Signing Off in Wichita
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After 24 years on the air, KSN Weather Anchor Dave Freeman has called it a day.
The KSN Chief Meteorologist will always be remembered in Wichita as the guy who kept viewers safe during severe weather.
It’s a responsibility Dave takes so seriously, he remembers the first fatality during his watch which came in 1999 with the Haysville tornado. He also remembers meeting grateful viewers.
“This man says, ‘You saved my mom’s life.’ She was in Haysville, and he was watching that night. He saw me give the warning,” Dave recalled. “He called his mom who was not watching and got her to shelter and her apartment was destroyed. When you have that experience, again, you become very conscious that this is about taking care of people.”
That includes his own family. A tornado once headed right for Dave’s neighborhood when his 10-year-old son was home alone.
“So, I turned to my intern, a wonderful young lady who’d been with us a couple of years, and I said, live on TV, ‘Lisa, call my house.’ She looked at me, and she knew. Even now when I think about that, in that moment, I lost my game face and I was just a dad, for just a fraction of a second, and then I just, like I’m going to do right now, I said I can’t do this right now. I have a job to do so I just shook it off and turned around and kept going.”
Freeman is not retiring to go fish, he has bigger plans.
“Tracy and I have always harbored a dream to be able to go and serve and give back, and we were particularly interested in going to Haifa, Israel, to serve at the Bahai World Center. All three of our kids went there and served a year of volunteer service, and we saw what it meant to them.”
It’s a leap of faith requiring them to sell most of their belongings and leave family and friends behind, but for this weatherman, the outlook is always sunny.
“It’s not so much I’m leaving KSN which right now is a very happy place and a good place, as it is we’re going to pursue this desire we’ve had to serve.”
