On July 1st, 1935, KWTO, which stood for Keep Watching the Ozarks, began weather broadcasts directly from the Springfield Weather Bureau office. The host was a colorful character named C.C. Williford.
When I was young, Dickerson Park Zoo had an elephant named Ole C.C. Turns out, she was named for Williford. He and his wife, Dorothy, had adopted her. That's how I knew about Williford, but many knew him from his time on the radio.
Williford's nephew, David Eslick, said his uncle's full name was Charles Claiborn Williford, but everyone called him Mr. Williford or C.C. He called him Charlie.
Eslick said his uncle's path to Springfield started in Jonesboro, Illinois, where he was born. Willeford's father died before his son's birth, and Charlie was raised by his mother and maternal grandfather.
His path to being a weatherman began in 1919. Williford took a civil service examination for an assistant observer in meteorology. After passing the exam, he started to work for the Weather Bureau in July of 1921, and after two promotions, he was transferred to Springfield. That was in 1932. Eslick said his uncle was the first weatherman to broadcast over the radio on station KWTO on July 1, 1935. His first broadcast was from the top floor of the City Hall building on Boonville.
Williford radio broadcast: "The weather is discussed more frequently, perhaps, than any other subject which affords a convenient subject for conversation. This is but natural, for it is ever with us our constant companion from the cradle to the grave."
Williford enjoyed a long career as a radio weatherman, largely on radio station KWTO. He served as head weatherman at the Springfield Weather Bureau from 1935 to 1955. Eslick remembers talking to some old timers who told him that when Charlie was on they'd stop what they were doing and listen to the weather forecast.
"And if he said it was going to rain, the ladies wouldn't put their wash out. And believe it or not, looking back on statistics and stuff, they say that his weather forecast was as true or truer than they are today," said Eslick.
He said his uncle's broadcasts were so beloved that around 1936, he was asked to go to Washington, D.C., to teach other weathermen his style. According to Eslick, his uncle was also conservation minded, "and his on his radio programs a lot of times he'd give a little fishing tip or something."
Williford would often mention people who had called and told him how many fish they had caught.
He was presented the Missouri Department of Conservation Master Conservationist Award in 1949, an award Johnny Morris received in 1993.
There was a little something of everything in his broadcasts.
He would put poems in there, and people would send him stuff, bugs or what have you, and he would, he would identify them," said Eslick. "And then, like I say, he talked about fishing and he'd read scripture, he'd read poems and quote local people so that people, they didn't just listen to see whether they could put their wash out, they listened to find out what he had to say."
Eslick wrote in a fall 2010 edition of Dickerson Park Zoo's Wild Times publication that Williford's weather broadcasts endeared him to listeners. He was asked to be the master of ceremonies at many functions, and he even gave commencement addresses.
Williford was a Shriner and often participated in the Shrine parade.
"He'd dress up and put on a raincoat and umbrella, and it's just 99 degrees outside and there wasn't any rain clouds," said Eslick. "And there's cartoons, the newspaper cartoons of that. And, but he was, he was just a colorful, colorful character."
Eslick said his uncle was a witness to history when he traveled to New Orleans with Springfield businessmen, including John T Woodruff, president of the National Route 66 Association, to talk to the Highway 65 Association "to make sure that Route 66 would cross Route 65, 65 would cross 66 in Springfield, making this the crossroads of America."
Woodruff was one of those gathered at the Colonial Hotel in downtown Springfield on April 30th, 1926, who sent a telegram to Washington, D.C., suggesting the name for the Mother Road be 66, allowing Springfield to claim that it's the Birthplace of Route 66.
But Eslick said his uncle was a humble man and never talked about any of that. He found out about it after Williford died. He also found out from a photo that Williford and his wife, Dorothy, were sitting near Harry Truman when the former president visited the Shrine Mosque in 1952. Truman was in town for the 35th Division reunion. He was a captain in the 35th during World War One, a division Eslick's grandfather, Captain Louis E. Eslick, also served in.
Eslick said his Aunt Dorothy and his grandmother helped raise him and his three siblings after his mother and father divorced. He has fond memories of his childhood and spending time with his aunt and uncle. He remembers that the weather bureau moved to the Springfield airport in 1949.
"Charlie would bring from the airport or the Weather Bureau when they moved to the airport there in 49, and he'd bring weather maps with the lines on them, the stratosphere and all that junk. And they had those like you see on TV today with the way the weather was moving," he said. "And then, every once in a while, he'd bring home a weather balloon, and that was the coolest thing.
It wasn't just C.C. Williford who was well known in Springfield. Eslick said his Aunt Dorothy was an excellent whistler, which caught the attention of many. She was a cook at Fairview School. She worked at O'Reilly hospital and at Lily tulip, and while she worked, she whistled. Eslick said everyone knew her as the Whistler, and Eslick is a pretty good whistler himself, having had a great teacher.
He remembers learning to drive in Dorothy and Charlie's car, a 1953 red Pontiac chieftain. Charlie loved to garden and Eslick used to help him with it.
"He was the tomato king and there was a lady named Nona Morton that was the tomato queen, and they used to compete at the fair of who had the best tomatoes, and it was really funny to watch that," said Eslick. "But Charlie had a big garden, lived over just south of Seminole and east of Jefferson and had a big garden. And one of the pictures that is around was him standing in front of his cane pole crop, and he had cane poles that he fished with, and he grew them. I mean, it was, you know, and he and Dorothy both were fisher people, fishermen. And that's back in a time when you didn't see a lot of women fishing."
According to Eslick, when he was 16, his aunt and uncle took him to fish with the Pierce City Catfish Club in their annual outing below Powersite Dam. He caught an 8 1/4-pound drum. He said that was how the Catfish Club remembered him.
C.C. Williford retired from the Springfield Weather Bureau on May 31, 1956 after suffering a stroke. He died on December 6th, 1966. Dorothy passed away in 1992.
Eslick donated most of his uncle's belongings to the Missouri State University Library archives. There are three CDs of his programs, including the first broadcast available in the archives at the library.
