Photo Gallery

Other documentaries produced for

Barton County Community College

            Mark Adams had the opportunity to produce several documentaries while working at Barton County Community College. One of the earliest was LONG DAYS JOURNEY TO SUNDOWN (1995), produced for the Barton County Historical Society, about the Santa Fe Trail that runs through Barton County. The program featured interviews with several local historians, as well as some dramatic recreations and readings from journals and diaries from that period. LONG DAYS JOURNEY TO SUNDOWN received an Honorable Mention Award at the 1997 KAN Film Festival. This was shown on the Cougar Channel, the college’s cable channel, starting in 1998. It is still for sale at the Barton County Historical Society.

            WORLD WAR II MEMORIES (1996) was a documentary featuring interviews recorded by Mark and BCCC History Instructor Linda McCaffery for the college’s Oral History Library. Originally the plan was to make a series of 30-minute programs to be shown on the local PBS station, Smoky Hills Public Television, but Linda didn’t feel there were enough interviews to cover all of the major battles of the war. This documentary was originally shown at a conference being held at BCCC, and then later aired on the Cougar Channel. This program incorporated footage of Linda McCaffery’s on-camera introductions and commentary intended for the original PBS show, shot in the Shafer Art Gallery during their first major World War II exhibit. WORLD WAR II MEMORIES won an Honorable Mention Award at the 1997 KAN Film Festival. It was later shown on the college’s Cougar Channel.

            In 1997 Mark made REMEMBER ME (1997), a short documentary about a traveling AIDS Memorial Quilt Display that came to Barton County Community College. It featured interviews with some of the organizers and directors of the memorial, as well as footage of the display and opening and closing ceremonies shot by Mark Adams.

            By 1998 the college’s cable channel, The Cougar Channel, was on the air and Mark was producing video content for the channel. Along with educational programming and promotional videos, Mark started producing documentaries as part of the line-up.

The B-29 Memorial (2001) documentary showed the effort to make the B-29 Memorial Plaza in Great Bend, Kansas from the beginning fund-raising banquet with guest Brig. General Tibbits, the pilot of the Enola Gay, to the final construction and dedication ceremonies. The program ends with a special message sent by Tom Brokaw, recorded on the NBC Nightly News set.

In 2001 Jack Kilby returned to Great Bend for his High School reunion. Mr. Kilby was one of the inventors of the integrated circuit, and thus is called the inventor of the microchip, receiving the Nobel Prize in 2000. Mark filmed an extensive interview with Jack Kilby while he was at a reception in the Shafer Art Gallery, as well as with T.R. Reid, author of “The Chip” and good friend of Jack Kilby. Mark also filmed the Banquet for the High School Reunion, and produced the documentary HONORING JACK KILBY (2001).

Dorothy M. Morrison donated several beautiful stained glass windows to BCCC, which were to be used in the remodeled college chapel. Originally saved from a church torn down decades earlier, the windows had to be restored before placed in the chapel. Mark filmed the restoration process and produced the documentary The Dorothy M. Morrison Stained Glass Windows (2002) for the Cougar Channel. Mark intended on producing a companion documentary about the remodeling of the college’s chapel, including the final installation of the stained glass windows. After filming interviews and most of the remodeling process, Mark had to leave BCCC for the job at ETV in the summer of 2004, a couple of months before the remodeling was completed.

Once again using highlights of interviews from the BCCC Oral History Library, Mark produced Personal Stories of World War II (2002) to be shown as a companion piece to WORLD WAR II MEMORIES on The Cougar Channel. By 2004, when Mark left BCCC to go to ETV, he had produced two more World War II Interview highlights programs for the Cougar Channel.

EXPLORING PATRIOTS POINT (2003) was a documentary Mark made to be shown with the airing of JUDGMENT DAY on the Cougar Channel. This ‘Video Portrait’ used the extensive footage shot of the U.S.S. Yorktown and the Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Charleston, South Carolina including the pre-production footage shot for JUDGMENT DAY, and the return to the museum in 2002. Also included is a visit to the U.S.S. Lexington in Corpus Christi , Texas and a comparison of the two Essex Class aircraft carriers, in terms of shooting locations for JUDGMENT DAY.

Mark was asked to make a documentary called Holy Family Ceramic Tiles Project (2003), following the creation of an art project for the Holy Family School in Great Bend, Kansas. It was never shown on The Cougar Channel.

VISITING DR. ROBL (2003) was a special project for the Cougar Channel showcasing a BCCC graduate and one of the key scientists who helped to clone the first cow, Dr. James Robl. Mike Dawes and Mark Adams traveled to his new company in South Dakota to interview him and tour his laboratories and facilities where he was starting to create new human medicines from cloned cows.

Shot in 2000, but not edited until 2006, RETURN TO CULVER is one of the most personal documentaries Mark has made. Seven months after his mother’s death, Mark and his father returned to Culver, Indiana to visit for the first time in over 25 years.

            Even though Mark was born in Kansas City, he moved to Indiana a little over a year after his birth, and his earliest memories of his life are from the five years he lived in Culver. But once they moved back to Kansas City, his mother never wanted to go back to the small town in north central Indiana. It was only after her death in 2000 that Mark and Don Adams traveled back to the place that meant so much in their lives.

            Mark took a video camera to record the visit, and later edited a documentary about the experience. But Mark considers this a program intended for only two people: himself and his father. Although he shows it to anyone who wants to watch it, he has never attempted to distribute it or screen it at a film festival.

Click here to read about more documentaries Mark made while at BCCC