KAITLYN MCCONNELL: To me, it's really about finding these undiscovered people in places that define the region.

And that's the bulk of who we are.

And the things that they're doing are important.

[music playing] It's no secret that the Ozark has a rich and diverse history, full of fascinating people, places, and stories.

And the history of the future is being made right now.

Our guest today is Kayla McConnell, a native of Marshfield, Missouri, who has been writing about the Ozarks since she was 17 years old.

In 2015, she started the website Ozarks Alive, which she describes as historical preservation and the present, documenting the way life is now so it's better understood in the future.

Join us as we talk about how she got started, some of her many travels around the Ozarks, and what the future looks like for the area and its people.

SPEAKER: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

Hi, I'm Dale Moore.

Welcome to "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

I have been looking forward to my next interview for such a very, very long time.

She is a preservationist.

She's an author.

She's a writer.

And I'm going to embarrass her, but I believe this she's a world-class researcher.

She's a blogger.

She chairs the Springfield Landmarks Board.

Past president of the Webster County Historical Society, and she's what I am.

She's a fellow hillbilly activist.

And I could not be more pleased than to welcome to this edition of "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," Kaitlyn McConnell.

Kaitlyn, it is so good to have you here.

Thank you for having me.

It's my pleasure.

You know, I'm going to tell you off the top, I think you ought to be sitting in this chair.

That's it.

[laughs] No this is a nice change from mostly what I do when I'm on your side asking other people questions.

So it's-- Well I'm just-- I'm tickled you're here.

Oh thank you.

We got a lot to talk about.

And I listed off there things that you've been working on.

Before we really get into the Ozarks Alive piece, which is kind of the centerpiece of what I want to talk about today, let's talk about early Kaitlyn McConnell.

Because that kind of sets the stage for why you are where you are now.

This is true.

This is true.

Anything specific you want to know or just kind of-- Oh, just when you first became interested in history, and-- Well, and as you mentioned in the intro, you know, I am several generations Ozark in-- at least seven that we know of in Webster County.

And to me, I've always loved history so that was always a special thing.

But it really didn't become very passionately real to me, I would say, until I was in high school.

And I say sometimes it was fate or maybe it was divine intervention.

But when I was in high school, I happened to be in the school library when I saw this book called "Walkin' Preacher of the Ozarks" by itinerant preacher Guy Howard.

I was not in the habit of just randomly pulling books off the shelf.

So I don't know why this one caught my attention.

But it did.

And I read it, and it changed my life.

Because it was written by this preacher who wandered around different parts of the region in the same years that my grandmother and great grandparents would have been in Webster County, where I was growing up.

And it really just made me see the region in a new way.

I would look out over hillsides and just feel like, was this the same view that my grandmother and her parents had as they were wandering around the area?

And even just the traditions and the way people did things back then that he described really just made history very real to me and made it feel like, this isn't that far away.

You know, it feels a world away, but it's not.

And from that on, I was hooked.

And I just had to know more.

So when the spark happened, I mean, what had you been-- and what, 15, 16, 17?

17.

Yeah.

Well, that's pretty far along in life.

I mean, what had you thought up to that point that you might be doing after high school?

Or did you have aspirations?

I think that-- yeah, I went through several iterations of what my career was going to be.

I think I thought at that point I was going to be a band director.

I played the trumpet for a long time.

So that was another little random fact of Kaitlyn McConnell's past.

But at that point, I'd always loved history too.

So that foundation was there, but it had never focused on the Ozarks until that point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so go to college, go to Drury.

You get a degree in integrated media.

What is integrated media?

Well, it's code for journalism.

And I don't even know that they have that degree anymore.

But at that point, that's what they had.

I, in high school, had started writing a newspaper column for the "Marshfield Mail," the paper works where I was from about history.

And that really set the stage for journalism.

Because at that point I-- when I started the column, I actually hated writing.

It was all about history.

But then I decided I love storytelling.

And that led me to go in that journalism direction.

OK. And that's where I want to head with Ozarks Alive.

What an adventure this is.

I mean, first of all, it is-- you've got to check out ozarksalive.com if you've never been there.

And I can't believe that by now if people haven't been-- it is extraordinary what you do there.

Thank you.

That means a lot to me.

It is unbelievable.

It's history but, it's also stories.

Walk us through the early days of the idea and how that came to be.

