On the afternoon of July 31, 1987, during his four-hour midday radio show, Terry Evans walked from the K-97 control room into the station’s newsroom. Telephones were ring with terrified Edmontonians in the start of a horrific tornado.

“I specifically remember giving instructions to a child on the phone to climb into the bathtub and cover himself with blankets to be safe,” Evans recalls, his voice carrying the weight of that moment.

“His parents were at work and he was home from school — alone — and the noise from the storm on his end of the phone was so loud that I could barely hear him. I stayed on the phone with him until the line went dead, and I don’t remember anything after that because I was terrified for that kid.”

The call came from the Evergreen Trailer Park, where 15 people were killed in that devastating tornado.

“I never found out what happened to him.”

The Evans voice. It was there.

And when that voice speaks into the microphone at K-97 on Wednesday at 5:30 a.m., he will mark 40 years in the Edmonton market.

There have been other offers over the years, including a particularly tempting one from K-Surf in Santa........

© Edmonton Sun