be a liar or humorless. Bill believed in our project from the beginning. When I came to him for guidance, he was always there...ready and willing to help. Most importantly, the content from his interviews was absolutely invaluable. I never would have guessed that writing this book would result in real and lasting friendships, but Bill and Jackie are prime examples.
Nobody loved the Wings more than Terry Nicholl. That's the biggest takeaway from our interview with him. His love for Wichita came through so clearly when we spoke with him. He sacrificed for the team and still loves the Wings despite losing his coaching job. I think he's a real hero for the Wings. He did everything he could for them, and they were so much better for having him...on and off the pitch.
I never felt any of our interviewees were deceptive in their answers. Sure, some of them censored themselves at times; but that's to be expected from human beings. But no one was an honest as Kim Roentved. Kim told us how he really felt on every subject we brought up. It is refreshing to hear from a man who doesn't fear speaking the truth.
But what is the truth? It is, of course, unknowable, in the fullest sense. The format of our book allowed for that. We let our subjects tell their stories. The readers can judge for themselves what rings true or hollow. I very intentionally did not want to editorialize in the italicized portions of the book. In between each interviewee's passage, I purposefully added material that I felt fleshed out the details they were discussing. That structure, with the interviewee's words preceded and followed by italicized information from me, might initially be jarring to some readers. However, it made for a better book. I owe a debt of gratitude to the authors of Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. It was from that book that I got the idea of using the oral history format for Make This Town Big. We had so many wonderful quotes from our subjects that it was a no-brainer to use those words to tell the story.
Of course, you don't have a coherent story unless you have an author to write it. But what if you have two authors? Our method was to stick to our strengths. Mike was the Wings expert. I was the writer. The book wouldn't have worked with just one of us. First off, before we even started this project, Mike had spent countless hours in the WSU and Wichita Public libraries making digital copies of every single article about the Wings in the Wichita Eagle-Beacon. He had succeeded in getting everything from 1979 to 1985. Thus, we had a treasure trove of information to use. Additionally, Mike had copies of dozens of Missile Magazine and The Wichitan magazine articles about the Wings. We developed a system for writing the book: Mike would come up with a list of important events in each season that he thought we should cover. I would use that list, the newspaper/magazine material, and our interviews to write a chapter. Then I'd send that finished chapter to Mike for his thoughts. He would then point out errors, additions, and changes that needed to be made. I agreed with his changes about 95% of the time. We won't talk about that other 5%.
But I get ahead of myself. Before I could even start writing, I had a monumental task ahead of me: transcribing 100 hours of audio interviews. If there is a Nobel Prize for transcribing...I deserve it. Each hour of audio recording takes approximately 3-4 hours to type out. That comes out to between 300-400 hours of transcribing. It. Was. Exhausting. I tried an automated program that supposedly would take the audio and type it out for you. It was trash. So I did it all manually. Though the pain of this Herculean effort (though I felt more like Sisyphus at the time) made me want to bore a hole in my skull, I gained so much from it. I knew their words backwards and forwards because I had taken part in these conversations and then typed them out, word for word. I learned A LOT. It made me a better author.
But transcribing that material was only the beginning. Once I transcribed it I then had to organize it. By the end of the transcription process I had a couple hundred single-spaced pages of material. I then divided the material into sections based on Wings seasons (i.e. 1984-85) or topics (i.e. thoughts on coaching, the Hatch Cover, summer camp stories, etc.). I waded through each interview transcript, copied the passage and then pasted it into the relevant section in another Google Doc. I would then color that passage from the transcript yellow so that I would know it had already been placed in the "Organized by Topic" Google Doc. Slowly but surely I made my way through all the transcripts until they were completely yellow. The result was two Google Docs full of organized transcription material.
I bet you didn't know that a Google Doc has a maximum number of characters. And I bet you never had to worry about reaching that maximum. For the record, it's 1 million characters. I got a little nervous towards the end of the book...I think I finished at somewhere around 950,000 characters. I wrote this entire tome on my Toshiba Chromebook, using Google Docs. That means I had to forego some of the luxuries of Microsoft Word, like automated endnotes/citations. All my citations were manually inserted. Besides that, I think you'll find that your Google Doc starts to get a little clunky after about 100 pages. In the end, the only thing I used Microsoft Word for was the editing process (which I did on a different computer). I regret nothing...not even the umpteen pages of citations in the back of the book. I decided if I was going to write this book, I wanted every source to be documented. Go big or go home. Academic writers spend a lot of time worrying about style, i.e. APA vs. MLA vs. Chicago style. Because I was writing for a general audience, and not just for academicians, I decided to bend the rules here and there. Thus, this book was written in what I call "Schaumburg, Illinois Style"...not quite Chicago, but pretty darn close.
A few paragraphs ago, I mentioned the 1979-85 Eagle-Beacon articles that Mike had painstakingly copied. We got to a point in our research when we knew we'd need more material from 1986-1992. It looked like Mike would need to go back to the library. This is where fate interceded. I got a call from Johnny Freedom. He had acquired a set of yearbooks that an unknown Wings fan had put together. This wonderful fan had glued Eagle articles in the yearbooks...from 1985-1990. Talk about saving the day!
I began writing the actual text of the book before we had finished the interviews or the research. This was possible because we had done most of the interviews in chronological order...i.e. we interviewed Kenny Cooper and Roy's other friends from the Dallas Tornado prior to our interviews with many of the Wings. So I began writing when the earlier research was mostly complete. This meant that I was researching, organizing, transcribing, and writing all at the same time.
I finished writing the book a year and three months after that meeting with Roy Turner and Kim Roentved at Deano's. At that point, I had to turn a Google Doc into a book. Mike and I considered trying to find a traditional publisher. However, these days, if you want to publish a book it's easier to self-publish. The biggest advantage of self-publishing is you'll retain more control over your book. I chose CreateSpace, which is the largest self-publishing company in the world. Owned by Amazon.com, CreateSpace gave us easy access to online selling and put out a product that looked just like any book from a traditional publisher. We had to pay CreateSpace a significant amount of money to format our text into a slick-looking trade paperback with a glossy cover and an interior with the right dimensions and font. A little bit more money to CreateSpace gave us a Kindle version as well. My overall experience working with CreateSpace was positive. When I write my next book I'll likely use them again. Thanks to our Go Fund Me campaign, Mike and I will not lose money on this book. We might even make a little bit of money. For that, we are grateful.
I used to tell people that "I don't like to write, I like to have written." In the case of this book, the process was difficult, but it was so educational and interesting that it was almost as important to my life as the finished product. I'm proud of what Mike and I created. I'm happy that so many people were able to have their voices heard in our text...and that the story of Roy Turner and the Wings is receiving the attention it so justly deserves. Go Wings!