KAITLYN MCCONNELL: Well the short version of how Ozarks Alive started was my life took this unexpected turn right after college.

And I ended up moving to Norway for three years.

And while I was away, one of the things that really resonated with me so strongly was this disappointment of not being able to be here to write about the region.

I saw things on Facebook.

Things were changing.

People were passing away.

And it really just made me feel so sad that I wasn't here.

And so when I moved back in 2015, I just thought, I'm not going to wait for a job to be able to do that, because it might never come.

And so I moved back in March of 2015 and launched Ozarks Alive in July.

And so it was, at the beginning especially, just an excuse to not sound creepy when I reached out to people.

And we're like, can you tell me about your life story?

But it began as truly that journalism side of things.

I wanted to be able to document these stories, tell history stories too.

But for me, it was more, and it still is, preserving what's going on in the Ozarks today.

And that's my goal with this is to be able-- 50 years from now, people to look back at Ozarks Alive and at least have not a comprehensive look by any means, but a slice of what life was like.

Yeah.

You describe it as a historical preservation project, which is-- I like that because it's the best of both worlds.

You're in the storytelling business.

Plus you're preserving history.

And to me, those are equal parts to me.

It's helping us, as Ozarkers in the year we're here, appreciate what's going on in the Ozarks.

But it truly is about that preservation too, I mean.

And people often do refer to Ozarks Alive as history site.

And like I said, I do occasionally write about purely historical topics.

But to me, it's far more about contemporary Ozarks.

What are things like today?

And often that ties to history.

People who've done something for a long time or whatever.

But it's not purely about looking back.

So what we do on this program as you know, we're all about preserving the history and the culture of sort of what you're doing.

But you do it in a little bit different way, I think, with the current preservation process that you do, which is kind of a different approach to that.

I find that fascinating.

So how do you get the ideas that you get to do the stories that you do?

It varies a lot.

There's kind of a spectrum I do hear about a lot through word of mouth.

So that's always a good tool.

I spend time looking through old newspapers.

And sometimes that will spark interest in either concepts or specific ideas that could be revisited.

But honestly, a lot of it's just driving around.

And I found a lot of stories just driving down the road and something grabs my attention.

And those actually are some of the stories I love the most.

Because they're the ones you probably won't find in a Google search.

And to me, it's these little slices of life-- definitely, things that are well-known, I write about those too.

And I love that.

But to me, it's really about finding these undiscovered people in places that define the region.

And that's the bulk of who we are.

And the things that they're doing are important.

So basically, what you do is sort of a wanderlust sort of a thing.

KAITLYN MCCONNELL: That's true.

You just get in the car, and-- KAITLYN MCCONNELL: Sometimes it is.

Yes.

And head out.

Yes, exactly.

And you never know what you're going to find.

And to me, even just being out in the Ozarks is inspirational too.

It helps lead to new ideas.

What are some of your favorites?

That his-- over from the beginning to now in no particular order?

So far, I think I've lost count.

But it's somewhere like around 500 or 600 stories.

So I kind of have it-- I don't even remember the order of all of them exactly.

But the things that always resonate with me the most are the ones that are truly the most authentic.

And there's a couple that come to mind that really fit that category for me.

One of them is about a woman named Theta Porter, who I wrote about several times.

She unfortunately has passed away.

But I first learned about Theta about-- I think it was 2016 when someone I'd written about called me and said there is a woman down here in Squires, Missouri, which is a little town in Douglas County, who is in her 80s and runs a restaurant all by herself.

And I thought, OK, this alone, I'm like, I've got to check this out.

And so I called her, and as she did as so many other people do, she said, oh, I don't have a story.

I don't have anything to say.

Like, just please, let me come out, and we can talk about it and see.

And so she said, yes.

And I went out that next Saturday.

And it was amazing.

It was truly-- she was 88 years old, I believe, at the time.

Had run this restaurant since she was in her 30s.

And it wasn't that she was doing it to be unusual.

That was what stuck out to me as well as the fact that this was unusual was that this was something she just had always done.

And that's why she did it.

It was part of her life.

And it was part of the Ozarks.

And it just really, really struck out at me.

And so I wrote about her then.

I wrote about her several other times over the years.

And one of the most amazing things was when she had a 90th birthday party, and the whole community came out at her restaurant and just celebrated her.

