How does a small town in the middle of Kansas become featured on one of national television’s most popular shows? In this case, it is because of the vision and perseverance of a local man who believed in the show, the community and a higher power.
This man is Doug Thompson.
Thompson, an Abilene, Kan., resident, is the owner and founder of the Kansas Auto Racing Museum and founder of the Christian movie company, Covenant Films, LLC.
As the area coordinator for the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” project in Chapman, Kan. Thompson participated first hand in every step, often making important decisions that will affect the Tutweiler family, whose home rebuild is being featured on the show, and the Chapman community for years to come.
Thompson said the story begins June 13, two days after the tornado that destroyed much of Chapman, including the Tutweiler home. He said various national news companies came to do coverage of the tornado.
One of them was ABC, which also brought their “EMHE” advance team to look over the town and see if it was a possible project.
Thompson said he became excited about the idea of being featured on the show when he saw the national news trucks rolling out of the parking lot of his museum for what everyone planned to be the last time.
“I knew if they did not come back, Chapman would really be in trouble because the rest of the nation would never know what had happened,” he said.
So Thompson decided to take charge of the situation to make sure Chapman was not forgotten.
“I found out that ABC had been to the city building, so I went and got their contact card,” he said. “I sent some e-mails off to [“EMHE” Executive Producer] Conrad Rickens and gave him some strong points about this community, some reasons why he ought to take another look at it.”
Thompson said he and Rickens had more conversations about Chapman and the possibility of doing a rebuild within the community.
“Even though he had already routed the advance team away, he decided to send them back,” Thompson said. “I said, ‘OK, just give us a chance to get it together.’”
Thompson said that night, he visited the home of Mike Keating, senior pastor of Emmanuel Church in Abilene, Kan. Thompson told the pastor, “We’ve got an opportunity, and there isn’t time to do anything else. We’ve got to make a decision right now and go with it. We’ve got to bring the family of God together and make a coalition, because Chapman’s only 1,350 people, and they can’t do it alone.”
That coalition became “Rebuild Chapman.” Using the slogan, “You can help rebuild Chapman, brick by brick,” Keating sent out 311 letters to the surrounding churches, from Salina to Manhattan and Herington to Clay Center.
“That began the groundswell of all of the volunteers,” Thompson said. “From there, word spread. The builders took the ball and ran with it, and decided, ‘We can do this.’”
The Chapman project is the 134th home “EMHE” has done, and it is the first one in which the majority of the volunteers were accessed through churches in the community. He said more than 3,000 volunteers from surrounding communities participated in the rebuild.
Thompson said the ABC advance team was a large help in organizing the volunteers.
“Initially, they decided they couldn’t do this because the community size was too small to take on the project.”
Ironically, Thompson said “Rebuild Chapman” had to turn away hundreds of interested volunteers because 3,000 were really all they could use.
Though the project has taken large amounts of time, determination and administration, Thompson said he chose to coordinate it because he believes there is more to come for this small but mighty community.
“Despite our country’s troubles, it’s still a good country, and the people are capable of doing a fantastic job to help others out,” he said. “Once word spreads from this show, we know the rest of the country will rally around Chapman and the school system and the city. That’s really what we’re looking forward to.”
Thompson said the show will air twice in the U.S. and 15 times in 69 other countries, so that by the end of its run, more than 1 billion people will have seen the episode.
“The good Lord caused every bit of that to happen,” he said. “That’s just one of the stories.”
Another pertinent story involves ABC’s request for clips from Covenant Films’ full-length feature movie, “Can We Talk?”, which is an original movie concept from Covenant Films that follows Nate, a young man struggling to break beyond the perceptions of others in order to hear God’s voice in his life.
Thompson said his film crew had street-level and aerial footage of the community, taken several days before the tornado hit and again immediately after.
“ABC was most interested in that because if you were going to script it, you would have said, ‘We’d like footage before and after the tornado.’ Because of that, ABC knew they could make a very interesting show out of this town,” he said.
Thompson said ABC has the Chapman episode set for a two-hour special on Jan. 25, 2009, which happens to be the date he had already set for the opening of “Can We Talk?”
Though this timing was an exciting surprise for him, he said, “The good Lord already had it all planned.”
During this past week, Thompson has been in the enviable position of having many conversations with the well-known host of “EMHE,” Ty Pennington, and one day he spent 10 hours with Ty.
Thompson said Pennington later told another member of the production team, “That Doug dude moves to his own beat.”
Despite being the primary contact for the entire project, Thompson takes very little credit for any of it.
“That was nothing I could have done,” he said. “I was just an instrument for it. It’s really the good Lord’s project.”
Volunteer connects small town disaster to national TV show
Published: Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Updated: Wednesday, November 19, 2008
 "Photo: Matt Binter")
Matt Binter
He never takes credit and it certainly is due him.Thank you so much Doug. God Bless you!