And that will live forever with me as one of the most striking stories.

But then another one which is far more probably well known around here at this point is McClurg, which is a music party out in Taney County, which I discovered around the same time as Theta actually and wrote about and then actually became a regular attendee.

So I'm down there a couple of times a month now.

And to me, that's special in that same authentic way that it's always just been there.

It's living history.

It's living tradition.

That's right.

When I think about, and when I-- classes that I teach, I'm interested in talking to my students now and people that I come into contact the differences between the digital native and the digital immigrant.

And the work that you're doing with Ozarks Alive is sort of bridging that gap in the digital space and world that we live in now.

Because people my age that are older are a little more digital savvy.

So do you find that it's easier to do your work now knowing that you can preserve things in a format in a way that people get that they understand?

Well, yes.

The other thing with this is I realize that if I had tried to do this 10 years before I did, this would be impossible.

And there would have been no way to do this at all.

And without the ability to start a website on your own or to have social media to propel those messages, this wouldn't be possible.

And so I'm grateful for that I think that I have lots of concerns about the digital future of our world and preservation, especially as physical copies of letters and newspapers and things begin to evolve and disappear.

In a lot of cases, how are we going to tell those stories?

And I have not figured out that question, because I'm not the answer to it all.

But I do think that there's good and bad sides to both of those things.

Yeah.

Well, and the recent book that came out talking about May Kennedy McCord.

And the fact that those stories had been not buried, but had not been public for so many years.

And then now they're in a book and we can enjoy.

I mean, the sort of what you're doing in that regard, I think.

I feel fortunate.

I never, of course, got to meet May Kennedy McCord.

But I wish I had, because I think that I would have really enjoyed knowing her.

Reading her work to your point, I feel like I try to do similar things, not perhaps as well as she did.

But just resonating with people and helping them feel better and appreciate where they live.

Well, what an extraordinary body of work she had.

Yes, that's right.

Dr. Sutliff mentioned to me when working on the book that they had so much that the publisher was like, you've got to cut this down.

[laughs] And they had to cut it down like two or three times too.

Yeah, it was unfortunate, because they-- And for a writer and an editor, that's like, oh, killing me, right?

Yeah.

No, more pages.

I need more pages.

Yes.

Speaking of your writing, Let's talk about some of the things that you've done.

"Passport to the Ozarks."

Let's visit about that.

So that is a guidebook that I wrote back in 2019 about places to visit in the region.

And that was something, and it still comes up a lot.

People wonder or ask me, where should I go visit?

What things would you suggest?

And so I decided to publish a book that had a lot of those places and kind of covered a spectrum of different things-- history, nature, food, just more eclectic museums, things like that.

And it was a lot of fun.

I actually would like to do a second volume, not an updated one necessarily of the previous one, but just a new list of things people can go see and optimistically would like to think that would be in the next few months.

But we will see.

Yeah.

So writing is your passion.

Clearly, I mean, that's what you-- so but turning that into a different medium, is your comfort level there to do that?

Do you like doing this sort of thing?

Yes, I mean I've tried to explore as many areas as I can.

I did a radio program on KSMU for a while.

I do TV appearances on KOLR 10 once a month.

And so I feel like people react to information in different ways.

Words are not going to be the best medium for everyone.

And so for me, it's about the story rather than the words and finding the best way to tell that where it resonates with people.

And a lot of us, we used to always talk about, well, but I've got a day job.

And you used to have a day job, but you slammed the door on that, said, I'm going to take this on full-time.

I did.

Yeah, at this point, that was in January of 2022, I left my job in PR at CoxHealth, which I loved.

I always have to say that there was nothing wrong with that job.

It truly was just I have been so passionate about the Ozarks and kind of at that point I was when I started Ozarks Alive thinking, if I'm going to do it, this is when I need to do it.

I was at that point again.

And thinking, if I am ever going to do this full time, I just need to jump in and see if I can make it work.

And so that's what I've been doing since January of 2022.

And I love it.

I mean, it's been amazing.

And I'm just so fortunate that I get to do this every day.

What are the projects are you working on in addition to your Ozarks Alive project?

Well, everything kind of falls under that Ozark storytelling umbrella.

I do a lot of work with the Community Foundation of the Ozarks.

I'm their writer in residence.

So I'm working with them on a regular basis.

I also work with Missouri State University Libraries as we prepare for the Smithsonian Ozarks focus-- That's exciting.

--and the Smithsonian in 2023.

And so the three of those major bullet points, Ozarks Alive overall, the CFO and the MSU Libraries for the Smithsonian are kind of the three major things I'm working on right now.

Yeah.

As you think about the work that's ahead, are there any challenges that you see that are beyond what you think you can handle?

By that I mean, it's so massive, the undertaking that needs to be-- like the preservation part, I mean, what do you save?

How do you save it?

Exactly.

Who's the keeper of it?

There's two elements to that keep me up at night.

And one is sort of when I touched on before is it's not so much a problem today, but 50 years from now, how are we going to do research in the same way that I do looking up things on newspapers.com?

Newspapers won't be there in the same way.

So how do we prepare and document things now so that they're available for somebody 50 years from now to even learn from to begin with?

But the other point here to what you said is simply the capacity.

I mean, I am not the solution to Ozarks preservation.

Things are changing every day.

Right.

And I try to cover a region from over to around the state line in Kansas up to Lake of the Ozarks, over toward around Eminence and then down to Northwest Arkansas.

And I don't even-- I never act like I am the comprehensive solution to this.

We need more people telling these stories.

And so I hope that-- there's a lot of focus on the Ozarks right now.

I hope that continues to grow and that there are other people who are preserving-- even if it's with your iPhone with your grandmother asking her questions and getting those recorded, we have so many tools now.

And it's such a shame when things get lost, because they don't have to be the way that they were before.

Yeah.

I think the challenge is to get young people engaged in that process.

Social media is a wonderful place, but there's so much there that can divert your attention to other things that all of a sudden something got away that you should have captured that you didn't capture.

And I think there's also a feeling that the Ozarks of today is not the same Ozarks as was in the past.

And that's.

True there are definite differences, but the Ozarks today is just as much a part of the Ozarks as in the past.

And I think its culture is just as valuable.

And so it's helping people reframe that, that even though it's not pictures of hillbillies everywhere, this is still the Ozarks.

And we need to preserve that culture too.

And I don't want to get away without talking about your work on-- because I think it's an important board, the Landmark Board.

What exactly is that?

And what does it do?

Well, and I'll tell you since the-- I can still talk about the board, but actually, I'm not on it anymore.

[laughs] DALE MOORE: OK.

But I can talk about how good it is so that that's still on the record.

The Landmarks Board is an organization here in Springfield that helps oversee the preservation of sites that are identified as historic sites or landmarks.

There's two kind of categories.

And when people are going to be doing work on a building or a landmark or something that falls into those categories, they go before the board to make sure that what they're doing falls into the guidelines for historic preservation.

And so there's sort of that buffer before people do things to properties that might destroy that historic value when applicable.

OK.

So it's not a governmental board.

Well, it is.

It's overseen by the city of Springfield.

So it's one of their boards.

And the board is an advisory board.

So its recommendations then may factor in on city council decisions as information they don't really decide anything until city council makes that decision.

But was able to give some feedback and input when decisions are made.

Are there any other entities in Springfield like that that do that sort of work?

There is a board for Green County historic sites.

But for Springfield, that's the board.

The Landmarks Board.

As you travel around the Ozarks and go to these different communities, do you find any communities that-- and I'm not trying to pit one against the other, certainly.

But do you find any that are just much better at doing the preservation piece, or-- well, I think of Carthage, for example.

And I love Carthage.

I always go down there when they have their festivals.

I mean, some towns just-- really like the apple butter making days in Mount Vernon and the Seymour fe-- I mean, all these festivals.

Is there one that you've visited or seen that's like, you folks get it right?

I don't know that I would say that.

I think I would say more that everyone is very different.

You drive from one Southwest corner of the Ozarks to the Northeast.

And you see so many different versions of the Ozarks along the way.

And so I do think you see maybe more robust versions like you talked about those places with festivals compared to towns that have disappeared.

I love both those types of places.

Sometimes I like the disappeared ones in a different way, where it's like, what are the stories that were here that aren't now?

But I think that overall, it's just a big puzzle in each piece is a little bit different.

Yeah.

I can see the wheels turning in your mind.

And when I occasionally drive down 96 highway and head-- you go through the Metropolis of Plew and Albatross and all of these-- [interposing voices] The section of Route 66.

DALE MOORE: Yeah, that section of 66.

And I wonder, that to me is a chance to hit an off ramp and try and find out more about those kinds of-- have you studied the history of Plew or Albatross?

Officially, I have not.

I have driven at many times and taken many, many photos.

But I have not-- I don't have a good talking point list about those particular places.

What I think that shows is that there is so much diversity.

And there are so many things that make up the Ozarks, the current culture but that are a direct reflection of the past culture and just passed down from one generation to the next.

What lessons do you think you would like to leave behind on what you want the legacy of Ozarks Alive to be going forward?

I think that I used this word before in this discussion, but that it was authentic.

And that this wasn't a sugarcoated version of the Ozarks.

It was how it was.

And to me, that's the most important thing, whether-- maybe it ties as a former traditional journalist moving into this space.

To me that accurate true story is the most important thing.

And so I hope that people in the future look back and have appreciation, of course, but really feel like they had a good picture of what things were really like.

Yeah.

If you could go back and redo anything or have a do over, would there be anything that you would reset?

Well, this is not a very glamorous thing to say.

But the thing I would do is have had a cataloging system in place from the beginning.

Because that's been a nightmare the last few years.

Because I'm such a person where I push and push and push to get something up, and then I'm like on to the next thing, where now I'm in the process of going back and cataloging all the photos, and this month and year and place.

And here's the story that went in and backing up all that stuff.

So that's a lesson for all of us.

Always have a good backup.

[laughs] Yeah.

Well, I just can't imagine how you could possibly improve on what you've done.

Because it is such it is such a perfect spot and captures perfectly the Ozarks and the stories that are being told in a way that is pretty darn unique.

Thank you.

I mean, I appreciate you saying that.

I always see things that I wish I want to do more of or expand in the future.

And for me, I think that would be the thing is I see myself as a limiting factor.

It's just me for the most part doing these stories.

And so I would be even excited in the future if Ozarks Alive had other writers who were either contributors or more regular folks to write.

Because I feel like we're in a race against time.

That's the bottom line.

It's a race against time to capture these traditions.

And they'll be new traditions.

They'll evolve.

But to capture them the way they are now is a race.

Well, I think that the way journalism is working now, I believe there's more of a cooperative kind of an effort.

I know you write some for the new newspaper, the digital newspaper, which is fabulous.

So I mean, I think there's new ways-- we're trying to find new ways to kind of not reinvent the wheel, but to find a better way to tell the stories that we need to tell.

We've been telling stories this way for a long time.

And it's refreshing to know that maybe we can open a door to a new kind of a venue, which is what you're doing.

Is there anyone that you wish you could talk to that you can't now that-- oh, I wish I could have had an interview with him, or-- I mean, there's always the ones people know of like Vance Randolph and the iconic folks-- I get asked that all the time.

Yeah, I mean, I think that-- I've never been asked that question before, which it seems like I should have thought through that before now.

I think that it wouldn't be a specific person but it would be someone I see in my mind who's this hill woman.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And the reason I thought of this, we did a show a couple of years ago, maybe three, I don't know.

Everything gets muddy.

But on Thomas Hart Benton at his residence.

And as we went up to his studio where he did his paintings, I thought, man, what a cool interview it would have been?

I mean, I'm standing here in the place where the poor man passed away.

But what an artist.

What an icon.

And so I get asked that question some.

And I was wondering if you could talk to somebody, living or dead, who would it be?

Who would you talk to?

Well, I think it really would be someone who is nameless in my mind but is a woman maybe in the hills from the 1920s or the '30s to say, is the way we portray the Ozarks of that era how you really perceived it?

That's something I've always wondered as I drive around.

We look back at that time period with the wagons and the horses and the isolation and think that must have been really hard.

And to those people, I assume it was just life.

But what did they think about that life?

Was that how they see things?

And I wish I could find that out.

Yeah.

Well, this went fast.

I knew it would.

You've got a heck of a thing going.

Thank you.

Keep digging in.

Keep being like me, a hillbilly activist.

[laughter] Because we need more of it.

But we appreciate you being here.

Thank you, Kaitlyn McConnell.

Oh thank you for having me.

So glad you were here.

You stay tuned.

I'll be right back.

SPEAKER: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

I want to thank my guest, Kaitlyn McConnell, for talking with us today.

And we'll see you again next time on "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

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